The trouble is, on its own, a message like "be joyful" can feel trite or too easyor too hard. It's such an important battle to fight for joy amidst trying circumstances. Phillipians will help us do that.

I sometimes wonder whether one of the signs of pride is a lack of rest or an increasing intensity. We do need to work hard and work for God. Yet where is the Sabbath principle in our lives? There is a temptation to take pride in how busy we areand wear it like a badge.

The reality of the fallen world in which we all live is evidenced in Nehemiah 13. Here we have another Bible hero being seen honestly. Why does the Bible show us these things? Pastor Josh says it's to point us to the one real hero who won't disappoint us.

In one of his most startling statements, Jesus said that the cities where he was doing his miracles would fare worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, because the miracles these cities had received were far greater. So where does that leave us in our spiritually wealthy land? We have a wealth of resources available to us, and we need to take the opportunities we have seriously and respond.

Here we look at the response of Nehemiah's people to God's Word. Misreading the Word to define what it means to be a Christian can be problematic. We have to come back to who Jesus is and what it really means to be a Christian.

It's all too easy to let personal differences spoil our spiritual relationships. We tend to think we know the kind of people God uses, and they must be just like us!

It's very important to get these simple steps right when studying the Bible: what does it say, what does it mean, and what does it mean to me? It needs to be in that order, one after the other, and it produces great joy because we now understand the Word that has been made known to us.

Nehemiah 8 speaks about the recovery of the centrality of God's Word, among God's covenant people when they returned to His land, and it sets a framework for the importance of His Word for the church today.

What we have here is an encouragement to be honest with God when facing opposition. Very often, people find it hard to pray in difficult times because they feel they have to say nice things to God. But God wants us to pray with authenticity and tell Him how we feel from our heart.

Adversity reveals what we really believe. Do we have faith in God despite our immediate circumstances? During testing we can be reminded that God is reliable, which can be very encouraging for us. Nehemiah experienced this too.