What is dedicated to God is what will last
Resolved, never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God.
Number four of the seventy resolutions of Jonathan Edwards
The trouble is that relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.
C. S. Lewis
I appeal to you therefore, brethren, and beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship.
Romans 12:1 AMP, classic edition
You know the name Michelangelo, but have you heard of Colalucci? Michelangelo created some of the world’s greatest and most familiar works of art, including the ceiling and altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. Gianluigi Colalucci was the chief restorer of the great artist’s work in what may be one of the most significant art restoration projects in history.
A look at the work of both the painter and the restorer tells us something about the patience it takes to restore. The southern and northern walls of the Sistine Chapel were painted from 1481 to 1483, the ceiling from 1508 to 1512, the altar wall from 1536 to 1541, and the eastern wall in 1572 and 1574. The total time to paint was twelve years. The restoration project, begun by Colalucci in June 1980, was unveiled by Pope John Paul II on April 8, 1994. That adds up to fourteen years. The restoration took longer than the original painting!
This begs the question, Why restore it at all? If it takes so long to restore something, why not just throw it away and start over? The answer in the case of the Sistine Chapel is obvious: it was restored because it is a priceless work of art. You are the same—a work of creation of immeasurable value to God! The restoration of a relationship, career, business, or dream is priceless to God. To throw it away would be as foolish as rolling white paint over the images of God and Adam in the Sistine Chapel because it would be quicker and easier to start fresh.
Never forget that in whatever you are putting back together, the most significant restoration is what God is doing in you. Through every circumstance, he is working to bring into your life more of the character of Christ—the love, grace, hope, and joy of Jesus.
As Gianluigi Colalucci reflects on his experiences as chief restorer, he describes carefully how he undertook the work of restoring the face of Adam:
I was able to proceed with the solvent mixture, which was gelatinous and adhered to the fresco even in the middle of the ceiling. I applied it with a brush, left it to do its work for three minutes, stopwatch in hand, and then began to remove it with the small sponge soaked in water . . . The ugly mass of substances slowly disappeared beneath my hands to reveal a pattern of brushstrokes of pure colour closely interwoven so as to create or indeed sculpt the shape of the face, now able to breathe again . . . I paused in enchantment before this piece of painting, which had regained its highly delicate colouring . . . I stepped down from the low wooden dais and sat down to look up in delight at that spectacle, thinking that in spite of everything, this was the finest profession in the world.1
Restoring the face of Adam is a compelling picture of what God wants to do in each of us. The Bible often presents Adam as the representative of the entire human race, because his sin brought the need for restoration to all of us. That, of course, is not the end of the story. In the love and sacrifice of Jesus, we are all offered restoration of a relationship with God. Romans 5:18 (NLT) puts it this way: “Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone.”
Through the love of Christ, God is restoring the work of art that is you. He is causing you to look more and more like Jesus every day. It is often slow work, but he is patient. Look carefully, and you can picture him gently wiping away the dirt and grime of the past, being careful not to destroy the underlying beauty he created in you. The promised completion of this project is almost beyond our imagination: “Just as each of us now has a body like Adam’s, so we shall some day have a body like Christ’s” (1 Corinthians 15:49 LB). God will bring out the full color of the masterpiece he has created you to be—and all will see that this beauty is because of Christ. This is the glory of God.
The truth of what God is doing in each of us leads directly to our need to dedicate what we are doing to God. To dedicate is to decide that something will be used for the sake of God’s glory. When we recognize that God is working toward this glorious restoration in each of us, it becomes much easier to dedicate every circumstance of life to him.
For whatever is built or rebuilt to stay strong, it must be dedicated to God. To have a strong family, you must dedicate it to God. To have a strong business or church or life, you must dedicate it to God. Without dedication, you will see what you have built begin to decay; with dedication, you will see it continue to stay strong.
Dedication is a vital step for those who want to see what they’ve rebuilt remain. Far too many people trust God for the strength to restore a relationship or career, only to take it back to themselves once the hard work of rebuilding is done. In our desperation to avoid failure, we trust God, but once the crisis passes, we begin to trust ourselves again.
The people of Israel went through this pattern repeatedly. They would trust God; things would improve; they would take it back to themselves; things would fall apart; they had to trust God again—the same pattern over and over again.
The key to not seeing that pattern happen is found in dedicating it all to God. Nehemiah again is our example. He knew the wall wouldn’t be truly completed until it had been dedicated. The dedication was not some nice little celebration ceremony at the end of the project; it was an all-important part of the rebuilding. Dedication recognized who the wall belonged to and who would get the credit for its usefulness.
Unless dedication is a part of your everyday life, you’re going to feel like you’re living only a half-life, because the purpose of life grows out of dedication. It’s out of your dedication of whatever God has put into your hands that you recognize why it’s there and what it can be used for.
Nehemiah gives four specific descriptions of what goes into the kind of dedication that results in this fullness of life. Some of what he presents may surprise you. All of it will challenge you.
DEDICATION BEGINS WITH THANKSGIVING
Nehemiah places thanksgiving at the very beginning: “At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, the Levites were sought out from where they lived and were brought to Jerusalem to celebrate joyfully the dedication with songs of thanksgiving and with the music of cymbals, harps and lyres” (Nehemiah 12:27).
If you can’t thank God for it, you can’t dedicate it to God. If your attitude is, “God, I hate my job, but I dedicate it to you because I know that’s what I’m supposed to do,” you’re not really dedicating it to God; you’re just using spiritual words to tell God how much he’s let you down.
If instead you say with a humble heart, “God, I’m struggling in my job, but even in that struggle, I thank you for that job and I dedicate it to you,” that’s an entirely different attitude. That’s an honest attitude of thanksgiving.
There are two specifics we learn from Nehemiah about dedication and thanksgiving.
First, thanksgiving leads the way. As we see with a number of leaders in the Old Testament, Nehemiah had the choirs that were giving thanks lead the way on this day of dedication—not the officials or the soldiers, but the choirs. In Nehemiah 12:31, we read, “I had the leaders of Judah go up on top of the wall. I also assigned two large choirs to give thanks. One was to proceed on top of the wall to the right . . .” And then in verse 38, we read, “The second choir proceeded in the opposite direction. I followed them on top of the wall, together with half the people.”
Thankful joy took the lead. Dedicated people have learned to let thanks lead the way in their lives. We mistakenly think that thanksgiving follows our successes; instead, it usually precedes them. We give thanks to God for something seemingly small, and out of that thanksgiving, he does something even greater.
The second specific is that thanksgiving must be heard. In Nehemiah 12:43, we read, “On that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced. The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away.” It’s not really thanksgiving unless it’s heard, unless we can tell somebody else about it.
Dedicated people not only feel their thanksgiving; they express it. The choirs remind us that one of the ways to express it is through singing. The Bible commands us in the New Testament to express our thanksgiving through “psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:19). This is commanded for all of us, not an optional activity for only the really good singers. This is not a matter of how well you sing, but of what singing is doing for your heart. If you think you don’t sing very well, so “I’ll just listen to everybody else sing,” you’re missing out on one of the great things God wants to do in your heart as you worship.
You can also express thanks by telling people why you’re praising God for what he’s done in your life. For instance, “I’m grateful to God for the way he’s been using others to encourage me this week.” You can share your thanksgiving by writing about it in a social media post or blog. As you express it beyond yourself, it becomes more a part of yourself and impacts the hearts of others.
In the flood we experienced, all of our possessions were under water and mud for a couple of weeks. This included our computers and the program and data disks. In that day, the drives were 5¼-inch floppies. (Just writing this is making me feel old!) Along with various games and programs, many of the disks contained a couple of years of my sermons and the data of several companies served by Chaundel’s home bookkeeping business. Our backups at that time were hard copies in file cabinets that were also underwater.
We took these mud-encrusted disks to several computer repair shops, and they just laughed at us. Not having anything to lose, we took the thin circles of plastic out of their sleeves, carefully washed off the mud, dried them, and put them into new sleeves.
Chaundel told the story to the church: “When we put those drives in a new computer, not one of the programs worked and not one of the games. But every word of Tom’s sermons was saved. Every number for my bookkeeping business was recovered!” As people cheered with celebration, their dedication was deepened because Chaundel shared her praise.
Right now, picture a person truly dedicated to his or her task. Is he or she smiling? When we picture dedication, we tend to picture a grimace of determination on someone’s face. Dedication is obviously serious business. But it is serious business that takes place with thankfulness and joy. Dedication begins with thankful joy. If you don’t picture that as a part of dedication, you’re not going to be able to live a dedicated life.
We’ve been talking about giving thanks. Let’s spend a few minutes putting it into practice before we move on.
In these moments, tell God thank you. Thank him for those things that come to your mind right now. Maybe it’s your family and the blessings God has given. Maybe it’s ministry opportunities that allow you to make a difference in this world. Maybe it’s the way God is meeting a practical need in your finances or for a job. As you thank God, recognize that your expression of gratitude is part of the dedication of your heart to him in thankful joy.
DEDICATION IS SHOWN BY PURIFICATION
As people whom God is using for his purposes, our dedication is shown in our purification: “When the priests and Levites had purified themselves ceremonially, they purified the people, the gates and the wall” (Nehemiah 12:30). How do you purify yourself for God’s purposes? The truth is, you don’t purify yourself. God is the one who purifies you. Without getting into lengthy details, even the purification done by these Levites looked forward to Jesus and the purification he would bring.
You can become purified for God’s purpose by recognizing what Jesus did for you on the cross. Do not try to purify yourself. You can’t do it, because you’re impure. Something that is impure cannot make something that is pure. Jesus is pure, so when you look to him and trust in what he did for you, he is your purification. In his prayer for his disciples, Jesus said, “And I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them so they can be made holy by your truth” (John 17:19 NLT).
Because of what Jesus did on the cross, you begin to live a holy, dedicated life. This means allowing God to take out of your life those things that don’t belong. Paul points to some of these in his letter to the Ephesians: “Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God’s people. Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes—these are not for you. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God” (Ephesians 5:3–4 NLT). Just as importantly, becoming purified for God’s purpose means allowing God to put into your life those things that truly do belong.
Purification is not only not doing certain things. Some people think that being pure just means you don’t do this or that, and so you’re pure. If that were true, the purest people in the world would be dead because they don’t do anything. Of course purity has something to do with what you don’t do—the sins you don’t commit. But it also has something to do with what you choose to do—the obedience you exhibit toward God.
Purity is seen in what you pursue. What are you chasing after? If you’re trying to be pure only by not doing certain things, you’ve missed most of what purity is all about, and you’re engaged in a self-defeating process. The only way to run away from what’s wrong is to run toward what is right. Dedication and purity are seen more in what you pursue than in what you don’t do.
In Nehemiah’s day, everything was a part of this dedication to purity. The people, the gates, and the wall—the priests and the Levites purified it all. The greatest danger to our dedication lies in the false idea that we can segment our lives into the dedicated and nondedicated—that when I’m at church, I’m dedicated; when I’m at work, I’m maybe not so dedicated. And when I’m with certain friends, I’m not dedicated at all.
Dedication Is an All-or-Nothing Proposition
Thinking of dedication as an all-or-nothing proposition is deeply discouraging to many, because we see ourselves on the “nothing” side of that equation. We are well aware of our struggles with sin. Let me give three brief words of encouragement if you see yourself as someone who loves Jesus but could never be dedicated to him with this kind of purity.
First, you are not alone. We all struggle with sin; we are all in need of a Savior. The apostle John wrote these words in the opening chapter of his first letter: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).
Second, you have hope. Because of the gift of purity that Jesus died to offer you, you can in this moment be as dedicated to God as any other Christian. The path to that dedication is found in the next verse in 1 John: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Confession, not perfection, is the road to purity for followers of Jesus.
Third, you can begin to live out this dedication in the small things. The British preacher G. Campbell Morgan said, “The year is made up of minutes. Let these be watched as having been dedicated to God. It is in the sanctification of the small that hallowing of the large is secure.”2
You dedicate the next year to God by dedicating the next minute. You dedicate your career to God by dedicating the next task, however small. You dedicate your love for your family to God by dedicating the next conversation.
Remember Chad and Julie—the couple whose marriage restoration we looked at in chapter 2. Knowing how difficult it can be to keep a marriage growing over the long haul, I asked them how they kept it dedicated to God. Julie’s response is an example of how dedication in the little things quickly becomes a big thing.
Julie said, “For me it was a matter of changing who I talked to. I used to call a friend who would agree with me every time I was angry at Chad. I decided that part of my dedication would be to talk to God about it and not the person who would build my feelings of anger.
“We had an argument sitting in the car, and Chad got out. My phone was sitting in my lap, and I so wanted to pick it up and call someone. I prayed, ‘God, you told me to go to you, but I really want to call someone right now.’ As I was praying, Chad got back in the car. He had never done this—he stayed away when we argued. I didn’t know what to say. And then he apologized! It freaked me out.”
It may be helpful here to mention a major controversy that occurred during the restoration of the Sistine Chapel. As the art began to be cleaned, many people were uncomfortable with the vibrant colors that began to emerge. Without fully exploring the details of this controversy, one thing that is certain is that the darker hues of a ceiling that had been covered by years of grime had become more familiar than the original. So people fought against the change.
This same discomfort happens as God restores our hearts and minds. We’ve become comfortable with old ways of thinking and doing, and so the restoration at first feels unfamiliar, scary, and somehow wrong. We’re afraid of the beauty because we’ve gotten used to the dirt. We’re afraid of the light because we’ve gotten used to the dark. It’s natural to fear the new thing that God wants to do, because we all fear the unfamiliar. It’s exhilarating when we begin to embrace the new thing that God is doing, because it’s what we were created to be.
DEDICATION IS EXPRESSED IN GIVING
Dedication is expressed by giving back to God out of what he’s given to you. God restores your marriage, not just so you can enjoy that marriage for yourself, but so you can now give back to God out of that marriage. God renews your family so you can give back to God out of that family. God rebuilds your career so now you can give back to God out of that career. He restores your finances, not just so you have more money, but so you can give back to him.
Giving is at the heart of dedication. It is the giving of our time, our possessions, our talents, and our concern that adds up to the giving of ourselves.
As we look at what the Israelites gave on this day of dedication, we see specifically how they gave their possessions:
At that time men were appointed to be in charge of the storerooms for the contributions, firstfruits and tithes. From the fields around the towns they were to bring into the storerooms the portions required by the Law for the priests and the Levites, for Judah was pleased with the ministering priests and Levites . . . So in the days of Zerubbabel and of Nehemiah, all Israel contributed the daily portions for the musicians and the gatekeepers. They also set aside the portion for the other Levites, and the Levites set aside the portion for the descendants of Aaron.
Nehemiah 12:44, 47
Of course, possessions aren’t the only thing we give. Yet apart from the giving of those things God has placed in our hands, all other types of giving tend to wither as well. It is also true that the simple act of material giving opens the door to many other blessings in our lives, both now and in eternity. The Israelites’ example teaches us four things about how giving becomes an expression of our dedication.
In all honesty, I wondered about including this section of teaching from Nehemiah. I was concerned it might sound too much like a class on tithing in the middle of a book on rebuilding. I decided to include it because of how often I’ve seen the simple act of the giving of possessions open the door to greater faith. In our materialistic age, there’s something about giving that multiplies our faith like nothing else can. Over the years, I’ve received not just hundreds but thousands of testimonies to this truth.
First, give obediently. The Israelites gave the portions required by law. The reason we give is because God commands us to give. God wants us to give because he’s a giver: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16). Giving is not a legalistic requirement; it is a loving obedience.
Second, give responsibly. The Israelites appointed some to be in charge of the gifts to make sure those gifts were used for God’s purposes. They made sure the gifts were not lost and that no one took them to use for themselves. We give responsibly when we plan our giving and when we give to a church that we know will use what we give for God’s purposes.
Third, give cooperatively. The Israelites all gave—it wasn’t just a few rich people. If we’re not careful, we can begin to feel that those who have a lot can give the most. Jesus teaches very clearly that those who seem to have the least are the ones who can really give the most. The most honored sacrificial gift ever was a widow’s two small coins. Jesus said no one had given like her because she gave everything she had (Luke 21:1–4).
If you feel you don’t have enough to give to make a difference, you need to recognize that God is not looking at the amount; he’s looking at your heart. That’s why you give in the first place. God wants the obedience of your heart that the gift represents. Because God’s accounting is different from ours, every gift is equally important. We give cooperatively because we all have a part in what God is doing.
Finally, give sacrificially. The Israelites offered great sacrifices on that day of dedication. They didn’t look to give the least they could possibly give to be respectable; they gave the most they could possibly give because of their respect for God’s greatness. Whatever sacrifices we make, God blesses us in return. But in the moment of giving, it doesn’t always feel that way. In that moment, there is a decision to sacrifice.
Give obediently, responsibly, cooperatively, and sacrificially. Giving is a part of having a spirit of dedication. A spirit of dedication is vital to seeing what you’ve rebuilt remain.
DEDICATION MUST BE REFRESHED
We learn from Nehemiah that dedication has to be refreshed regularly. As we’ve been reading through these sections of Nehemiah, it may seem like these Israelites are a perfectly dedicated bunch of God followers. As we read Nehemiah 13, we see that they struggled with achieving a lasting dedication.
What do you do when your dedication seems to wane? You can resign yourself to defeat; you can design yourself an excuse; or you can assign yourself a new commitment. The truth is, dedication must be refreshed regularly for all of us.
Nehemiah points us to the process you will go through to refresh your dedication—a process you will face many times in your life of faith.
Stop Skirting the Issue
The process begins with a decision to stop skirting the issue. In 13:11, Nehemiah writes, “So I rebuked the officials and asked them, ‘Why is the house of God neglected?’ Then I called them together and stationed them at their posts.” The officials were neglecting some of the things that had caused their success, and Nehemiah called them on it. In chapter 1 of this book, we learned that the first step in putting anything together again is admitting there’s a problem. Now we’ve come full circle: once again the Israelites must face a problem.
When you start to pretend that a problem isn’t a problem, you really have a problem! You know you’re denying reality when you’re not able to talk about something or you hope that no one notices anything. That’s the point where you need to be honest with yourself. Quit skirting the issue, and ask God to help you begin to dedicate your life to him anew.
Quit Compromising with Your Enemy
The next step is to quit compromising with your enemies. Compromise is the great enemy of commitment. We slowly compromise our way out of dedication. There’s almost never one big decision that we make to not be committed; our downfall comes in a series of little compromises.
Let’s learn from how Nehemiah handled this tendency to compromise:
But while all this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I had returned to the king. Some time later I asked his permission and came back to Jerusalem. Here I learned about the evil thing Eliashib had done in providing Tobiah a room in the courts of the house of God. I was greatly displeased and threw all Tobiah’s household goods out of the room. I gave orders to purify the rooms, and then I put back into them the equipment of the house of God, with the grain offerings and the incense.
Nehemiah 13:6–9
Perhaps you remember from Nehemiah 2 that Tobiah and Sanballat were the two great opponents of the rebuilding of the wall. Eliashib had given Tobiah a room in the courts of God’s house. Here we see the very guy who had been an enemy of rebuilding now somehow having secured a room in one of the courts that had been rebuilt.
Maybe Tobiah paid a handsome sum of money for it, and people thought, This is a great deal. Maybe he convinced them it would be good politics. For whatever reason, the equipment for the house of God is in some closet somewhere while Tobiah enjoys this room.
The lesson here is this: the enemy will keep trying to move back in. This is why you must quit compromising and get back to a place of commitment. If you reengage with the friends who tore down your marriage, once you restore your marriage, they’re going to try to tear it down again. If you begin to flirt with the habit that caused your addiction, you’ll find yourself falling again.
Stop compromising with your enemies! Nehemiah didn’t say, “Let’s just move a few things out; maybe we can share the room.” He simply threw all of Tobiah’s household goods out. Then he put the equipment for the house of God back into that room. The action to take is obvious: You’ve allowed some bad things to move back into your life. Throw them out! Move the things of God back in!
Choose to Remove Opportunities for Sin
The third step in the process of refreshing your dedication is to make the choice to remove opportunities for sin. Remove them before you get to the place where you’ve let the bad things move in. Take a look at what happened:
When evening shadows fell on the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I ordered the doors to be shut and not opened until the Sabbath was over. I stationed some of my own men at the gates so that no load could be brought in on the Sabbath day . . . Then I commanded the Levites to purify themselves and go and guard the gates in order to keep the Sabbath day holy.
Remember me for this also, my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love.
Nehemiah 13:19, 22
Some of the people in Judah had been bringing in loads of grain and other goods on the Sabbath day, a day on which Israelites were commanded by God not to work. Maybe people other than the Israelites were driving the carts, but it was the Israelites who ended up unloading the grain. They may have known they were breaking the Sabbath, but could have easily thought, We have no choice. The grain is here and has to be unloaded or it will be wasted. They couldn’t resist the temptation to work with the grain on the day it arrived.
So what did Nehemiah do? He planned in advance to keep the Sabbath by locking the doors so the grain couldn’t be brought in. Don’t miss the lessons here for rededication: we must plan in advance to keep out of our lives the things that are hurting us.
If you’re struggling with alcohol addiction, you plan in advance to not go to a bar—even if it’s just to hang out with your friends. If you’re asking God to help you stay pure and not have sex before marriage, you don’t pray for purity together in the backseat of your car. No, you plan in advance to not be in the car because you recognize what can easily happen in that situation.
Where in your life do you need to plan in advance so you don’t put yourself in situations where you trip into the same sins again and again? How do you need to order the doors shut and then post guards over those areas of your life?
Fill Your Life with God’s Purposes
The fourth step in rededication is to fill your life with God’s purposes. As important as the first three steps in this process are, they will mean nothing unless you also take the fourth step. It’s never enough to try to just keep out what’s wrong; you must at the same time be filling your life with doing what is right. Nehemiah 13:30 reads, “So I purified the priests and the Levites of everything foreign, and assigned them duties, each to his own task.” They needed to quit doing what was eroding their purpose by getting back to doing their God-given tasks.
The importance of this truth is captured in that old phrase, “Idle hands are the devil’s playground.” If we have spaces that are left empty in our lives, they tend to get filled with the wrong things. The greatest example of this in the Bible may well be King David. When all the kings were out to war, when he was supposed to be battling for his country, he decided to stay back in the city of Jerusalem—and when he was walking around on his palace roof, he saw Bathsheba and fell into sin (2 Samuel 11).
You don’t flee temptation by sitting idly and waiting until it goes away. It’s not going to go away. You run from temptation by running toward doing what’s right. Second Timothy 2:22 reads, “Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” You run away from what’s wrong; you run toward what’s right; and you run with those who also are pursuing purity.
Dedication is worth nothing as a feeling or a noble thought; it only shows its worth as a decision. Many people misunderstand what it is we are deciding. We are not deciding to “do good things” or to “be a good person.” That’s a self-defeating decision.
When we try to do good on our own power, we tend to either internally fight doing what’s right and constantly fall for temptation, or feel we’re doing a great job at doing what’s right and fall into pride. It’s the classic “sinner or Pharisee” dilemma—either way we’ve lost connection to the power God wants to give us. The secret is to stop trying to be dedicated and to instead trust God and let our dedication flow from that trust.
As we approach the end of our look at how to put it together again when it’s all fallen apart, let’s go back to the church in Marysville. It was one of the great privileges of my life to lead the people in that building project. Truth is, they often led me. There were more than a few times that I looked at the relatively small number of people in the church and felt I was leading them into a project we wouldn’t be able to finish.
In those moments, they reminded me that I had been teaching them about faith and that they believed God could do great things. There’s nothing quite so humbling as having your own sermons preached back at you! Because of their faith and sacrifice, after meeting for a few years in a community college, this small church bought five acres of land by a freeway and built a building so they could continue to serve the community.
Several months after we’d been in that new building, a pastor from our area—someone I’d never met—dropped by the church. He told me that the land we had built on had at one time been property his congregation had looked at purchasing. In fact, years before, he and his entire leadership team and come and knelt to pray on that then bare land.
They had dedicated the land to God’s use and prayed specifically that God would allow a church to be built on that land. “The only problem,” he told me, smiling, “is that we didn’t pray that our church would be built on this land!” He went on to say that our building after the flood had become a great source of faith for his church, as they saw their prayers being answered in ways they had not expected.
That church stands on that property today as one testimony among millions to God’s faithful work of rebuilding. His faithfulness never fails. His endurance never ends. As he completes his work of rebuilding a church, a business, a relationship, or a purpose in your life, you can continue to rely on his loving promise: “The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding” (Nehemiah 2:20).
DEDICATE IT TO GOD: My First Steps
Dedicate yourself to these seven principles for putting it together again by praying these commitments out loud:
1. I will find the strength to start.
2. I will take the first step.
3. I will appreciate others.
4. I will expect and reject opposition.
5. I will build on my successes.
6. I will celebrate to sustain my joy.
7. I will dedicate it to God.
Father, thank you that you will never give up on me when things fall apart. You’re a God who shows up. Whether it seems like I have everything together or like everything is falling apart, you are there to strengthen me and show me the way. Instead of looking at my circumstances, I choose to look at you. God of heaven, I ask you to give success so that as your servant I will start rebuilding and stay rebuilding. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.