God wasn't rebuilding Jerusalem just so everyone could stand back and admire the wall. He was rebuilding a place where His people could live, worship, raise families and become a community again.
We've spent alot of time through this Rise & Build series talking about the wall. We've found our section, carried stones, learned to build beside each other, fought through opposition and refused to come down. But now the wall is standing, and I'm realizing all over again that the wall was never really the point.
The people were.
Jerusalem had walls again, but it still needed people inside them. Nehemiah 11 tells us that people began settling there, and some willingly uprooted their lives to make their home in a city that was still being restored.
Thay didn't just volunteer for a project and then go home when the work was finished.No, they were putting down roots and becoming part of what God was rebuilding.
And this chapter feels incredibly personal to me because I can look around my own church and see God doing something right now. We've prayed for growth. We've prayed for families and children. We've prayed for people who need Jesus to walk through our doors. And they're coming.
I'm seeing new faces and families at completely different places in their walk with Jesus. I'm seeing kids who haven't grown up knowing how church works right beside kids who have been here their whole lives. And God has been dealing with my heart about what happens after they walk through the door. Getting people inside the building isn't the main goal. We have to build a place where they can belong. And that means there will be mess. There will be noise and questions. Kids will run when we wish they'd walk. Somebody will bring chips somewhere we really don't want chips. People won't automatically know when to sit, stand or be quiet. They won't know all our traditions or understand all the things that feel normal to those of us who have been in church for years.
But I keep coming back to one thing...
We prayed for them.
We can't ask God to send people and then become frustrated because the people He sends don't already know how to live inside the walls. We get the privilege of loving them, teaching them, discipling them and making room for them while Jesus does the rebuilding.
And I have to remind myself of that too. I don't want to get so focused on children's church running perfectly that I miss the child who needs someone to notice them. I don't want to care more about everything being clean, quiet and orderly than I do about a family finally feeling like they've found somewhere they belong. I don't ever want to become so busy building ministry for people that the actual people start feeling like an inconvenience.
Especially the next generation.
Those kids running through our hallways aren't just kids we have to manage today. They're part of the Church we're building for tomorrow. They need the generations who came before them, the ones who know the history, have prayed through hard seasons, stayed when things weren't easy and carry wisdom that only comes from years of walking with God.
And we need those kids too. We need their energy, their questions, their ideas and the way they will carry Jesus into a world that looks different from the one many of us grew up in.
We need each other.
That's the community I see being rebuilt in Nehemiah. Different generations, different families, different responsibilities and different stories, all finding their place inside something God restored. And it makes me see the wall differently. A wall isn't successful just because it's standing. It's successful when life starts happening inside it. When children learn about Jesus there. When families heal there. When generations worship together there. When strangers become family. When someone walks in broken and finds people willing to stay beside them while Jesus rebuilds their life. When the kid who once didn't know how to behave in church grows up and becomes the one serving, teaching and making room for another kid just like them.
That's what I want to help build.
I don't just want a full building. I want a church family. I want the child walking through our doors today to look back years from now and say, That's where I learned about Jesus. That's where somebody knew my name. That's where I knew I belonged. I want families to put down roots. I want people who have been here for decades standing beside people who just walked through the doors. I want the broken to find Jesus and then become the ones who make room for the next broken person who comes in.
God isn't just filling seats.
He's building a people.
God didn't rebuild Jerusalem so His people could admire it from the outside. He rebuilt it so they could come home. And that's the kind of church I want to help build, not something that just looks beautiful from the outside, but a place where real people can come in, meet Jesus, grow, worship, raise their families and become part of a community.
That's why we carry the stones. That's why we keep showing up even when building gets messy.
Because people need more than a wall.
They need a place to call home.
Love Pastor Mandy
Daily reading Nehemiah 11
MandiesDandies / Ark of Hope
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