{"id":3661,"date":"2021-08-30T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-30T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=3661"},"modified":"2021-08-26T17:19:37","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T23:19:37","slug":"casting-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=3661","title":{"rendered":"Casting Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s spend at least a couple of days in Nehemiah, one of my favorite Old Testament books. From Nehemiah 1.3 to 6.15, we go from a problem to a solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire&#8230;So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days. (Nehemiah 1.3 and 6.15, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The title and Part One of my book <a href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/Everyone-Wall-Call-Christian-Mission-ebook\/dp\/B081651RNM\/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&amp;keywords=Everyone+on+the+wall&amp;qid=1630017235&amp;sr=8-2\">Everyone on the Wall<\/a> comes from Nehemiah. Here are some simple observations from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Nehemiah+1%3A1+-+3%3A1&amp;version=ESV\">first two chapters<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Nehemiah was a layman, both in wall building and in potential leadership in Israel. Not a priest. Not a prophet. \u201cI was a cupbearer to the king.\u201d (Nehemiah 1.11)<\/li><li>God obviously put it on Nehemiah\u2019s heart to lead this effort, especially after 4 months in prayer. He probably didn\u2019t start out thinking he would lead. He was just sad about conditions and began to pray. As he prayed, no doubt God began to say to him, \u201cWhat are you going to do about it?\u201d \u201cMe? What can I do? I\u2019m a captive in a foreign land serving the king.\u201d But he formed a plan and continued to pray.<\/li><li>Prayer, planning, and petition &#8211; he asked the king for what he needed. And, as I pointed out <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=3658\">yesterday<\/a>, because God was with him, the king was with him.<\/li><li>Nehemiah goes to Jerusalem, and there is opposition mentioned from the beginning: Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem. (The first two were mentioned early in chapter 2 and Geshem at the end of chapter 2.)<\/li><li>Nehemiah scopes out the damage first hand. There\u2019s a lesson: don\u2019t go by what you hear or read about a problem. Witness it, first-hand, on the ground.<\/li><li>Then Nehemiah casts the vision, challenges the leadership, and the first guy mentioned as \u201con the wall\u201d is the high priest! I&#8217;ll write more about that tomorrow.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Then I said to them, \u201cYou see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.\u201d And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, \u201cLet us rise up and build.\u201d So they strengthened their hands for the good work&#8230;Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers the priests, and they built the Sheep Gate. They consecrated it and set its doors. They consecrated it as far as the Tower of the Hundred, as far as the Tower of Hananel. (Nehemiah 2.17 &#8211; 3.1, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Where there is no vision, the people perish&#8230; Proverbs 29.18, KJV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s spend at least a couple of days in Nehemiah, one of my favorite Old Testament books. From Nehemiah 1.3 to 6.15, we go from a problem to a solution: The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire&#8230;So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=3661\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Casting Vision<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-X3","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3662,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661\/revisions\/3662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}