Sermon on Nehemiah 5:1 - 7:4, soccer after church

In his Sunday sermon on Nehemiah 5:1 - 7:4, Pastor Steve posed the following question: what is the biggest danger to God's people? Is it persecution? In light of recent happenings, one may think so. Pastor talked about a young woman in Egypt who experienced torture & harm from the police & then (appalingly) members of her own family, just because she converted to Christianity. He also mentioned the group of South Korean Christians currently held hostage in Afghanistan. But persecution, as Pastor correctly pointed out, is nothing new to God's people. And the sad but true fact is, a lot of people will be open to attack & persecution just because they are Christians.

However, from the Nehemiah passage, the biggest danger to God's people came not from their enemies, but from those within their ranks. Specifically, the wealthy Jews were profiteering from the poorer people, & this injustice caused Nehemiah to be angry. He would have been thinking, how could they (the rich) be be doing this to their own people?

So what is the biggest danger to God's people? Persecution? Opposition? No. The good news about persecution is that it shows God's enemies are fearful, & the persecution only strengthens believers & spur them on to seek Christ. Actually, the biggest danger to God's people is the faithlessness of God's people towards each other. This was the case in Nehemiah's time, & is also the case today. As pointed out by Pastor, the Western church has all the wealth, but do not seem to be doing very much with it in terms of helping the church in poorer places. In some developing countries, several villages share 1 Bible, & then the Bible is passed on to another lot of villages. The people in those countries are poor & could not afford to get many Bibles. In such countries, the church is growing. We in the more advanced world, with the money we have, could do more than we are currently doing to help the church in the poor areas.

Pastor's sermon reminds me of how lucky I am to be living in a place where I am not persecuted for my faith (not that I'm very active with my faith). I should also reflect on what I can do to help less fortunate fellow believers in the developing world.

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After church, a few of us played soccer at one of the UQ fields in Carmody Rd. It was fun, though my team got hammered big time (probably because the other team had fitter runners). I think for every goal we scored, the other team scored about 2. My sister & brother-in-law also played, & they seemed to enjoy the football as much as I did.

I did more running than expected & lasted longer on the field than I thought I would. Nevertheless, it was very veerrrryyyy tiring. At the end, I was left sore & could barely move. The next few days were painful. Due to my lack of fitness & not excessively high stamina, my whole body (especially legs) were aching like mad. Every leg movement was such an ordeal. Even moving a leg out of my bed hurts. Walking from bus stop to work was a torture - I practically limped, & colleagues at work could tell something was different with the way I walked. "Played soccer on Sunday....that's what it did to me", I would tell them & pull a face to indicate how much of a toll the soccer took on my physically. Colleagues would laugh.

Luckily, I can feel that recovery is imminent. I should be ok by this weekend! The whole thing reminds me of the physical limitations of my earthly body. Never mind - when I get to heaven, I will be given a new body. There will be no more aches & pains of the sort that I have experienced lately. Isn't that good?