Overlooking Nehemiah

He was a poison detector and that was a job, not a title. He would sip the liquid and if he didn't fall over dead, he would hand it to the King so the King could safely drink it.

Nehemiah was called a "cup bearer" and he made sure that all drinks, water, wine, the hard stuff, did not contain poison before the Persian King, Artaxerxes would consume it. Nehemiah was a devout Jew living in the royal palace as a slave in the capital city of the Persian Empire, Susa. And while he has his memoir written, the book of Nehemiah of the Old Testament, he was still a poison detector. He was not a spiritual leader. His biography is very clear; he just wanted to rebuild the walls of the city he had heard stories about. He was just an ordinary guy, who believed in God and asked God to help him. He had no special religious training, wasn't a Levite thus a priest, didn't have a pulpit in which to stand nor had a prophet's training.

If you think about it, a lot of those people of Bible times were just devout individuals seeking to do what God wanted them to do. Abram, Gideon, Zerubbabel, Matthew, Peter, Andrew, Luke, Phillip, Demas, Tychicus to name just a few.

Today we tend to think that only "Spiritual leaders" can talk or tell us about Jesus. That the "professional staff" are the only ones with training and insight to convey the important passages to others. Our religious environment tends to focus on the manuscripts, blogs, and opinions of those leaders without conferring with the sources: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit and the Bible.

Yet the history of Judeo-Christian faith demonstrates that it was the Nehemiahs of the times that most effectively and most often carried the message.

In our 21st century world, we are overlooking the Nehemiah within us.

Let me help you find your Nehemiah by joining our blog discussion at www.hopeforlife.org or by emailing me at bbrant@heraldoftruth.org.