God’s Work, Team’s Work

Nehemiah 3: God’s Work, Team’s Work

On Sunday, CDC had the privilege of hearing a sermon from an interesting speaker, Pastor Ricky, who runs an orphanage in Chiangmai, Thailand. Living by faith in God to provide for their needs, Pastor Ricky and his family bring up orphans and poor children in the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, even those infected by full-blown AIDS.

Nehemiah Chapter 3 basically documents how different teams of God’s people worked together to repair different parts of the walls of Jerusalem. Pastor Ricky focused his sermon mainly on 3 R’s- Ruin, Repair and Results/Rewards.

Ruins

Where is our Jerusalem? In a sense, our Jerusalem represents our life, our family, our church, our neighborhood, our calling. The work of the devil is to steal, kill and destroy, and various areas of our lives may have been left in ruins as a result. On a personal level, it could be a loss of touch with God, a financial burden, a sickness, an enemy. At the family level, it could be a broken relationship, unsaved loved ones, estranged family members. At the church level, it could be a serious disagreement, a general sense of apathy, or even unforgiveness, immorality and selfish ambition. At the neighborhood level, our place of living and our workplace, there could be ruins of idolatry, godlessness and materialism all around us. Finally, our calling, our special ministry which God has assigned for us, could be in ruins because of fear, procrastination or other desires. 

Repair

Once we identify the ruins in our life, we must quickly act to repair the walls….. The book of Psalms wisely proclaims “Unless the Lord builds a house, the builders labor in vain”. The starting point of everything is God, and only by starting with God and relying on Him to help us can we truly rebuild our walls with materials of true lasting quality. The best way to repair is always by love. The apostle Paul wrote lovingly to his sheep “Do everything in love”. We repair by showing love, giving love, restoring in love. As we seek to grow in love with God, we will automatically become more passionate to love holy lives. As we seek to love others more, broken relationships will be mended and unity will be strengthened. Besides that, repair work also takes great faithfulness. We need to persevere and press on, faithfully repairing and maintaining every wall in our lives. Finally, we need to repair in teams, like in the time of Nehemiah. We should try to bear burdens alone but pray and work together with fellow brothers and sisters. That is why the Cell Groups of every church is so important for us to grow together and support one another, helping each other repair the ruins in our lives!

Results/Rewards

Based on physical eyes, we sometimes will not see any results even after a lot of hard work, and the ruins still seem as terrible as ever. Nevertheless, we need to choose to look, not with human eyes but spiritual eyes, as Paul told the Corinthian church “Let us fix our eyes not on what is seen, which is temporary, but what is unseen, which is eternal”. Abraham believed God would make him the father of nations when he did not even have a single offspring. Let us then go on in faith, doing all we can and believing, even if we fail to see fruit physically. In the end, we will reap a harvest, be it in our lifetime, or another’s.

God bless,

Jason