The Nehemiah Story – Part Six
The Inspection

Have you ever gallantly fought against something, or someone, until you became weary, and just gave up? Then through some outside source, you were encouraged to once again ‘take up the fight.’ It appears that the people of Jerusalem had given up the fight. Over the years, a half-hearted effort had been made to restore the protective walls, but nothing significant was accomplished. Maybe this is what has happened in those states that are said to be spiritually dark. The Christians have fought a good fight, but have become weary and needs an ‘outside source’ to become their partners in the fight against sin. Our prayer is that God will use the Experiencing God Through Missions Inc missionaries to be the ‘outside source’ that will encourage the Christians in the spiritual frontier states to keep on fighting against the evil one.

Nehemiah’s arrival in Jerusalem was not a small affair since he traveled with “army officers and a calvary!” Even though the people knew about Nehemiah, because of Ezra, quite possibly, many of the residents thought ‘here we go again – another conqueror.’ Maybe to put the people at ease, since he knew he would need their help, instead of going to work right away, Nehemiah ‘rested’ for three days. Maybe during this time, he met with area officials and heard about the hopeless situation, they felt they were in. Nehemiah knew that it wasn’t hopeless, because ‘the gracious hand of God is upon me.’ Nehemiah 2:18.

Nehemiah was very sensitive to the situation, in Jerusalem, and to the surrounding ‘forces’ that did not want to see Jerusalem restored. To put together a rebuilding plan, he needed to assess the needs, by seeing for himself. He did it quite secretly. He headed out at night! Instead of taking his ‘army officers and calvary,’ which would have attracted a lot of attention, he took, just a few, of his ‘good men.’ After he had seen enough, Nehemiah ‘reentered the city’ and put together his rebuilding plan.

In the next Newsletter, you will learn about “The Plan.”