Dear friends,

Today, I’m gonna share with you a scripture that enlightened me last week. While I was reading my bible, I came across the book of Nehemiah. Like most fresh Christians, I had actually never opened that book. Had no idea who Nehemiah was or what that scripture was all about. I have come to find it very insightful, especially when God opens your eyes to the message behind certain events. You can imagine my surprise today, when I got to church on sunday and the preacher spoke from Nehemiah. I was like “aha! I must be in the spirit”, lol! Anyways, going on to today’s thought…

Nehemiah 1:1-4. “These are the words of Nehemiah. He was the son of Hacaliah.
I was in the safest place in Susa. I was there in the 20th year that Artaxerxes was king. It was in the month of Kislev. 2 At that time Hanani came from Judah with some other men. He was one of my brothers. I asked him and the other men about the Jews who were left alive in Judah. They had returned from Babylonia. I also asked him about Jerusalem.
3 He and the men who were with him said to me, “Some of the people who returned are still alive. They are back in the land of Judah. But they are having a hard time. People are making fun of them. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down. Its gates have been burned with fire.”
4 When I heard about those things, I sat down and sobbed. For several days I was very sad. I didn’t eat any food. And I prayed to the God of heaven.” If you get the chance, you may read it to the end of Chapter 1.

What struck me about this verse is that Nehemiah was living in a comfortable and safe place – he was living in the fortress of the king! But when he received this bad message about the children of Israel, he quickly forgot about his personal comfort and became uncomfortable – his peace left him knowing that his own fellow Israelites would be living in fear or danger, up to the extent that he mourned and went on a fast on their behalf for days.

The truth of the matter is that he didn’t have to. He could have said – “Eish, thank God am fine. I should be grateful” or “I hope it gets better for them soon” or even pass the buck on someone else by asking “why can’t the men there do something about it?” But he chose to take responsibility for this problem that wasn’t really affecting him much and prayed to God to help him solve it. And if you read the book to the end, God indeed answered his prayers and the children of Israel were sorted.

I am now starting to believe that God is calling us to a higher level of spiritual maturity where we can also prioritise other peoples problems, where we can decide to fast and mourn because things are not well with fellow Christians or because there is too much unbelief in our environment or where we see even non-Christians suffer. Where we can seek the face of God earnestly and deeply on behalf of people we come across who do not even know us or know that we are praying on their behalf, just because we know that God’s heart extends to all men and that His will is for their soul, just as ours, to prosper.

This brought me to another scripture which I read not long ago 1 Timothy 2:1 “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people”. Please note that the key word there is “first of all”. Which means, we need to learn to put others first even in our prayers, thank God on their behalf, intercede & appeal to God on their bahalf. We are encouraged to do all of this “first of all”. It requires a certain level of selflessness…

While I was thinking about these things, I realised that God answered my prayers for many matters when I found someone with a need and prayed earnestly for them even more than I prayed for myself. I have found that when I take other people’s problems to the feet of God, I never really had to pray too hard for mine before they are answered! I found that when I mind other people’s problems, God sorted mine, sometimes even before he answered the prayers I was praying for the other fellow!

God expects us to serve others even in our prayers… And there is reward in it. I guess this is God’s way of encouraging brotherly love.

My prayer is that God will open our eyes to see the value in doing this and to allow us to feel the pain of others to the extent that our issues don’t matter as much anymore, for us to seek after the salvation & deliverance of all men, knowing fully well that God will meet us at the point of our need as He promised in His Word. That we will begin to become very uncomfortable with other peoples problems and kneel, cry, worship God, pray at the feet of God, constantly on their behalf for God to bring a breakthrough in their lives. We need to start taking some responsibility for the ills in our environment and do something about it. We need to ask God to help us share in other people’s pain so that we can also share in their joys and victories. This will even give more meaning to our existence when we see the miracles that we have caused to happen in the lives of our fellow human beings.

Please let me know what your thoughts are…

Love y’all
Ufuoma.

Ufuoma Akpoduado