This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you back for day three, week four of our look through the book
of Nehemiah. We're talking about these principles for how you and I can rebuild,
can re-energize our lives. Let me just go back over them very briefly.

We've talked about reaction, how to begin to see needs as opportunities,
initiation, being willing to take the first step, recognition, learning the
value of saying thank you, opposition, respecting and rejecting opposition,
organization, learning from your failures, organizing your successes,
celebration. We just talked about how to regain, retain the joy, and now we turn
to the seventh principle, the principle of dedication. You dedicate it to God.

What you're rebuilding, what you're re-energizing, you dedicate it to God. As
you follow these principles, let's say you followed them and you've rebuilt a
marriage, you've rebuilt a career, you've rebuilt from a disaster in your life.
You've re-energized your life.

All the way through and now especially at the end, you dedicate it to God. If
you don't do that, if you trust God to help you to make it better, and then you
take it back for yourself once it's been made better, you're going to see it
fall apart again, and you've got to rebuild all over again. The people of
Israel, if you read the Old Testament, went through this pattern again and
again.

They would trust God, things would get good, they would take it back to
themselves, things would fall apart, they recognized that they had to trust God
again, they would trust him and things would get good again and again, the same
pattern. I don't want to see that pattern in your life. The key to not seeing
that pattern is to whatever he rebuilds, whatever he gives, whatever blessings,
you dedicate it to God.

This project of rebuilding the walls, the project wasn't completed until the
dedication of those walls. The dedication we're going to read about in the
chapters of Nehemiah we're going to look at in the next few days, it was not an
add-on at the end, a nice little celebration, ceremony to have at the end, it
was an important part of the building. They had not finished the wall until
they'd dedicated the wall.

Dedication recognized who the wall belonged to, and it recognized who would get
the credit for its usefulness. In my life, in your life, unless dedication is a
part of your everyday life, you're going to feel like you're living only a half
life because it's out of dedication that the purpose of life comes. It's out of
dedication of whatever God has put into my hands that I recognize why it's there
and what it can be used for.

So what adds up to the kind of dedication that results in this fullness of life
that I'm talking about? Well, listen to what happened as they dedicated the
wall. We're going to look the next few days at four principles for dedicating it
to God.

Some of what you hear will surprise you. All of it will challenge you. Number
one, dedication begins with thanksgiving.

If you can't thank God for it, you can't dedicate it to God. So in verse 27,
here's what happens. At the dedication of the wall in 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
and harps and lyres.

That's chapter 12, verse 27. Let me say this again. If you can't thank God for
it, you can't dedicate it to God.

If your attitude is, God, I hate my job. I hate my marriage, but I dedicate it
to you. That's what I know I'm supposed to do.

You're not really dedicating it to God because you're telling God you hate it.
You don't want it in your life. If instead you say, God, I'm struggling in my
marriage.

I'm struggling with my job. But even in that struggle, I thank you for that
marriage. I thank you for that job, and I dedicate it to you.

That's an entirely different attitude. Notice a couple things that happen when
they give thanks to God. First notice that thanksgiving comes first.

Nehemiah, wisely as a leader, as many leaders in the Old Testament did this same
thing, had the choirs giving thanks lead the way as a part of this dedication.
Not the officials, but the choirs. Thanksgiving led the way.

Verse 31 and verse 38. I had the leaders of Judah go up on the top of the wall,
and I also assigned two large choirs to give thanks. One was to proceed on top
of the wall to the right, toward the dung gate.

There's this dung gate again. And then in verse 38, the second choir proceeded
in the opposite direction. I followed them on top of the wall, together with
half of the people, past the tower of the ovens and the broad wall.

He had the choirs who were giving thanks take the lead. Thankful joy took the
lead. And dedicated people have learned to let joy lead the way in their lives.

A lot of times we think that thanksgiving follows the successes in our lives.
Actually, it usually precedes it. Usually we give thanks to God for something
he's put into our lives, and then he's able to use it in a greater way.

So thanksgiving must come first. And then the other thing you see here is that
thanksgiving must be heard. This thanksgiving, this joy they had, it could be
heard far away.

In verse 43, "On that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God
had given them great joy. The women and the children also rejoiced. " The sound
of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away.

It's not really thanksgiving unless you can tell somebody else about it. This
thought that, "Oh, I'm thankful in my heart. I know I'm thankful.

" And you've never expressed it. You never even expressed it in a prayer. But
beyond that, you've certainly never expressed it to anybody else.

You've never expressed it in a worship service. Thanksgiving has to be heard.
Many people have learned to express their joy.

They not only feel their joy, their thanksgiving, they express it. Now one of
the ways to express it is what we see in these choirs, is through singing. The
Bible tells us in the New Testament we're supposed to express our thanks to each
other through songs and hymns and spiritual songs.

It's a command in the scripture. You may think, "I don't sing very well. " It's
not a matter of how well you sing.

It's a matter of what singing is going to do for your heart. They expressed it
through singing. The New Testament commands us to express our thanksgiving
through singing, and that's one of the things we do in worship.

So if you think, "Well, I don't sing very well, so I just come to worship and I
close my mouth and I listen to everybody else sing," you are missing out on one
of the things that God wants to do in your heart. One of the ways to express
thanksgiving is through singing. It's not the only way to express it.

You can express it in your small group by telling people the praises for what
God has done in your life, giving him thanks. You can express it to the people
at work. You can express it by writing it out on a blog or a book or whatever.

However you do it, you express it beyond yourself, outside of yourself. It's one
of the keys to letting thanksgiving lead the way in your life. This attitude of
giving thanks, of having joy, and that being a part of dedication, I hope that
begins to put to rest one of the unspoken fallacies that we sometimes carry
around in our heads about dedicated people.

Right now, in your mind, picture a dedicated person, a person who is truly
dedicated to their task. Let me ask you a question. Is he smiling?

Is she smiling? A lot of times when we picture dedication, we picture this
grimace of determination upon somebody's face. And yeah, dedication is obviously
serious business, but it is serious business which results in thankfulness,
which results in joy.

Dedication begins with this thankful joy in your life, and if you don't picture
that as a part of dedication, then you're not going to be able to live a
dedicated life. Now we've been talking about giving thanks, let's spend a few
minutes doing it. Would you pray with me?

In these moments, just say God, thank you. Thank you for those things that come
to your mind right now. Maybe it's your family and the blessings that God has
given.

God thank you. Maybe it's ministry opportunities to make a difference in this
world. God thank you.

Maybe it's something very practical. God has met a financial need, he's met a
physical need, he's met the need for a job in your life or somebody else's life
that you love. God thank you.

Tell him thank you right now. As you're giving God thanks, thank him also for
who he is. Thank him for his forgiveness.

Thank him for his mercy. Thank him for his love. As you take time right now to
thank God, recognize that that's part of the dedication of your heart to him.

You're dedicating your heart to him in thankful joy. Lord, we do that right now.
We dedicate our hearts, our lives to you in thankful joy, in Jesus' name, amen.

Join us tomorrow, we're going to continue to talk about the value of dedication.