Nehemiah chapter 5 & 6

Chapter 5 closes with a short version of Nehemiah’s  term as governor in the land of Judah describing the good that he did.   The last verse of Chapter 5 says this...

“Remember me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done for this people.”

I love that. Everything Nehemiah did was because he feared God.  If God remembered what he had done than no one else had to.  Nehemiah was NOT a people pleaser.  He lived to please His God.  ❤️

That was a good thing because the Governor of Judah had enemies.  People who did not have his best interests at heart but pretended otherwise...people who heaped evil upon him for the good he had done.  Chapter 6 outlines some of their attempts to destroy him either by slandering him or ruining his godly testimony.  Nehemiah, however, had the best weapon at his disposal and used it often. He was a man of prayer. He lived in communion with His God.  Below are two examples of his prayers...

Then I sent to him, saying, "No such things as you say are being done, but you invent them in your own heart." For they all were trying to make us afraid, saying, "Their hands will be weakened in the work, and it will not be done." Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands.—Nehemiah 6:8-9

My God, remember Tobiah and Sanballat, according to these their works, and the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who would have made me afraid.—Nehemiah 6:14

Nehemiah had much against Him but His God was for him...God heard his prayers and thwarted his enemies at every turn.

So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of Elul, in fifty-two days. And it happened, when all our enemies heard of it, and all the nations around us saw these things, that they were very disheartened in their own eyes; for they perceived that this work was done by our God.—Nehemiah 6:15-16

Ending with a portion of the OYB Psalm today because it is just so perfect in conjunction with the reading in Nehemiah.

Let all the earth fear the LORD;
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
9 For He spoke, and it was done;
He commanded, and it stood fast.
10 The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect.
11 The counsel of the LORD stands forever,
The plans of His heart to all generations.
12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,
The people He has chosen as His own inheritance.—Ps 33:8-12