Nehemiah 1:8-10 English Standard Version (ESV)

⁸ Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, ⁹ but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ ¹⁰ They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand.

In Nehemiah’s prayer he asks God to remember what God commanded Moses. Immediately after recalling those words Nehemiah proclaims that these are His redeemed people. Now we are in the church age and have a far better witness of His redemption power. Jesus Christ has redeemed us by faith in His work on the Cross.

So this issue still remains about returning to God by promise. How do we return to a place we have never been before? The wilderness tribes followed God in the cloud by day and the fire by night. They had a sure guide. They also had Moses who spoke to God face to face as if God were a man.

Now having spiritual ears and eyes we walk by faith. It is not as clear for us as it was in the days of the Exodus. The children of the Exodus never entered into the promise of God but we did. Christ is the promise and God has returned to us by great power and His strong hand.

What do we know about the One who abides in us? Nehemiah had the ancient scrolls to know who God was and what God said. We have the completed works in order to not only know who God was and what God said but we have the Holy Spirit to tell us who God is and what He says to us today and tomorrow.

Accept that God does not changed. We do.

Hebrews 4:12 English Standard Version (ESV) For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Note carefully the division within each of us. There is flesh and there is spirit. There is how we live and what gives us life. There are thoughts which do not originate from our heart of hearts. We should be aware of this division because one is selfish and the other selfless.

Romans 8:1-4 English Standard Version (ESV)

Life in the Spirit

¹ There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

It is important to recognize that the flesh can do nothing but weaken obedience to authority. The flesh can only please itself and has no interest beyond self. The Spirit only serves God, His purpose and His will. Those are two extremes and our earthly life is walked out with both of those interests within us at all times.

We have to choose to follow one or the other every day. Choice is at the core of love. Love cannot be expressed with any sincerity without freedom of choice. God created us this way so that we could choose to love Him. We are no longer prisoners of our own devices. We are free to choose.