“Coming Back”

If you’ve ever reached a pinnacle, one of those milestone moments, you want the “high” from that to last. If you’ve ever achieved something significant, especially spiritually, you’d like that level of commitment and sense of everything being right to be sustained. Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works. Life is full of ups and downs. The tide of our spiritual health rises and lowers. The greatest athlete’s ability changes, especially with age. This is simply part of being an imperfect, finite human trying to walk with the perfect, infinite God in a fallen world with a sinful nature. 

The books of Ezra & Nehemiah, which may have been a single book in the ancient world, follows God’s faithfulness to His people through the rising and lowering tides of His peoples’ faithfulness, especially as they come out of the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. The return is monumental, as is the restoring of Worship through the rebuilding of the temple! Yet, the faithfulness of God’s people is like a receding tide. The reform through the Word is huge, too! Yet, disobedience flows, again. Rebuilding the Wall was exciting and unifying, yet God’s people repeat the pattern of faithlessness after this achievement. 

In this series, we will follow the rising and lowering tides of God’s people and glean lessons for our own patterns, both of faithful achievements and the receding tide from faithfulness. Through it we will see the importance of passionate worship, biblical teaching and gospel community.