The book of Nehemiah is NOT a minor prophet book. Just in case you were wondering. Because I thought it was.
In this episode we talk about
How Nehemiah is a playbook written long ago for the circumstances that God’s people are facing today.
Steps I have taken to fortify my defenses against the tactics of the enemy.
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Transcript
You're listening to the Over Drink podcast, the podcast dedicated to normalizing normal men, talking about normal things, sharing testimonies and putting purpose to pain. My name is Mitch Parsons, and I'm your host Me over a Drink podcast. I'm realizing that I am not even a little bit original in my intro. It's always the Over Drink podcast. And then I say something along the lines of like episode.
I don't even know because I'm not keeping track. And the thing is, it's like I'm not keeping track and I don't know what episode we are. And then honestly, it doesn't really matter. I have been being taught. I have been being taught, yeah, a lot through the lens of this podcast. I say it's for you guys, but really it's for me.
It's all selfish. The Lord's teaching me a bunch through it. I'm just kidding. Kind of. But I'm learning a lot about striving. I'm learning a lot about Sonship and he's teaching me through being a dad what it looks like to be a son. And it's been really cool and you guys are a part of that. And so this podcast is fun for me because I know the faces of the people who listen to it or a lot of them.
I have conversations weekly with people all week. I'm running text threads with people who are requesting stickers, which I got stickers. So if you want sticker year or a sticker or multiple stickers, would you shoot me an email at Mitch Parsons Creative at gmail.com? I would love and be honored to be on your water bottle, your laptop, your.
I don't know what else people put stickers on. I put them on my water bottle on my laptop. And so, yeah, let me know. They're a little two and two inch by two inch circular stickers. They're super cool, laminated and I have about 500 of them live. The difference between hundred was $ 4 In what world would I not pay $4 for 200 more stickers that just come on your life right now is busy, busy, busy.
I will be in the state of Colorado, which is where I reside for five, five days in July. A lot of it is fun and a lot of it is work. About . I am going to Omaha for th of July to go to the Omaha Zoo with my family. Don't ask me why we're choosing to go to Omaha in July.
It's going to be 100 degrees with 100 % humidity and I'm a big boy. Big boys don't like that. I'm not excited about. I am not a good person in the humidity. My wife, when we went down to Charleston for our anniversary and my birthday, it was like 90 degrees with like 70 % humidity. And I was just angry. We were outside and I was angry.
It was my wife. She, like, touched my arm and she was like, Why are you sweating? And I looked and I was like, Why am I sweating? Why do you think that I'm sweating so freaking an armpit, We're in an armpit. And that's not how I should speak to my wife. But in that moment, I blame that on my humanity and the humidity.
So we're in Omaha, and then we go. We come home, and my wife has a trip. Her and her team are going to do a worship night in New Mexico. But I'm bringing my laptop and because I have a companion past the label or whoever is funding the trip buys my ticket instead of my wife's. And then I had her for free.
And I get to go because there's an odd number of girls. And so my wife ends up staying in a room by herself anyways. And so free flight, sleep free hotel and being able to work from my laptop is a beautiful thing. And I get to go watch my my wife's team do their thing, which is super cool.
If you haven't heard of Red Rocks worship, go look them up. My wife is the super pretty one with the glasses and then we come home and I'm like a Saturday night. I leave Tuesday morning for Chicago for my work. And then once we get back from Chicago, we I land on Thursday night. We leave Saturday morning for a week in San Diego.
San Diego, guys, I watched Anchorman with my wife for the first time. She's never seen it. And if you have seen Anchorman, when I say San Diego, it's German for you can fill it in yourself. But she barely laughed and I was like, You don't know what I've been quoting for the last five years. She did say that it all makes so much more sense now to her.
And by it all, I don't know what she means by that, but I'm glad that the movie gave her some kind of revelation and substack. This is this is a new thing for me. I'm actually sitting here in my basement with my little podcast setup and I have like a list of things that I want to run through.
And so I'm not really good at following it, but I do have bullet points. And so the next thing it says is Substack. That's it, very open ended. I created a Substack What is a Substack? And Substack is a newsletter. It's a place where writers can write. I love to write. I think I've ran away from the name I'm a writer or the title label.
I'm a writer for the longest time because nobody values on our social media structure writing unless it is like some cool graphic that has a poem on it and it's followed by like, I don't even know what it would be followed by. People just don't care about long form writing. People don't care about it. It's not what is deemed influential.
And I was challenged by a pastor who's teaching me a lot right now. His name's Pastor Landon Scott down in Dallas, Fort Worth at Mercy Culture Church. And he said something along the lines of I'm going to paraphrase it, but the Lord cares 0% about influence and 100 % about spiritual authority. They are not one and the same and they are not proportional.
And so I've really kind of owned my gifting of writing. I like to write. I think I'm good at it. I've been told I'm good at it doesn't matter really, actually. It's just something that I love to do. And so I'm writing a book of poetry. I have a book that I'm writing, like an actual book. Not that a book of poetry isn't an actual book.
I don't know why. And then I, I write this newsletter. And so if you would want to go sign up for it, essentially what it is, is it's an it's a piece of content that's going to have my writing at the top and then a curation of any assortment of podcasts. So I listen to sermons, I listen to worship songs that I'm loving, books that I'm reading, I'm going to start talking about on my next podcast.
I'm actually going to come into C.S. Lewis and The Screwtape Letters because that book is ridiculous. It is so profound in the fact of the Dude prophesies, like what's going to happen in the world we live in today, but he just writes it in C is Lewis language, which is so chewy and hard to palate. It's like not palatable and I want to talk about it so next episode is going to be a like a I'm going to talk about Chapters one and two of Screwtape Letters.
This episode I am going to talk about Nehemiah and I'll get into that in a second, but I really actually get into it right now and screw it. I really do believe that,
Okay, so I'm interrupting the smoothness of this podcast to make fun of myself. I was under the impression up until about minutes before I sent out my newsletter that Nehemiah was a minor prophet. Nahum is a minor prophet. I just assumed because Nehemiah was close to the minor prophets kind of within the Bible and the like. I didn't know about Nehemiah and I didn't know about any of the minor prophets.
So I was like, That's also a minor prophet. I mentioned in my podcast multiple times how important the minor prophets are. They are very important. Uh, I just want to also justify this a little bit. The minor prophets and the major prophets are all about the resurrection or I guess, the redemption of Jerusalem. Nehemiah is all about the redemption of Jerusalem, but it is just a historical book.
It is not a minor prophet. And so if you've listened to this podcast for more than one episode, this is about Empire. It's about Empire. So, uh, sorry to interrupt. Just remember that my name is Mitch and I'm an idiot. So get your news side.
like the prophets, both the minor and major prophets are so important for us to read and the world we live in today as Christians, they talk about rebuilding of Jerusalem.
They talk about the deliverance of God's people from both their own sins and from their enemies. I was I don't know what I didn't even know that the book of Nehemiah existed until like two weeks ago. When I started reading the Prophets, I was reading Zachariah, which is another book that is just so important. They're all important. I mean, if it's written in the word, then it's important.
But like the Lord's given me this revelation of how they just layer on topics like history is cyclical and you read these books and like, Oh, that's happening today, but it's just a couple thousand hundred. I don't even know. I'm not really good at this stuff. It's a long time ago compared to now. And so I started reading The Prophets, and as Christians we are being persecuted.
We are facing opposition. Nehemiah talks about the rebuilding of Jerusalem that the the calling to do it, the roles that are played with how do we rebuild, how do we defend? And then he's actually later in the book, which I'll get into at another time, because it's seven through at the end of the book, he starts getting into different like me.
I think as Christians we are you hear politics being talked about in church and you're like, Yeah, don't talk about politics from the pulpit. Why? Why not the enemy? Politics are not exclusive or like untouchable by the enemy. And they're using he is using the politics and policy to shape the world we live in in a negative way.
And why can't we as Christians stand at the pulpit and say, hey, this is what we should be talking about in politics? Because politics are gross. They have become gross. But that doesn't mean it's not a battlefield that doesn't need to be fought on. Wow, tangent. Okay. So before we get started talking about Nehemiah, I want to pray real quick and then I want to jump in and then we'll get out.
Jesus, Holy Spirit, I pray for the normal man, for the normal person, the person that doesn't have a giant platform, the person who lives a quote unquote, ordinary life. I pray for authority, spiritual authority to wield in their circle of influence, not to continually grow their influence. I let I pray for a spirit led leadership. Holy Spirit, this podcast is yours.
Our lives are yours. We surrender them to you. Holy Spirit, guide our thoughts and our actions. Lord, we love you and your name. Be proud. Okay, so really quick. This is again different than what I normally have been doing, but it's something new and it's something that I feel like the Lord is challenging me in. And when you have those things where the Holy Spirit, it's like you're going to do this and you're like, No, I'm not.
I know you are. And it's like, No, I'm really not. And he's like, No, you really are. And here it is. This is me. Like after they say that a righteous man or a Christian, like in Proverbs, he talks about how Christians fall six times as stand up seven. I have fallen six times in disobedience to doing something like this.
And here I am on my seventh time creating a podcast about the book of Nehemiah. It hasn't always been about the book anymore. It's always been like, Hey, why don't you talk about some of the stuff I'm teaching you? And I'm like, I don't want to because that's scary. And here I am. So. Nehemiah One and two, the whole book of Nehemiah I kind of talked about it earlier is essentially Nehemiah, who is a cup bearer for the king.
When a cup bearer is is essentially the he's not like an advisor to the king, but he spends a lot he's at the right hand of the king. He's always there because he drinks the wine to make sure that it's not poisonous before the king drinks it. So really, he's like the last line of defense from like some silent assassin to the king.
But what a crappy job. So let me just drink this real quick and make sure it's not poisonous. I use that as an excuse to drink my friend's stuff before I hand it to them and I go to them making certain that poisonous. I'm. You're fine. You'll love me for later. But one day Nehemiah goes in and he's like, visibly distraught.
And him and the king spent a lot of time together. And so the king picks up on it. And essentially what happened was Jerusalem had been destroyed, the walls had been burnt down, they'd been ransacked, God's people's city has been destroyed. And Nehemiah, as a Jew was upset and and downtrodden, I guess would be a word. And so he goes in with this, I guess, mission of I'm going to talk to the king and see what I can do.
And he prays in Nehemiah . Listen to the prayers of those who delight in honoring you while honoring you. Lord, please grant me access today by making the King be favorable to me. Put it in his heart to be kind. He goes in, he talks to the king and he asks for permission. Not only does the king give him permission, he grants him to leave work.
He gives him letters to pass safely through the land. He gives him a letter to give to the manager of the forest, to give him lumber to rebuild Jerusalem and he gives him guards and security to deliver him to where he needed to be. So in this, I know that the King is not God, but the God that we serve is our king.
And I wonder how much more favor we would get from our king if we just approached him in the way of if it pleases the king, then could I do this or have this or work towards this? Because in all of his petitions to the King, Nehemiah leads it with If it were to please the king, if it were to please the king, could I lead?
Could if it were to please the king, could I have a note saying to travel safely if it were to please the king? And in Matthew , it says, If you sinful people know how to give good gifts, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him? And this king knows how to give good gifts.
How much more? If we were to petition the Lord? Because I think oftentimes, like, man, I was challenged by this. Like, I don't ever pray for myself. I pray for all the people around me, which is not how holier than thou is, is almost like a self esteem, esteem thing. I'm like, I don't really want why would I pray for myself?
I have other people to pray for, but like someone challenging is like if you can't pray for yourself, like you need to pray for yourself before you pray for other people. You should be number one on the list. You got to be healthy before you start praying for other people, which I don't know how much like truth there is to that statement in terms of like you've got to be there first.
But at the point was like you got to be able to pray for yourself. And so asking the Lord like, Lord, like if it is, if it pleases you, like this is what's on the desires of my heart. Like, would it please you also. And what like, just listen. What if So Nehemiah shows up to Jerusalem. He takes this trip and he goes out and scouts the the the the damage essentially and puts together a plan.
And Nehemiah three then describes all the people who took part in the rebuild of the city. And this is what's cool and this is why I think as Christians we need to pay attention because I think that this whole book is a giant metaphor or can be seen as a giant metaphor of the world we live in today as Christians.
This is like the actual physical Jerusalem is under attack, but also like God's people are under attack. We are under attack constantly. We are in constant opposition to the enemy. So in Nehemiah three, it talks about how as I pull out my Bible guys, I got just a Bible for our wedding gift. I had like this and like this leather hand bound Bible made.
It's a sturdy Bible and it's been sitting in my office and I don't ever use it because I study upstairs with my own Bible. And I left my Bible upstairs and I was like, Oh, it's almost like you kind of forgot. I was like, I forgot that we had this. It's a really cool Bible. So anyways, it talks about how the priests are taking part of the rebuild the owners of camp of like the owners of different businesses and establishments are taking part in the rebuild.
Random people throughout the city are taking part in the rebuild and it says that some guy who owns half of this like massive piece of property I'm trying to find it without flipping yet. Last week, the last podcast I posted, you can hear all my background noise and it was distracting and I hated it. And so but essentially this like wealthy landowner is contribute like everybody is working and I think not that this isn't happening already, but it's almost like a, a reconfirmation of the fact that like everybody has a role, even if you are poorer than dirt, you have a role to play, or if you're richer, then I don't have an analogy other
than dirt. You're richer than gold. Shoot, you have a role to play. Nehemiah four goes into the fact that so you don't have four, Seven says, but when? SAMBOLIN Who is the northern enemy of Jerusalem? The Arabs, who are the southern the Emirates, the Eastern and the acolytes who are the Western enemies heard that the work was going forward and that the gap in the walls of Jerusalem were being repaired.
They were furious. Why wouldn't they be like God's people being weak and unable to speak against their pagan ways? Is is where they want them. It's better to be demand and quiet. And I think I think to right now as Christians, how many oppositions do we see as neighbors? They don't go by the name of the devil. They are forces that are opposing to you, but they're masked as like the same old, same old neighbor neighbor, that neighbor, neighbor, neighbor, neighbor.
And they just been pillars for forever. But they're they're like how many, I think, to success. And for eight, they all made plans to come and fight against Jerusalem and throw them into confusion. I think to the the pride LGBTQ agenda of throwing us into confusion. And like, what do you believe? What is what does Jesus believe? What is kind, what is not gay and what is acceptable and what is tolerant?
What is what is it in between tolerance and like that in itself is and is a force against Jerusalem because it's throwing them into confusion. I think to man, even though they're good forces, like in theory they should be. But like the idea of like speed, like financial pressure is is a force against Jerusalem, a force against Christianity, because how do I steward money?
What is it bad to pursue money? Is it bad to to want to be rich? I don't think it's bad to want to be rich. I want to be really rich. But it's like, do I love money or do I want the money to use money as a tool man like, do I do I want that tool for myself or do I want to use it?
Do I want to be able to bless people like that? Can I want that as a Christian? They all made plans to come and fight against Jerusalem and throw them into confusion. I like this though. So for nine, but we prayed to our guard God and guarded the city day and night to protect ourselves. Their first response was to pray.
I started like this thing within like a challenge of myself because it's so easy to be like, and this is so uncomfortable for me a lot of times, but it actually gets a lot less uncomfortable the more I do it. But I would always say, Hey, I'm praying for you. Give them a hug, side hug and send them off and be like, I'm praying for them.
And then I just would like sometimes . It'd be like, Yeah, or I would forget, but I heard someone say like, I want to be the person who's like, Hey, let's just pray right now. I don't care where we are. We're going to embrace and I'm going to pray for you. Their first response was to pray. They faced opposition, they faced danger and they prayed.
And that's a challenge for me to you to like, just keep praying and be prayer warriors. Man, I if you listen to this, we need more people to pray for . Don't be afraid of their enemy. Remember the Lord who is great and glorious and and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives and your homes.
This verse, this simple reminder of why, as Christians, we should wake up every day with the trip on our shoulder, we are under attack. I will keep repeating it. And I think the Lord, here's the thing. The Lord wants people to know this. My pastor today preached out of Corinthians and that's where it was. No, he preached. I would Timothy, But then he would jumped over into Corinthians and his whole thing was like, We are under attack.
You're under attack. We are in a giant war, overarching. And each of us are in our own battles and we all have our own skill sets and we all are fighting with a different man. It could be in the Navy Air Force, Army, Coast Guard. You could be a sniper, you could be whatever. Like you could take that analogy forever.
I actually am right. That's kind of what my books about. And so you you are in a fight. But we have no reason to be afraid because our Lord, who is great and glorious, is fighting for us. And we've already won because it says every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. And but there are things in that life until that time that we need to stand up and fight and protect.
And this verse says that it says, Fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives and your homes for . But from then on, only half of my men worked, while the other half stood guard with Spears. Shields and bows and codes of male. Okay, so when you look at that, spears and bows are weapons codes of male and and shields are defensive things.
We have to rules to a to fortify and to defend. And the ones who defend have to be ready to attack. We're not always on the defensive. You got to be able to attack and like to be equipped to attack. You got to be in the word. You got to be you got to have your testimony unlocked, sharing your testimony, I should say, because that is a weapon.
But you're also called to fortify. There are seasons of fortifications and their seasons of defense all throughout the Bible. You read the Israelites going through on the way to the promised Land, and they're conquering these these cities. But they turn back and they like they would pause these projects of of moving through territory to fortify the things that they've already conquered.
Man, if you have a thing with if you have issues with addiction, I have an addictive personality, look back and fortify the things that you have had victory over because there will be cracks in the walls. I promise. I am growing up. My my issues, my sexual temptations were never necessarily pornography. I mean, I did watch pornography, but I was never addicted to pornography.
But there were victories that I had to have in social media in the way that I've talked about it on this podcast, in the way that I talk to women. And if I took today after my like, deliverance from that six years ago, five and a half years ago now, what would be maybe five and a half, six years ago, I still have my wife has a a screen time limit password on my on my phone to I don't have social media.
I don't I have all adult sites blocked. Not because I'm like struggling with that because I'm fortifying those walls that there's even not even an option for temptation. I cannot if I wanted to go see anything, I think some of you men, some of you women maybe need to do that. It's there's nothing wrong with deciding. I think the thing for me was, man, I had a I had a a demonic dream.
When they just first got married, I woke up sweating and I apparently in my sleep, I was shouting, I rebuke you in the name of the Lord. But essentially two nights in a row, I had these dreams where a demon that was at one point in my grandma, like in the dream, and she turned around and had these eyes that I was and is like, that's when I was shouting and I rebuked you.
I see. Which I know what you are. I know what you are. The next day I had a dream that we were in this coffee shop and that same spirit, that same demonic presence was in my dream, and the barista had her back to me and I said, I know what you are. I see you, I see you.
And it turned around and said, It's okay. He wants you to know he sees you too. Later in the dream, I went to go take a drink of alcohol and bees and like beetles came out of the cup and, like, swarmed over me and I set it down. And like, from that moment forward, I had decided that I was not going to drink anymore.
And at the end of my dream, that same presence showed up and said, It's okay, I can wait. I'll get you with it later. Man, I no longer drink. I didn't drink for like two years after that. And then I didn't fortify my walls and I started drinking again. And it causes issues, man. It just does. Just know your body and be obedient.
And like I. I am tempted by things that I would never be tempted by when I'm drinking. And so for me, it's like, okay, I no longer drink. I can stand on the fact that I will not drink any more because the enemy has already said that that's what he is going to use to try to kill me and and screw you, screw you.
It's not worth drinking is not worth it to me. If you drink, that's fine. But I'm saying I'm in my life. My marriage is much more important than that, than a margarita. Through , the laborers carried on with their work, with one hand supporting their load and the other hand holding a weapon. All of the builders had a sword belted to their side.
The trumpeter stayed with me to sound the alarm. So what a puppeteer is, is like, Hey, someone on the north wall is attacking troops. Choi Right. Like, go get it. Like, protect help. Then the trumpeter stayed near Nehemiah so that at any point the alarm could be raised. And if a portion of the wall was being attacked and the men would be prepared to stop their work and go and defend man, I feel this so heavy right now towards our children.
Maybe that's because I'm a dad, but I just read these I read these things, these stories about kids transitioning and being pressured into transitioning from their teachers or the the the admission of or like people coming out who have worked for these massive companies like Disney or was like, Oh, yeah, they are intentionally grooming your kids or like Target, I'm over it.
I'm just over all of that man. And like, so, like, sound the alarm, defend our children, fight back, man Like abortion and one year of Roe v Wade being overturned was recently in the last week or two, I believe I got an email in my in my inbox about from a coffee company that I support. Seven weeks coffee is what it's called a baby's seven weeks is the size of a coffee bean.
And so % of their proceeds go towards opposing or actually not opposing, but supporting anti labor version clinics. Go check them out. I'll put them in the bio or not in the bio, in the link, in the description, in the show notes. Good Lord. Okay. I like this verse though, because it shows that. So while there was a point in the load, they had one hand supporting the load of their burden of responsibility, being a husband, being a dad, being an employee.
The other hand was prepared to fight at a moment's notice. And I think that's a picture of what a man's responsibility should be. It should be a worker, a defender and a fighter, like I am working hard to to support my family, to carry my load. But I am going to drop that in a heartbeat to defend my family.
And if you are opposing me and my family, I am going to be a fighter, which is why I like elephants. I have elephants tattooed all over my body. Actually, because they are defender first and fighters second, but they're fighting to defend their family and they are big and strong and dangerous. And if you know me, I'm a large human, but I'm a teddy bear.
Until you talk about my girls and in which case and then you got trouble for during that time, none of us, not I know my relatives, nor my servants, nor the guards who were with me, ever took off our clothes. We carried our weapons with us at all times. Even when we went for water We like as Christians right now, we always have to be on guard.
How sad is it, though, that like, I can't like I can't just show my daughter she doesn't really get a lot of screen time, but when I do show her anything, I'm afraid of what she's going to see. Or like when I want to sit down and just watch a movie with my wife, like we have normalized pornography and sex in such a way that like we could just be laying there watching a movie and all of a sudden there's a full on sex scene on my TV, and I don't need to see that.
Why is that being shown to me without my I guess I'm giving it permission by clicking play. But like I always have to be on guard. I never. So when it says we didn't, we never took our clothes off. So like, that's like symbolic to the fact of like we never made ourselves vulnerable. We were always protected. In verse seven three, I'm going to jump forward.
It actually says, and I said to them, Do not leave the gates open during the hottest part of the day. And even while the gatekeepers are on duty, have them shut the door, shut the bar and the doors. Appoint the residents of Jerusalem to be to be as guards. Everyone on a regular watch. Someone will serve as sentry posts and some will be in front of their homes.
So the thing that I first I read that I was like, why didn't you mention the hottest part of the day? And I did some research on it and the im not a whole lot. I mean, it was an easy Google search, so don't act like I'm some awesome scholar. But the hottest part of the day is when everyone is sleeping in this city and arresting to get away from the heat.
So it's saying like, hey, even when you're resting, you need to have bars and doors up to protect yourself as a man, even when you're arresting men. I got off of Instagram because restful to me, it was like, I just want to unplug my brain. I don't want to think I'm just going to mindlessly scroll, which is a silly, silly desire, but and I recognize that it is.
But for me, I think I want to scroll if I'm just scrolling, I better have my gates up in my bar down because man, there is stuff on social media, on Tik Tok, on. I mean, LinkedIn is not. But the thing is that sexual temptation on those other to LinkedIn easily allows me to start being prideful or opposite being jealous, being like coveting of other people's jobs, money positions.
Like if I don't have my bars up my doors closed, bars down, boom, got bars. You remember that video is like, But don't call me a rapper. Super hot fire. Go watch it. If you bring it back to middle school. We have a responsibility, though, to stand guard. I know it sounds dramatic, but like go watch the news for like a second or maybe less than that.
And and it's going to take more than what we're giving right now as Christians. I believe that I think that this book is a playbook to talk about what it's going to take, but it's also going to have to take this ownership of like a recognition in the fact of the current circumstance and temperature of the world we live in.
Like it's not rainbows and gumdrops. It is like going to take a reclamation of authority and we need to do that. So here we go, charge verse six to see and build and get something where these officers from foreign cities is sent to Jerusalem to quote unquote, keep the peace. They sent a Nehemiah message requesting that he meet them in an isolated city in the plain of Ono.
They sent it three times and he refused because he knew that they had plans to kill him. Man, the enemy has. You can look back at the the like the the Bible is a history book and you can study your enemy as if you're watching tape or watching a film of a game. He gives away his moves in this.
What is he doing? He's pulling. He's trying to pull Nehemiah away from all of his people so that he's more vulnerable to be killed. Nehemiah is wise and does not do that. But how easy is it to be isolated, to not to stop going to church, to stop going to young adults, to stop going to your Bible study, to stop being around your friends?
You get like that is like a massive repercussion of depression, which like I understand, I don't want to be around people when I'm sad. A Can I say that depression is not the not the sickness, it is the symptom of a sickness. So if you are depressed, even if you were to say, well, my body is like chemically imbalanced.
Yeah, it is. And it's still a symptom that you become depressed. Something is causing your body to be chemically imbalanced. What is it? I speak from firsthand experience. Go listen to my last podcast. But if it's like depression because of isolation, like the enemy has those in his plans, like that is, his plot to kill you is to just isolate you.
Don't let him fight back. The next thing is that in verse , they then if because they couldn't isolate him, they paid a prophet to deliver a message to Nehemiah that his enemies were coming to kill him and that he should stop working and to lock himself in the temple to protect himself. If they can't get you to isolate you, they're going to try to scare you and intimidate you and the pandemic.
I know that I'll piss a lot of people off about the pandemic. If I start talking about it. Just know that that had a lot more to do than physical sickness. It had a lot to do with the intimidation and to stay inside, stop working, stop doing what you are are called to do and be afraid of people who are coming to harm you.
If that's you just know that the Lord, your God is bigger than any of that man. This book is so good because it ends with this. when not this book, there's this portion. What? When our enemies in the surrounding nations heard about it, they were frightened and humiliated. They realized this work had been done with the help of our God.
So this is the thing, like flyover Jerusalem is broken. The Nehemiah asks God to help. God provides everything needed to help. He teaches how to do it. He gives advice on how to protect. He gives advice on roles. He gives warnings about how the enemy is going to try to oppose you in it. And at the end it says, Well, sucks that they failed and now they feel silly because God help them do it.
How encouraging is that, though? Because we're in a world right now where it feels like we need rebuilding, we need redemption, we need healing, and he does it and we'll talk about it. I'm going to do this. I like this. This is fun. I want to read like and I'll share. Obviously, that's what the podcast is, I guess.
But like the other prophets, minor and major talk just about this, they talk all about this and it's an example of example over and over of God's goodness. So I don't want to belabor the fact you should go read Nehemiah because I can talk to you about it. But now there's so much more that you can go read like this revelation builds on itself.
So I've given you what the Lord gave me and now take that and go read it and see what the Lord gives you to build on top of that. And then I'd love to hear what the Lord gives you. Email me. Mitch Parsons, Creative at gmail.com. Guys, I want to send out stickers. It's free marketing for me and also like, I want to like support or like, say thank you for listening.
Not that a sticker is a huge deal, but I'd love to send you stickers as many as you want. Go follow me on Substack I This is my Substack is growing slowly. I'm not using social media though. And so the coolest thing about it is like it's all word of mouth. It's all you saying, Hey, I appreciate this.
I think someone else would appreciate it. Or it's me making relationships with people outside of this and talking to them about what I do. And I don't care about these massive numbers. I want a core group of listeners and friends that because when I when I sit here and talk, I literally picture like my friends who I I've made or the friends who I started this thing with and I, I just want what's best for the other person on this.
Mike The other person on the side of this. Mike And again, Pastor and Scott says this thing like it'll never be when he talks about his church, it'll never be mine, it'll always be yours. And like, that's I pray that's what I started praying about. This podcast is not mine. It's % the Holy Spirit. And so I can share this with someone who needs it.
Um, I promise you that this podcast is worn over in my prayer life. You can trust. You can trust that. So yeah, share it with somebody. Reach out. I want to chat with you about anything and. Until next time, though. Please.
Did You Also Not Know That Nehemiah Was a Book in the Bible?