The Well Church OKC

So many times we consider the Word of God as we would any other piece of mail, electronic or otherwise. I wonder why we do this. Perhaps because we ultimately treat it as if it was from another human, like us. Flawed, selfishly motivated, no more or less than what we could offer ourselves. We see it as something that should be evaluated, contemplated, discussed and reviewed. Then, perhaps, we might choose some portion of it to consider if it adds value to our lives. Most of it, perhaps, ends up in the trashcan.

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Last week, I previewed a bit of what the final chapter of Nehemiah would hold for us. Another accounting of the Jewish nation drifting from their focus on the God who had redeemed them from exile, given them purpose and resources, and seen them through the rebuilding process of the wall, the city of Jerusalem, and the nation of Israel. We often look at the book of Nehemiah only in the narrative of the wall being built, but in its entirety, it is a much more honest look at the nature of the nation of Israel, and truly, our own lives.

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We are God’s chosen people, selected before we were even created! This is hard to understand on many levels, and yet its truth is true! So, as we look at the concluding chapters in Nehemiah, we would do well to identify this book as a reminder of God’s faithfulness even more than it is a reminder of our infidelity.

Unity within the body of Christ is a calling worth living for because it points to Christ crucified and promotes spiritual growth.

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What’s in a name? It is a common phrase but one I want to explore a bit this morning. A name is a powerful and meaningful word. It communicates a significant amount and is often overlooked in our day to day lives. Why? Because it is common perhaps. All of us have one it seems. Some of us actually have several. We have the name or names we were given at birth. We have names that our friends call us. We have nicknames and names that fit in certain contexts, etc. Names from before we were married, and names after. Work names and house names.

The fact that our God truly, deeply and fully knows us by name should be one of the most comforting things in our lives.

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We are, or were, all lost. None of us has chosen to remain true to our Creator. At some point, or at many points in our lives, we have taken paths that lead to our destruction. We are prone to wander, prone to leave the God who loves us. We give our affections to the things of the world. To violence, to lust, to attention, to power, to easy money, to anger, to fear. Even to things that seem good by the world’s standards. To building a business, to pursuing a degree, to buildings family. But these things, devoid of the aim to pursue God, are a placebo that keeps us from desiring the Kingdom - a snare that pulls us away from our true purpose. When we do these things, we are willingly walking into the trap of sin slavery. We are in exile. We eventually wake up to our condition, but we are never able to rescue ourselves. This is the endless hopeless cycle that all humanity traps itself into.

Matt Cancio takes us through some of the ways our enemy Satan tries to distract us from doing God’s will for our lives, and how we should respond.

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Those who are most fragile are the ones most quickly and profoundly affected by stress and economic challenge. They simply have no buffer, no margin to absorb the hard times. They are not only more quickly impacted, but the proportionate harm is much greater. The systems of support, the resources and the networks needed to make it through challenge are simply much less for the less affluent.

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Sometimes you have to fight for what you know to be true. This is simply reality. It has always been so, apparently. When you stand for something that is in opposition to what others gain from, you will find yourself in their crosshairs. Let’s pick up our story where we left off.

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We are actually not moving toward the inevitable complete destruction of the world and its people, but toward the perfect restoration of all creation! We should act like it. The ultimate story of the Gospel is embodied in this idea. Our lives, intended for a perfect and perfectly fulfilling relationship with our Creator, can only return to the original condition when the redemptive work of Jesus is fully completed in our spirits.

Nehemiah had awakened to his work in his world and was working to awaken it in God’s people. They were inspired to act and act they did.

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