My bat Problems and Where We Are Going for the Fall

Yes I have had bats in our house. I have learned I would much rather deal with mice, snakes, bugs vs bats. I am not sure if God created their look or if they were especially cursed in the fall, but my encounters with them have not been favorable. The reality is, though, I failed to address several problems in my house that opened the door (no pun intended)for my eerey encounters with them. I knew there was a problem but I wasn’t doing anything to fix the problem (can you relate?).

This was the problem Nehemiah faced thousands of years ago. The walls and gates of protection around Jerusalem were down and unless something was done “bats” were going to get into Jerusalem. Everyone knew there was a problem but no one was taking initiative or responsibility for the problem.

We live in a day like Nehemiah. Huge challenges are before our nation (war, economy, poverty, etc). The church is in many ways asleep, statistics show very little difference between church goers and non church goers in regards to divorce, morality, areas of character, etc. For many churches the hot debate is whether to ordain homosexual clergy. Lastly families are struggling and marriages are teetering even to stay together.

There are two things we need to learn from Nehemiah.
1) He had a Holy ambition-Holy in the sense that he wanted God to be honored, and ambition in the sense of a passionate desire for long lasting fruit. If you had to rank your spiritual ambition level where would it be? 1- I solely care about myself and what is going on in my own little world that consists of three people: Me, Myself, and I… or…a 10-I passionately want to serve God and His agenda in this world.

2) He had a Dislocated heart. Here was Nehemiah hundreds of miles away with an executive job making big bucks, all the perks (our dream right?), and a busy schedule. Scripture says when he heard that the walls were down and the people of God weren’t doing well he sat down and wept (Neh. 1:3). Then he began to pray and fast. Why would a guy with such opulence and financial blessing care? He had a dislocated heart, he might have had a lot but his heart was somewhere else.

Jesus had a dislocated heart when it said that He being in the very nature God (worshipped, adored, served) did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant…humbled himself, became obedient even to death on the cross (Philippians 2:5-8). His love for us drove him to lay aside all the riches that He might gain us.

It is my prayer that we might take the same ownership of God’s agenda that Nehemiah did. We have an opportunity to help rebuild the walls of people and give hope to the hurting this fall. But it is going to take initiative or a Holy Ambition, and a heart that is dislocated that moves us out of our comfort zone.