Heart Beat - By Lauren Jacobs: Recent Episodes
Heart Beat - By Lauren Jacobs
We live in a world of severe overshare. Every word we receive, dream we have, or meal we eat is shared on social media, we even seek new experiences just to share them on line! Yet, Nehemiah understood the spiritual discipline of guarding your heart and guarding your vision. He was given a Heavenly vision to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, but he kept it locked up in his heart until the time was right. In this devotional, you will understand why he chose not to share when he first received the word and why we can learn from him, especially when we are nurturing a secret vision.
It is hard to stay fath filled with life sometimes hits us with hard blows and nasty crashes. In those times I often sink in to doubt or fear, despair or weariness. I struggle to remember God's past faithfulness and His past miracles, that is why I am learning to build an alatr of rememberance. In this devotional I take you in to the altar Nehemiah built for his people, it was not an altar of stone, rather it was an altar of rememberance. This is a deep topic, and in each devotional I leave you with soul searching questions that will hopefully guide you deeper in to the Love of Messiah.
The Israelites are building the ruined walls of Israel, during a time of great uncertainty. Nehemiah is encouraging the people to take heart and keep strong, and the work progresses steadily. But their enemies rally against them with the weapon of words and words have power! As a therapist who focussed on the reality and consequences of verbal abuse, I take you in to the process of identifying harmful words and knowing how to tell the difference between words that harm from others and words that harm from within.
In some way, we have all been a witness or a participant to someone elses pain. And we wonder about the struggles of pain, we wonder about the how, the why, and we wonder if there is a place for our emotions, somewhere we can pour it out. In th ebook of Nehemiah we meet him in a place of sadness and despair, but instead of hiding his emotions as we often do, he poured them out in to a place of refuge. He did not hide the pain, he embraced it, that is what this devotional is all about. Embracing the pain and pouring it out in to the Hands of the Ultimate One who is our Refuge.