This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to our first week looking at the book of Nehemiah. This study I am very, very much looking forward to teaching you because there are some principles in this study that really come out of some difficult, painful, but God-honoring and God-glorifying circumstances in my own life. These are some principles that I first taught. I first taught through these principles of Nehemiah many years ago in a church that had lost its buildings to some people who had lost their homes, including me and Shondell, my wife, who had lost our home in a flood that had destroyed the town that we were in. And we were asking ourselves, where do we find the energy to begin again? And that is a question I know many, many people ask, not necessarily because your home has been flooded or your church destroyed, but because of the struggles you're facing in your life or your business or your marriage or your finances or wherever. The truth is we are not like the Energizer Bunny. We don't keep going and going and going. Life has its ups and downs. There are valleys, there are hilltops, and the questions we're going to look at in this study of Nehemiah is when you're in the valley looking up at the mountain, where do you find the motivation? Where do you find the energy to begin the climb? This is important in little ways every day of your life. How do you find the energy to get started again on a Monday, to finish a project that's just taken too long, to face up to some unpleasant task? How do you find the energy to make your relationships meaningful? The energy to say no to temptation, to pray, to grow in Christ. It's important every day of our lives to be re-energized and Nehemiah teaches us how. It's also important in big life-changing ways. Nehemiah was able to refocus and re-energize an entire nation to rebuild, to rebuild from the bottom up. Nehemiah chapter 2 verse 20 became where this little church in Northern California that had faced that flood and I together became the theme verse for us. That verse says, "The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding. " So how does that kind of promise become real in your life? How do you begin to refocus priorities in your life? There's many times you know what's important but you just can't seem to focus on it anymore or focus on it like you should. Nehemiah had to clear away a lot of rubble before he could start to rebuild the wall with his people, which is his rebuilding project in Jerusalem. Sometimes we are surrounded by so many things in life that it seems hopeless to even think about priorities. Nehemiah shows us how to sort out the priorities from the rubble in your life. He can teach you how to rebuild, how to be re-energized. This is a book that also talks about how to re-energize purpose in your life. You know what your purpose is sometimes but you just don't have the energy to do something about it. Nehemiah is written for you if that's how you're feeling right now or if you know somebody that's feeling that way, it's written for them. Nehemiah also tells us how you begin to rebuild a sense of significance in life. How do you rebuild what's lost? You've gone through a financial bankruptcy. How do you rebuild from that? Or you've had relationship struggles with your kids that have gotten to the point where you're just not talking anymore. How do you rebuild from that? Or you're on the edge of a divorce, you're in a time of separation maybe even in a marriage. How do you rebuild that relationship? Sometimes you face these circumstances, the bankruptcy, the relationship with your kids, a relationship with a husband or wife and the truth of the matter is you look at yourself and you think, I just don't care anymore. I know I should care about rebuilding, I just don't even care about that. How do you rebuild from that? How do you rebuild from an emotional loss of energy? How do you rebuild a career that's in ruins? And most importantly, how do you re-energize a close relationship with God in your life? One of the exciting aspects of this study of Nehemiah is Nehemiah. Nehemiah was a man who was filled with faith, the kind of faith that took action, the kind of faith that changed the direction of his life and the direction of an entire nation. Faith that resulted in the courage to step out, faith that resulted in prayer, faith that resulted in this day-to-day management of problems and opportunities. During this study of Nehemiah, we're going to look together at some basic principles for re-energizing, for refocusing your life. They work whether you need a boost in the middle of the week or a project or you need an entirely fresh start in your marriage, your career, your life, your faith in Christ. Here's the principles we're going to look at together. They are the principles of reaction, initiation, appreciation, opposition, organization, celebration, and dedication. First, the principle of reaction. In that principle, we're going to learn from Nehemiah these next few weeks together how to begin to see problems as opportunities. How to begin to see not that God has brought the problem, but how God can use the problem in your life. And then secondly, we're going to look at initiation. We're going to learn from Nehemiah how to take the first step. The toughest part of re-energizing anything, anyone, any project is just getting started, is taking that first step. Nehemiah has some great lessons for taking that first step. Now, these lessons that Nehemiah teaches us, they are surprising lessons. They're not the things that you usually would read in a business book. They're spiritual lessons. They go to the depth of your soul. They're soul lessons for when you face these struggles of life. The third thing he teaches us is appreciation. How to stay focused by saying thanks. The words thank you have great power to refocus your life. How do you give thanks specifically and sensitively and searchingly in a way that refocuses your life? Nehemiah teaches us how. He also teaches us about how to handle opposition. How to expect and reject opposition. We're going to see as we walk through this book four weapons of the opposition that's going to come against you and also four proven steps to victory in your life. How to redirect your thoughts and reposition your forces and restore your confidence and refocus your priority. Nehemiah teaches us how to do all these things. He also teaches us about organization. He teaches us how to organize our successes. A lot of people, they get a success in life. You feel like I'm starting to initiate something new in life, but then you fall right back to where you were and you don't have the energy to get started again. How do you organize your successes in a way that you continue to enjoy God's victories in them? Nehemiah is one of the experts in all of human history about how to do that with faith. He also teaches us about celebration. How to regain, how to retain the joy in your life. A lot of people, there's some big project, some big thing that needs to be done in life and you rebuild, but then you don't have any more energy. You rebuild the wall only to find out that you have crumbled. So how do you regain a spirit of joy in your life? How do you retain that spirit of joy no matter what the circumstances are in life? Nehemiah teaches us how to do that. And then he teaches us also about dedication. How do you commit yourself to something worth living for? How do you make the kind of commitment that will last, that will change your life and other people's lives? So that's what we have to look forward to as we look through this book of Nehemiah. That's the kind of lessons that he has to teach us. That's the kind of life change that he can bring to my heart, to your heart. Now I want to begin this study with prayer, with asking God that he'll take that place that you need to rebuild and he will bring something new, something fresh, something strong, something that only God can bring in your life through these lessons, these faith lessons in the book of Nehemiah. So let's pray together. And Father, we ask together that you would, in the way that only you can, use your word to touch our lives in a way that change happens. We don't want to stay where we are. We want to grow. We want to change. Right now, we bring to our minds that place, one of those places where we need to be re-energized. We need to rebuild. It might be a relationship, it might be a project, it might be the day-to-day routine of life. It doesn't have to be something big. It's just something where we need your strength. We need to rebuild faith in that area. We need to find new energy for that project. God, we come to you and we pray that you'd use the faith lessons in the book of Nehemiah to rebuild that thing in our lives, to rebuild that moment in our hearts. Because God, we want to live the kind of life that trusts you and follows you. And so we come and we ask this in faith. Thank you for the power of your word. Thank you for what it can do in our lives. In faith, we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Join us tomorrow. We're going to start by looking at the first step, the reaction step.