Hi Everyone ,
Sharing a devotional with you today from Nehemiah 9:17-21:
17 They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them, 18 even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, ‘This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt,’ or when they committed awful blasphemies.19 “Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. 20 You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. 21 For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen.
Here the Israelites are confessing their sins to God as they have fallen away again. This time it was after the walls have been built again Israelites assembled and repented. As they repented they remembered all the things God has done for Moses, Abraham, and other ancestors. They confessed that they had not listened and had become stiff necked and appointed a leader to return their slavery. However in the midst of that they remember what who God is. They remembered that God is a gracious and compassionate. They start naming things that God has done for them and keeping their eye on Him.
God is Gracious so we don’t need to prove ourselves. In these verses we can see that proving or doing what we think might gain approval from others is not what God wants for us. He wants us to trust him and to walk alongside of Him in our daily lives. I wonder how many times we thought, “I need to prove…” it is something that we all do at some point because we want either to look like we have it all together or to gain approval from others. In this the Israelites realized that it was not in their own doing that all these things has happened, but by trusting God. They could not do any of this on their own. God is gracious to us and it is even more apparent in Luke 15 in the story of the Prodigal son. God has open arms to welcome us in. Friends let us not live as though we need to prove something to someone or to God. He has already called us to Himself as Children of God. may we walk in light that there is nothing to prove and that we cannot earn God’s love but it is a gift that He already freely gives to us. Let us keep our eyes of Jesus and the Father’s abundant love for us.
Blessings,
Esther