SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone, it's Nancy with your Wednesday Daily Walk.
SPEAKER_00: As we read Nehemiah chapter 9, we saw where God's children acknowledged they had disobeyed his commandments.
SPEAKER_00: They had turned their backs on him, but they had come to a place of acknowledging their sin and they wanted to turn their hearts back to God.
SPEAKER_00: As we moved into Nehemiah chapter 10, we read about their recommitment to God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 29 of chapter 10 says they quote, entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law that was given by Moses, a servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our God and his rules and his statutes.
SPEAKER_00: The chapter goes on to describe what they committed to do, what that recommitment would look like.
SPEAKER_00: I've thought some since we read those chapters about recommitment.
SPEAKER_00: How sometimes we deliberately turn our backs on God's desires for us and take our lives into our own hands.
SPEAKER_00: Other times we can easily and slowly drift off course until something happens and we realize we are far away from God's desires and his commands for our lives.
SPEAKER_00: But like the children of Israel, we can turn back to the Lord, confess our sin, and recommit our lives to following Him.
SPEAKER_00: That recommitment can be something we do as we begin each day.
SPEAKER_00: I think about David's prayer in Psalm 51, which I quote so often in my prayer time with God.
SPEAKER_00: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
SPEAKER_00: So what does that commitment to the Lord look like?
SPEAKER_00: The New Testament is clear in many passages about how God desires for us to live in a way that will honor Him.
SPEAKER_00: I think we begin with what Jesus said is most important.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew records a conversation Jesus had with some religious leaders about the most important commandment.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew chapter 22, beginning in verse 36, we read, Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first and greatest commandment.
SPEAKER_00: And the second is like it.
SPEAKER_00: All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.
SPEAKER_00: So our commitment to the Lord begins there.
SPEAKER_00: As Romans 12 references, it's a renewing of our mind, and certainly it's a matter of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: And if we draw close to him in prayer and spend time reading his word, he will show us how to live our lives in a way that will honor and serve him.
SPEAKER_00: Each day as we commit, he will guide.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.