Year 5, Day 49: Nehemiah 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Hexagon, Prayer

• Hexagon: The hexagon is the symbol that we can use to represent prayer.  The hexagon gives us 6 topics that we can remember in prayer, each coming from a petition in the Lord’s prayer: God’s Character, God’s Kingdom, Provision, Forgiveness, Guidance, and Protection.

Nehemiah’s prayer is humbling.  It demonstrates that Nehemiah is connected with God.  It demonstrates that Nehemiah cares about the spiritual well-being of the Hebrew people around him.  Let’s look at this prayer and what makes it so powerful.

Do you notice where Nehemiah begins?  Nehemiah begins in a fast.  He acknowledges God’s character as provider and sustainer for his life.  After fasting in God’s presence, Nehemiah acknowledges God’s character is words as he calls Him awesome, faithful, loving, and attentive.

Then Nehemiah transitions from talking about God’s character to God’s kingdom.  God’s people are trying to survive back in Israel.  Nehemiah prays that God’s will be done among them.

Nehemiah then turns to a period of confession.  Nehemiah confesses not just the sins of the people around him but also his own sins and the sins of his household.  Nehemiah understands the need for forgiveness in our relationship with God and the people around us.  Nehemiah understands humbleness.

Nehemiah then tells God that He remembers God’s promise.  If the people return to God, then God will guide them once more.  God will provide for them once more.  Nehemiah asks God that His provision and guidance upon the Hebrew people as they come back out of exile and rebuild the temple and the environment around Jerusalem.  Nehemiah knows that the efforts of the people will not prosper unless it is the hand of God that provides for them and guides them.

About the only thing that Nehemiah doesn’t explicitly pray for here is the protection of the people.  However, protection, provision, and guidance go hand in hand.  Although Nehemiah might not say it explicitly here, it is not unreasonable to think that it would be on his mind.  After all, the prayer is brought about because of a report about the danger of the people by the native inhabitants of the land.

We see a clear posture of a man of God here.  Nehemiah humbles Himself before God, acknowledges God’s character, and prays for His will to be done.

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Year 4, Day 47: Genesis 48

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Protection

• Protection: God shelters us.  He knows our threats and knows how to bring us through them.  We learn to trust God to protect us.

As I looked at this chapter through the various lenses of discipleship, I saw the topic of protection come through in the blessing that Jacob pronounces over Joseph’s children.  This is a beautiful blessing.  It is a blessing that first and foremost turns us to God’s activity.

In the Hexagon, we understand that one of the things for which we can pray is protection.  God protects us.  God watches out for us.  We learn to trust our life in His hands.  Let’s face it, is there anyone else whose hands life is better placed?

But the thing that I really love about Jacob’s blessing upon his grandchildren is the emphasis of God’s protection over not just himself but his fathers.  God walked with Abraham and protected him.  God walked with Isaac and protected him.  God has walked with Jacob and protected him.  Why shouldn’t Ephraim and Manasseh learn to feel this same protection that was upon their forefathers before them?

We can also know this same protection.  God has not changed.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ephraim, and Manasseh is the God of Peter, Paul, James, and John and He is the same God over you and me.  God hand is over us all.  Into Him we commit our life and spirit.  There is no better place.

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Year 4, Day 28: Genesis 29

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Provision, Protection

• Provision: God gives us what we truly need.  God knows our needs better than we can know them.  We learn to trust God to provide for us.
• Protection: God shelters us.  He knows our threats and knows how to bring us through them.  We learn to trust God to protect us.

Today we see the story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel.  I’m going to look at Leah specifically through the lens of two parts of the hexagon: provision and protection.  Leah is the tender one – sometimes translated as weak one.  Leah is the overlooked eldest daughter.  Leah is described as “hated” by Jacob because he really wanted Rachel.

However, God knows what He is doing.  In spite of her rejection, God opens Leah’s womb and she becomes quite fertile.  She bears four sons to Jacob, and each of these sons will play a very significant role in the rest of the story of Genesis.  Reuben and Simeon will be the family leaders for much of the time.  Levi will become the great line of priests and Levites.  Judah will eventually become the family leader and will ultimately produce the line of David.  It is out of the line of Judah that Jesus comes.  God provides incredible honor for Leah in spite of being hated by the world.

God also protects Leah.  She could have been forgotten in this world, but through Laban God grafts Leah into His people.  She could have been abused and neglected by Jacob, but God opens up Leah in order to provide Jacob’s first four sons.  God not only grants her provision but protection by grafting her into a family that can care for her and bring her into a place where God can literally work through her and her offspring.

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Year 3, Day 353: Revelation 8

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Hexagon

• Hexagon: The hexagon is the symbol that we can use to represent prayer.  The hexagon gives us 6 topics that we can remember in prayer, each coming from a petition in the Lord’s prayer: God’s Character, God’s Kingdom, Provision, Forgiveness, Guidance, and Protection.

As we begin this chapter, we hear about a moment of silence, an offering of incense, and prayers being offered up to God.  We don’t know the subject of the prayers, but I think it is fair to say that the prayers would be encompassed in the general categories of the hexagon.

What is important about this section is to see the cause and effect.  The prayers rise before God and there is a response.  A censer is thrown down upon the earth in judgment.  When we pray to God and lift up our concerns before Him, we do not pray to a dead God or a God who is incapable of doing something.  We pray to a God who can and does respond to us when we genuinely pray in His Spirit.

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