a drop of water

On Sunday evening Mark led a quick study through Nehemiah chatper 4. This chapter talks about the first oppositions against the Israelites building the wall, instigated by local surround leaders, Sanballat and Tobiah. The oppositions were on two fronts, 1. a psychological attack including mockery and sowing seeds of doubt and 2. a physical attack of flexing muscles and threats. Nehemiah met each of these oppositions with prayer and a plan, respectively. I personally think it is interesting that often times we will meet opposition with one or the other. Some of us will just pray about it. Some of us will just make a strategic plan to face it. This happens at work when we (I) are unhappy about our circumstances. We (I) just pray about and don’t really (maybe lack the courage) to do anything about it. Or maybe this happens with ministry where we (I) have a great plan to reach our goal, but we (I) spend very little time praying about it. I suppose there is even a dichotomy, where we emphasize the spiritual side of physical tasks and emphasize the physical side of spiritual tasks.

The question that Mark left core with was: “If the point of the book of Nehemiah is ‘bringing people back to God,’ why is Nehemiah rebuilding a wall? How does him organizing the rebuilding of a wall come into play with the main theme of this book?”

So I was sitting in the NCR library this afternoon during my brief break from work and I was thinking about why one always hears that you need to be right with God before you enter a relationship in Christian circles. I understand the traditional meaning of this guideline, that one should be secure, confident, trust in, believe in, and dependent on God before a relationship will be soil for marriage to bare fruit, but I think that sometimes this guideline gets a twisted by American self-sufficiency.

The idea of being ‘right’ with God gives people a sense that of a plateau that they must climb towards, and upon reaching it, they can walk smoothly together, with God looking down from heaven. Because it is advised that we need to develop our own relationships with God before relationships with a significant other, we make an unneeded extrapolation that one’s faith is solely a personal thing. I used to live this way, when Jenn was discouraged, I would encourage her to seek God, essentially leaving her alone to seek God on her own. But marriage and relationships and friendships are not about that. Yes our decision of faith is an individual one, but it is an individual decision to enter a community decision (does that make sense?).

In marriage, we are not going to just be walking on this plateaued relationship with God, but we will be climbing together with our spouses. Like rock climbing, having two people there, allows you to climb a lot crazier mountains, instead of just hiking uphill like we might have done alone. Of course God willing, there are those who will climb alone, but perhaps I’m taking the analogy a little too far. What I wanted to say is just that in our friendships, in are relationships, in marriage, in our relationships with God, it is not about letting each other fight through it alone, but it is about coming alongside each other and filling the gap when needed.