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TODAY’S SCRIPTURE

So I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” Nehemiah 6:3

Read: Nehemiah 6:1-9
Listen: Nehemiah 6

TODAY’S MESSAGE

Nehemiah’s opponents try to get him to lose focus. They invite him to a meeting. They try to damage his reputation. They are hoping to distract him to stop the wall from being completed. Nehemiah recognizes the danger of distraction. He refuses to leave the work on the wall. It’s so close to being finished, and he’s focused on completing the rebuild. He presses through the distractions to see the project to the end.

Nehemiah’s focus is a good lesson for us. Distraction is an enemy of spiritual momentum. Distraction comes in many forms. Often, the things that aren’t bad are the most dangerous. It’s the travel sports league that keeps a family from church every week. It’s picking up the phone to start scrolling before spending time alone with God in the morning. It’s the conversation about fantasy football that distracts a group of friends from talking about what’s going on in their lives. It’s the constant texts from friends and co-workers that interrupt a husband and wife from taking time to talk about what God is teaching them. When we allow ourselves to be distracted, we risk losing spiritual momentum. Distractions steal our time with God and our church community. Nehemiah refuses to let distractions keep him from what God wants him to do. If we don’t want distractions to pull us from things like church, small groups or our time with God—we must resist the distractions around us.

IN YOUR CHAIR TIME TODAY

Grab your journal and write down three spiritual priorities. For each priority, write down what you would need to do daily, weekly and monthly to make progress on those priorities. Then, write down the things that will distract you from those actions. Carve out time to do the daily, weekly and monthly activities while ruthlessly working to eliminate distractions.

2023 SPIRITUAL PRACTICES

Join us all of 2023 developing a different spiritual practice each month. SPIRITUAL PRACTICES are intentional regular activities to deepen our relationship with God and mold us to be more like Jesus.

November is BIBLE MEDITATION. Keep track of our spiritual practices at beyondtheweekend.org/spiritualpractices.

Download a printable PDF of the BTW week here.