Pep Talk "Nehemiah-Style"

It's in the Bible!  I'm always amazed at how funny Scripture can be.  I read a great verse today. Nehemiah was mad at the Israelites for intermarrying, so he "confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair"!!!  Wow!  He was mad!  But what was it that made him so mad?  They forgot, such short memories, of what God required of them.  God had said, "You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves."  They didn't listen.

He reminded them of Solomon, what a great man he was.  "Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. NEVERTHELESS, foreign women made even him to sin."  None of us are immune to forgetting God's law, even one of the greatest kings to ever live.

Every October I reflect on our debt-termination goal with a new vengeance as it was around this time of year, 3 years ago, that we kicked it up a notch and I started the blog to track our experience. Reading Nehemiah is good as a source of inspiration.  He had a goal, too - to rebuild the wall.  We are rebuilding a wall, in a way.  He got a lot of flack and many attacks as he went about his business, so much so that he had the men working on the wall with a sword in one hand and a tool in another.  We get attacks all the time that discourage us, too.

But then, in Nehemiah 12, the wall is done and it is about to be dedicated.  The leaders of Israel were brought on top of the wall. with two "great choirs".  That must have been quite the moment, standing on top of the finished wall.  How I long to stand on the wall!  Each choir's purpose was just to sing and give thanks.  Everyone in Israel joined in, "And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced.  And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away."  How exciting for them to have gone through the whole process and seen it to completion.  The book had begun with Nehemiah upset that the walls were in disrepair.  Then he was sent.  He checked it out and saw had bad it was, but he didn't stay in that bad place.  He just started.  One brick at a time, one family at a time, one section of the wall at a time....it got done.

I needed to read that again, especially this time of the year.  Our wall is still needing to be built. When October comes, I find it very hard because each time a year passes, it tends to discourage me. Yet Nehemiah reminds me to press on and just keep building our wall.  One day I hope to stand on our wall with our choir and rejoice so loudly that people all around here us!  Dave Ramsay is no longer on our radio station, but when he was, we talked about driving down to Nashville (or wherever he is!) and going on his show telling how we got debt-free and then doing the "Debt-free Scream" so many are famous for!  We still might, Lord willing.  The people who do it on the radio always do it real loud!  It's always followed by the famous word, "FREEDOM!!!!!" yelled out by Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart who also longed for freedom.

So, now I have permission to give a pep talk "Nehemiah-style" and keep our family on track....I'm not sure that I'll beat them up, but I might pull some hair!  It's good to be reminded today of our debt-free goal and though we aren't there yet, I have to choose to not be discouraged and instead be more like Nehemiah and the Israelites and just press on.