Rise Up and Build!

“The God of heaven will give us success; therefore we His servants will rise up and build!”

– Nehemiah 2:20

This was our memory verse for this past Sunday. Linked to our theme this term, this verse tells how the Israelites were determined to rebuild their city wall, and they knew that God would give them success. We might not be building a literal wall, but God is calling each of us to build for His kingdom. Every one of us plays a role in building, be it a relationship, telling people about Jesus, being involved in a local church, outreaching to other churches, or allowing God to lead your life. And the verse thankfully confirms that God will give us success. With this in mind, we told our children to build.

This Sunday we spent some time looking at the story of Nehemiah. We looked at his passion to honour God in building a broken city wall. We looked at how he got all of the people to build where they stayed, to do their bit. We emphasised how God gives each of us a call, a call that He will lead us in. We also encouraged our children to persevere when times get tough. God says He will give us success in building and so when times do get hard, we can persevere because of Him.

Spend time looking at the story of Nehemiah again with your children. Perhaps try to build something with them and encourage them in the building process to not give up. Ask them where they think they can build in their life: family, friends, church, with God. Give them some ideas. Pray with them asking God to reveal His plans and call for our children and encourage them to walk into that call as God leads. Their call has already started. The key now is to know God’s will and obey, like Nehemiah did.

For those who took home biscuit walls, it is okay to eat those. Some walls do need to fall.

– The Children’s Church team