DON’T KEEP SILENT IN SUCH A TIME AS THIS!  For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” —Esther 4:14  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx37FRpcIw             God can work through you and through. He desires to do so! But if we keep silent, if we do not do His will then He will do so through someone else. But… God has you and me living at this time in history and in the location we are at for specific…

TRUTH ON THE INSIDE!  Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. —Psalms 51:6             Who are you on the inside? What are your thoughts? Our Lord takes “delight in truth in the inward being.” If we are being true inwardly then we will act accordingly.   But do we act like we are living according to the truth, but on the inside something else is going on? It is easy to put on and outward perception of truth, but is that who we really are on the inside? Oh may we ask our Lord to teach us wisdom in the…

PLAIN COMMUNICATION WITHOUT WORDS!  The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge! Selah —Psalm 50:6  The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.   Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. Without speech or language, without a sound to be heard, their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. —Psalm 19:1-4  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. —Romans 1:20              You are…

UNDERSTAND!  Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish. —Psalm 49:20              Someone has said, “When you die you die like a dog. You are thrown in the ground and that is it. There is nothing after death.” So it is with those who deny God. They are “like the beasts that perish.” For those without understanding there is no hope beyond the grave. They are like a dumb animal that does not understand.             With this fatalistic attitude unbelieving men live for today and hope for tomorrow. That is all they have. With no hope beyond the grave their philosophy is— “Let us eat…

PRAISE HIM!  So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days.  And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God. —Nehemiah 6:15-16   Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King. —Psalm 48:1-2              For the lost to know that work that was done was done by…

VISION, OBEDIENCE, WORK AND WORKERS!  Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me. And I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. There was no animal with me but the one on which I rode… And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, “Let us rise up and build.” So they strengthened their hands for the good work. —Nehemiah 2:12-13, 18              Of all the people of Nehemiah’s time God put the burden…

OUR EVER-PRESENT REFUGE AND STRENGTH!  God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. —Psalm 46:1-3              Trusting in your own strength? It will fail. Why not trust in a Refuge who is always present? Why not trust the One who gives us strength and is our strength? Why not trust Him who is “an ever-present help in trouble?” When God is our refuge, when He is our strength then we know we have “an…

DISCIPLE!  For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. —Ezra 7:10              Ezra “set his heart” to do three things: To study the Law of the Lord To do what the Law of the Lord said To teach the Law of the Lord This is discipleship. We learn what our Lord is saying to us through His Word. Then we make application to our own lives. Then we hand this down to others so they will do the same. Just as our Lord desires us to learn, know, obey and pass it…

BE AWARE! If a ruler listens to lies, all his officials become wicked. —Proverbs 29:12 This is an amazing statement made about 3000 years ago and yet it is as relevant today as it was then. Now if a ruler listens to lies, if he is receiving information that he knows is false and passing it on as truth, then this is bad news for those he rulers over. Not only that but because he is willingly listening to lies and passing it on that means those “officials” of his become wicked. How can this not be the case? Now we are to pray for those in authority, but that…

OUR LORD’S SOVEREIGN RULE!  In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to…