Remember The Lord Is With You

Remember The Lord Is With You

Nehemiah 4:14 “And I looked, and arose, and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”

In case you are not familiar with this story, as I only recently learned more about it. Nehemiah felt the Lord called him to go and lead the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem. He got permission from King Ar-ta-xerx′es to go and to do this. But when Sanbal′lat the Hor′onite and Tobi′ah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they derided us and despised us and said, “What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” These people wanted to stop the rebuilding of the walls.  They threatened to harm those building the wall. This is why Nehemiah is reassuring his people in the verse above.

What stood out to me most about the verse above is the statement, Remember the Lord, who is great and terrible. I thought this was an interesting word to describe God. I have never thought of God as terrible. I was thinking maybe it meant he is great for His children, but terrible for those who are against His children. However, when I looked this verse up in various translations, it says other words. The most common wording is “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome. That I can totally understand this wording. God is definitely awesome.

I also looked up the wording from the translation we use at the Catholic mass and it said, “Do not fear them! Keep in mind the Lord, who is great and to be feared.” I can see this as well. There are actually two meanings to this phrase. First, we should all fear the Lord, meaning have awe and reverence for Him. We don’t need to fear Him as be afraid of Him, but we can look to Him with Awe. The second meaning of this phrase is the traditional meaning. Yes, those who are trying to hurt His children should fear the Lord. They should be afraid because He will stop at nothing to protect and take care of His children.

In the verse above, Nehemiah reminds the people of Jerusalem that they have no reason to be afraid. He is letting them know that they can rely on the Lord and that He will keep them safe.

This verse is a good one for us to look to when we need to be reminded that the Lord is fighting for us as well. He is on our side. Sometimes we can forget this. Sometimes we can think we are in this alone. I mentioned something in my episode last week that I think is worth repeating. God is not surprised by anything we go through. He doesn’t look at our situation and say, “Oh no, Catherine is struggling; what should I do?” He knew I was going to be struggling, and He knew how I would get out of it. He will help me out of the situation I am in just as He will help you out of your situation. He is a good, good father, and he will not leave us alone in our struggles unless we ask Him to. Unless we push Him away.

It is possible to close doors to God’s help. God respects our right to free will, and so if we decide we want to fight our battles on our own, He will let us. This is one reason it is so important to ask God for what we want or what we need. Yes, He knows what we need, but He is waiting for us to ask, for us to give Him permission. He is waiting for us to invite Him into the situation. God does not go where He is not wanted. He will not go against your free will.

This verse above says, “Remember the Lord, who is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” This is a great reminder that we need to fight for our families. It is a great reminder that there is a war going on for our souls—not just our souls but those of our loved ones as well. We need to be on the lookout and on the offensive.

It is a great reminder that we are not in this fight alone. We have the Lord on our side. The Lord who is great and awesome, who is great and powerful. He is fighting with us. He is fighting for our children and for all of our loved ones. Whenever we feel like we are struggling, whenever we notice our loved ones are struggling, we can call upon His mighty name, and He will be there to fight for us. I first was going to write alongside us, and He will do that, but did you know He can fight our fights for us too? Did you know you can hand something over to Him, and He can take care of it? God doesn’t need your help to fight your battles.

That doesn’t mean we don’t ever have to do anything. Sometimes He is calling us to do our part while He does His part. However, sometimes, especially those times when it is too big for us to fix or when we don’t even know where to begin, He can fight those battles for you. He can either take care of it completely without our help, or He will lead us to the first step, then the next step and so on. All we need to do is remember to turn to Him and ask Him. If you are struggling today if you are in the middle of a battle right now, can you take a moment and invite God in? Can you ask Him to come and fight this with you or for you? Honestly, what have you got to lose?

Dear Heavenly Father, I love you and ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we want you to fight our battles with us; please help us. Lord, we want you to fight for our loved ones with us. Lord, we invite you into all of our battles. We invite you into all of our struggles. We invite you in to protect our loved ones. Lord, we turn to you. We want your help. We want your protection. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind you all that mentoring is tomorrow night. I will be finishing up the series on praise and worship. Tomorrow we will discuss various places from the Bible where God shows us the power of praise and worship. I hope you will join us. I just want to encourage you if you have been on the fence about joining mentoring but aren’t sure you want to spend the money. I want to encourage you to invest in yourself. Invest in your faith journey. We are often so willing to spend money on everything else but not our faith journey. Why is that? If you are local and have not joined because you really don’t like Zoom, reach out to me. If I have a few people interested, I am happy to do an in-person mentoring group as well.  I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email [email protected]. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You are the delight of my heart, my children. That is why I sent Jesus my son to you. I sent you my greatest gift. Treasure him always. Follow in his steps. Emulate him and you will continue to be my delight.”

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