Ok all you doubters and haters, we are one step closer. Keep your pump-action ready and find some high ground. Seriously though, this will not help with the zombie mania that has taken many in our country. I must admit, a zombie apocalypse appeals to me as a guy for the simple urge to prove yourself strong, ready, capable, and to fight. All are pretty normal desires for a man, zombies aside.
In fact, it is pretty natural for any person to desire to overcome, survive, and defeat an enemy; any person. You might even say it is wired into us. For the most part we attempt to fill the desire with doing well at work, movies and video games, and for some extreme sports like paintball. It is simply part of being human.
The real challenge is what to do after you overcome. Notice how most of our dreams end at the great victory? It is tough to live in that victory. Especially when you feel more like a zombie than killing one!
While I do not think Jenny and I are in, the battle is done now what mode, I do feel more like a zombie than killing one. We literally pour ourselves out to exhaustion every day, and then wake up and have even higher expectations set for us, with seldom a break. The human body and mind were not made for such a schedule and yet we add emotional exhaustion on top of it all.
I feel overwhelmed by the idea of doing our job well, then you add striving to keep a strong relationship with my wife, be a good father, keeping the baby, and trying to do devotions and keep up a relationship with God. Most of the time I am surprised if I can string together coherent words let alone keep up with expectations.
I am sure if my main and only focus was the job I could get enough rest to survive long enough for a few days off and reset to do it again, but I refuse to compromise my relationship with God or my family. And so I feel like a zombie.
Living in the land given you can be tough, but you have to do it.
11:1 Now the leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem. And the rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of ten to live in Jerusalem the holy city, while nine out of ten remained in the other towns. 2 And the people blessed all the men who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem.
3 These are the chiefs of the province who lived in Jerusalem; but in the towns of Judah everyone lived on his property in their towns: Israel, the priests, the Levites, the temple servants, and the descendants of Solomon's servants.
Nehemiah and the people of Israel have seen a great work completed, the people have refocused, celebrated, and taken inventory of the work left ahead of them. They have acknowledged the help of others and the work as God’s and now it is time to live in it.
Builders often struggle with this part of the task. As a Builder it is often easier to think of working than it is to live in what you have built. For example, church planters work very hard to build a church from the ground up. Once the church is built, however, they almost always tend to move on to another church plant. Why?
It is tough to settle for the long slow process of development. Rebuilding is an intense and temporary task with measurable goals and an easily seen end. To finish the wall, to build the church, to reconcile the family, to reconcile your marriage. The goal, the dream, is easily seen and focused on, but what about when it is achieved.
Your family is brought back together, a great victory is won; now what? Well now comes the long slow and difficult process of living in that victory and learning how your family is going to interact, what ground rules to lay, how to build the relationships correctly, and, of course, the gradual process of actually carrying out those decisions.
Now you begin to see the difficulty of the task behind inhabiting the work? I believe that is why the men who chose to live in Jerusalem were esteemed and blessed by the people. It is easier to live in the comfort of what has been home to you for years and know that you won a great victory and it is over and done now.
But what would have happened it the wall had been rebuilt and no one remained in the city to being the long slow process of development? It would have simply been broken down again.
A Builder recognizes that the completion of one rebuilding project is only the beginning, if that work is not inhabited. If you do not flesh out and live that victory in your slow daily life, letting it develop in and around you, then it will all come crashing down again.
You will certainly need prayer, praise, and community in order to reorganize your daily life to fill in the rebuilt areas of your life.
Babies are really good at inhabiting their victories. They learn to recognize voices and faces and they search for them and rejoice in using the ability. They learn to eat and they explore it to the fullest. They learn to walk and crawling goes out the window. If only we could so easily let go of the way we used to function in our brokenness and so completely inhabit the rebuilding of our lives around Christ. Perhaps we would grow as fast as babies do.
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