September 9: Nehemiah 6:11-16
 
Key Verse: Nehemiah 6:16
When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realised that this work had been done with the help of our God.
 
Devotion:
The more we focus on God and His will in our lives, the less we focus on the world around us and the evil one who is waiting to trip us up all the time. The net result from this is we see how God continues to look after us – but when we focus on the world we see how the world diverts us away from God. If we focus on the negative, that is what we see, but when we focus on the positive, we do see more positive things!
 
Nehemiah was wary of the Prophet Noadiah because her words did not quite marry up with the words He had got from God; there was a difference in the way in which God was asking them to work. The prophet was saying God would be with them if they shut themselves off in the temple – which sounded ok on the surface but was not what God said in the beginning. God had told Nehemiah He would be with the people no matter where they were!
 
We do need to remember this because God has promised us all He will be with us no matter where we are and what we have done in our lives. We do not have to meet up in church buildings for God to be with us. We do not have to make sure we meet up on the Sabbath so God can meet us then. We can call on God wherever and whenever we are!
 
God listens to our prayers all the time and is answering prayers all the time. We should not limit God to a day or a place where we can see the result whilst being surrounded by lots of other Christians of like mind! The more we go through the Old Testament, the more we should realise God was with people all over the world and continued to look after people no matter what. But when people walked off in the wrong direction, they lost sight of where God was and how He could help them; they were too consumed with worrying about what the world was doing!
 
Points to Ponder:
Do you get worried about not being in church?
 
Will you call out to God from where you are right now?