Tyler Pease - August 11, 2013
God Uses Dependent People…who BELIEVE
From Series: "God Heals Broken Dreams - A Study in Nehemiah"
I’ll never forget the day I first tried to explain death to our little girls. Kids know about toys, so I used toys as an object lesson – “Just like our toys break sometimes, our bodies can also break. Well girls, this morning grandpa’s body broke, and now he’s with Jesus.” That’s a hard concept for a child. To live in this world is to live in a world of broken things. Our toys break, our bodies break, our hearts break, our dreams break. When things break, we cry and learn to cope. We assess the damage and affix blame. We demand answers and search for solutions. We try to fix things as much as is humanly possible and we ask God to help us to live with what’s left. Nehemiah is a story about broken things…a broken wall, a broken nation, broken hearts and broken dreams. It’s the story of a man that God uses to rebuild a wall, to restore hope, and ultimately to resurrect a nation. In the bigger sense, the story of Nehemiah is much more than a story about a great leader; it’s the story of a great God who delights to take our broken hearts and broken dreams and exchange them for new hearts and new dreams. To use the words of C.S. Lewis, God allows us to trade the “mud pies” we value so much for a “holiday at the beach.” God does heal broken dreams…not simply by giving us what we think we need, but by replacing our shattered hopes with new longings, the greatest of which is a new longing for God Himself. Join us this summer for an eleven-week study of the God who heals broken dreams and the people He restores along the way.