52 or 90?

Sadly, I was in my mid-20's before I first learned about the story of Nehemiah. It was taught to me beforehand, and I REALLY could have used it in may teenage years, but it wasn't until I was in full time ministry work that this story took root in my heart.

It is a story of passion, hope, hard work, belief in God, courage, discipline, and total life change. It warns us of what can happen if we fail to start doing what matters. An entire lifetime can pass stuck in a place of fear and doubt. But with resolve, everything can change, and fast. In fact, in less than two months you can position yourself to be more focused, with better hope, and direction than at any time in your life. 

I want you to make personal, direct, individual application today. I'll give you examples in three areas: Scripture, Diet, and Addiction to Social Media. I hope you are able to apply the principles to the broken walls in your own life.

But at the end, I want to begin to introduce the social idea - the idea that the real application of this story isn't you, but us. Not me, but we. The best work is familial, collective, and done together. More on that next week!

- What are some things you want to change that could plague you your whole life?

- Why have you convinced yourself those goals are beyond or behind you?

- Have you ever embraced the transformative power of the "52 Day Challenge"?

- Okay, so now you have. Where are you excited to start?

- Why is personal discipline in your life important to people you know and love?

Transcript

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Welcome to season five of the Excel Still More Podcast. I'm still your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you and your walk with the Lord, and I'm glad you've joined. The program continues to be sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John is a good friend, and he's helped me and my family in everything from stock and mutual fund investing to annuities, life insurance, and retirement planning. I certainly commend him to you if you have needs in any of those areas. You can reach him at 205-326-7364. Thank you again for your ongoing encouragement and support. Let's get started. Today's content is a little different than the last few weeks. I feel like I've been sharing things with you that were somewhat new to me, that I had that initial excitement for and have been working on implementing. But today I've got to take you back, back to something that I actually presented in an episode called 90 or 52 in early September 2019. It represents one of the most crucial Old Testament stories for goal setting and habit changing that you'll ever see. I lament the fact that even though I was raised in the church, I wasn't always listening carefully, and I was probably in my mid-20s before I really saw the story of Nehemiah and began to implement what it could mean for me. It's actually been on my mind for nearly two months now, and so there is a goal that I have met that I'm excited to share, but I was surprised looking back that it took almost an entire first year of the podcast before I included it in an episode, and it just feels like an injustice that we haven't talked about it here directly in a four-year span, but we're going to fix that today. So just a heads up on the numbers. I love numbers. So I have about four of them to share with you today. Clearly, I need to explain the numbers 52 and 90. Also the number 20, and that's just a personal commitment to try to get this episode back down to 20 minutes. It's just been getting a little longer every week, and no one has directly complained. But if it gets longer than your time on the treadmill or your commute to work, I know that can be a problem. Interestingly enough, you can already take a peek and see how I did today. As for me, as I'm recording this, I still have no idea, so we'll see how it goes. Also, around the midpoint, I will talk to you about the number 19, most often associated with COVID, but also often associated with some lethargic behavior that took place during COVID, and I actually think Nehemiah's story can help with that too. So whether you're familiar or not, here's the Cliff Notes version of what happened in the first six chapters of the book of Nehemiah. God's people, Judah, had been in captivity because of their sin under the control of a foreign nation for about 70 years. At the end of that period of time, Babylon falls, God's people are free, and most of them head back to Jerusalem to rebuild their lives. Nehemiah's family was not one of them. His parents had settled up in the north in one of those previous regions, and that's probably where he was born and raised. So flash forward ninety years, God's people had been home for nearly a century. Someone from Jerusalem shows up hundreds of miles away where Nehemiah lives and gives this report. God's people are back home in Jerusalem, but the walls around the city remain broken. This fact blew Nehemiah's mind. You can't be serious. It's God's people back where God's house is in God's city, and you're telling me that a lifetime has passed and they have not fortified the walls. The reasons for that were not really good. The nations around them liked them with crumbled walls. They did not want to see the Jews rebuild any previous strength that they had. They wanted them without courage and easy to manipulate. It's probable that they started to do something every once in a while, but their lack of courage and the opposition just always caused them to fail. So Nehemiah did not take that well. He said, I've got to get down there. I have to help them make this change. So he prays about it. He goes to the new Persian ruler who supports him heading back south and actually sends him with supplies. Nehemiah gets back to Jerusalem, takes a few days, and surveys the city. Then he meets with all of the leaders of the city, as many as he can gather together, and he says, Guys, this is not right. We've been blessed by God. We need to use this restorative blessing to try and rebuild things in a way that can honor him best. He gives this terrific, passionate speech that touches the heart of the Jewish leaders. And after 90 years of walking around the rubble, the people get to work. All the people got to work, and he was helping to lead that. Now, things were not altogether smooth. First of all, it was a ton of work and it took a lot of help. Secondly, as you might imagine, the cities around them opposed them and tried to get them to stop. And I think without Nehemiah's encouragement, they probably would have. But instead, he just rallied up the troops to protect the workers. If you can imagine all of these workers around the city of Jerusalem with hammers facing inward, and at their backs were soldiers, Jewish brethren holding swords facing outward. It turns out that most of the cities around them were all bark and no bite, and of course, God was in on all of this, and they were able to complete those walls and fortify that city. How long did it take them to rebuild the walls after ninety years of them being broken down? Fifty-two days. That number is specifically given to us in Nehemiah chapter six, verse fifteen. Fifty-two days. Less than two months of collective and focused work, and they changed everything. Now, when I say change everything, maybe I should qualify that a little bit. They reset everything. They got it back to where it needed to be. They brought themselves back to a rejuvenated position of hope and protection and a sense of honor in who they were and where they belonged. What would the future hold? Well, that would be entirely up to them. Fifty-two days of work can change practically everything, but it doesn't mean that everything will always be good. It just means you've done this beautiful and impactful reset to make a great future possible. You'll see why I've added all of that in just a minute. Their future, at least in the near term, went really well. Nehemiah hung around for I think twelve years and was governor of the region. And I think if my recollection of Bible history is accurate, they rebuilt these walls in around 450 BC and they lasted until the destruction of Jerusalem that Jesus foretold in 70 AD. So 52 days of work led to 500 years of fortification, which carries this generational impact. Here's a generation or two that did nothing. One group comes in, two months of work, and it affects their children and their grandchildren and on for a very long time. Okay, so what is the value of that story? How is that designed to help you today? I'd like to begin with the way that I usually apply it and I think is super valuable, which is on a personal level. There are things that you could spend your whole life not doing. 90 years, from birth till death, you can see that it's important, but you can just get used to not doing it. You can start and give it a try for a few days, but succumb to a lack of courage or commitment or falter under the weight of the opposition and just ignore it. In fact, there are things that an outside believer might observe in your life that are super crucial to fortify by the power of God, but you've become so used to it that you just walk around it or step over it or even justify it. I need you to understand, you've got to answer a question today. When it comes to things that you would readily admit are valuable, important, maybe even crucial, are you a 52 or a 90? What I'm asking is, are you someone who will ignore it or defend it for 90 years, use your entire life, passing on to the next generation that approach, or will you change your life in 52 days? We talk about parameters like 30 days or one year, and they're really valuable, but I have personally found a lot of inspiration in this span of time. 52 days is enough to break habits or at least begin to become free from habits. 52 days is enough time to absolutely experience visible, real, notable outcomes like a built wall that can show you that you're on the right track. However, before we get to application on a personal level, just know that 52 days doesn't mean the work is done. It means you have positioned yourself to know that the work is worth it, and now you've got to decide what happens next. It's not, hey, Chris said that I could go 90 years not doing this. If I'll just focus on it for 52 days, everything will be great for the rest of my life. You know that's not true, and it doesn't matter what the application is. But I do think there are a lot of people who simply have no hope. They wouldn't even know how to get to a place of better or how to renovate their lives because every time they start, they stop, or maybe you've just lost the energy to even start. I want to be your Nehemiah today. I want to be the guy who shows up and says, hey, listen, you can do this. We can do this, we can do it together. The opposition is mostly bark, very little bite. Why are you so scared? Yeah, this is going to be hard, but we both know that it's worth it. And if you're still apprehensive about it, can I ask, what is 52 days? Ninety years is something. That's a whole life. That's a big deal. But what is 52 days, really, in the grand scheme of life? From today moving forward, that is launch day of the episode, that's like October the 10th. And this can bring in another doubt that says, that's not enough time to really make a difference. If you fall victim to that, it will be October 10th. Someone listening to this episode will be in a better place they've been in in years, and you'll still be doubting whether two months' worth of work would matter. So, what are some specific areas where this can be applied? I think ultimately it's nearly innumerable. I think everything can benefit from energy bursts like this. But a couple of things came to mind. I've been preaching this lesson since my mid-20s, and several times along the way, people would say, you know, I've never read the New Testament. I know I need to, I have all the excuses in the world, but I just don't know that I'm the kind of disciplined person who can get that done, and I'm not sure how to change it. And I would tell them something like this, you know, there's a good chance you'll go your whole life without it unless you figure out a strategy to make immediate change. Can I recommend a 52-day challenge? And by the way, when it comes to this challenge, there are two ways that I've often presented it. One is, you know, Luke wrote one quarter of your New Testament. He wrote the book of Luke, and then he wrote his sequel, the Book of Acts. There are 52 chapters. Why don't you just try this? Every day for the next 52 days, read Luke's writings. At the end of that time, Luke will have introduced you to the entire span of first century record of Christianity, and there's a good chance that you'll be so convicted to the habit that you'll be ready to go on to something else. Recently, a new sister in Christ took this challenge. She's on day like eighty now, and she's working her way through the epistles, color Bible marking, and everything. Occasionally, I'll present it like this. The New Testament can be read in 52 days if you read five chapters a day. The average reader can read five chapters of the New Testament a day in 17 minutes, 17 minutes a day, and you, 52 days from now, will be able to say, I have read the entire New Testament cover to cover. Quite often, it was this strong, heavy, front-end commitment that got people through the first time, and in most cases, they're still reading. Here's another one, a personal one. Fifty-three days ago for me, I made a commitment to take better care of my body. I had gained that COVID 19 pounds, like I was literally 19 pounds above what I would consider to be my fighting weight. And at my age, it would be very easy to just live out the rest of the years, maybe I get 90 of them, and just never really find the strength to address that. Just consider metabolic changes and life changes and genetic stuff, and never even consider that I could rebuild what once was. But it was 53 days ago that I remembered Nehemiah's story and I made a choice. I'm not here to push any particular diet. I chose to do the carnivore diet for 30 days where I ate pretty much all meat. Now I've modified that a little bit and I've mixed in some veggies, but it was no added sugar, no processed foods for the entirety of the time. And that's all I'll say about that because I know there are many other wonderful ways to achieve better health, but the point is I chose something and I stuck with it. And today on day 53, all 19 of the pounds are gone. My blood pressure is down to normal range. My energy is through the roof. I feel great about myself, and I think I'm able to come through and be better for my family. Nick is not impressed because I'm actually competing with him in pickleball now. But the point is I found great hope, and now I'm on day 53, and guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to keep this. I don't necessarily mean that exact diet. Remember, it's not about that, but I feel great hope now. I pressed through things. I changed habits. I defeated all bark and no-bite enemies. And in the realm of health and exercise, I really feel like anything is possible, and I love that feeling. Where I am a year from now, we'll just have to see. 52 days of work doesn't mean you're going to be great 365 days later, but the only reason I'll be great 365 days later is because of the way I committed to these last two months. I've been so excited about the process, and you know that I journal every day and I like to list days. I'm still a bit of a box checker and list maker. I can't get away from it. But I tried something else the other day. I decided I've got to get social media off of my cell phone. I keep threatening to get the Agent Gibbs NCIS flip phone, but texting is such a central part of what I do that that would become a nightmare. But I've got to get rid of this social media time. It's eating up too many chunks of the day. So I started a 52-day challenge. I'm on day eight. No social media on the cell phone. If I want to check Facebook and it's kind of a part of my job to do so, I pull out the laptop and I do it as long as I feel like I need to, but that's only a few times a day. I was checking my cell phone a few dozen times a day or more. Getting stuck in that same old addictive scrolling that accomplishes nothing. Don't even try to tell me that I couldn't live out a full 90-year life wasting that time every day and never breaking free of it. One of the things that helped me on this to get rolling is from several weeks ago when I did the episode on your daily lifetime. I want each day to be a representation of what I hope my lifetime is. And if I got to the end of my life and started calculating that and I realized days, weeks, and months were used up of my life, a significant percentage, staring at things that don't matter and scrolling endlessly, I would consider that to be a huge waste. But that thought was not enough to change it. I'm sure the Jews walk by those walls all the time and said, We really need to fix this. Somebody had to show up and say, get to work. Let's get on this. 52 days can change everything. So I'm committed to that. 52 days. I hope when I get to day 53 of no social media on my phone, my habits will have changed. I will have been freed of that addiction, and I never ever go back. So listen, I hope that I can inspire you today, first of all, by just the telling of that beautiful story. Cannot emphasize enough how valuable it would be for you to go and read Nehemiah chapters one through six. And then I touched on some things personal to me. One related to the reading of scripture, which we all know is very important, taking better care of our bodies, which we carry around with us everywhere that we go, and trying to break free of distractions that are getting in the way. Now, as we get to these last couple of minutes, I really want to change gears kind of majorly, still drawing from the story, but I want you to begin thinking of an entirely different way of applying this passage. And what I hope to do is come back next week and explore this thing in greater detail. You can see what I did with the Nehemiah story. This is what we usually do. I think it's kind of an Americanized thing, this individualism of our time and culture. We read stories that have to do with entire groups, families, congregations, nations, and the application I draw from it is just for me. Me reading the Bible, me cutting out sugar, me getting away from my cell phone. And I am not demeaning that. I mean I just spent 16 minutes promoting it. But as I hope to develop next week, I think sometimes we miss a greater and more important point. Nehemiah didn't do all of that work and labor for fifty-two days for himself. In fact, he denied himself for the sake of his people. He left his homeland. He had made a courageous request of the Persian king and carried goods hundreds of miles to Jerusalem. He rallied up the troops, he got them on point, he kept them together. But it was not about him, it was about his people. It was about restoring the pride, and I mean that in a good way, the pride as God's people of an entire nation. The application isn't what can I do in fifty-two days that I could leave undone for 90 years. The application was what can we do in fifty-two days? If we pull together, if we want the same thing, if we're willing to change from lethargic excuse making to focus on what we know is right, particularly for families and for churches, what Jesus is and taught, we can change the future for all of us, whatever the us is, the societal parameters of the us in question. And it's not just about me getting better and my sons and daughters getting better, it's us getting better and paving a better road, a less cowardly road, a less addicted road for our children for generations to come. So I don't want to distract you from individual thinking today. Total green light on that. But next week, let's start thinking about what this could mean for our entire family, for the body of God's people with which I work, and for the field of friends and influences around me. Sometimes I think we neglect or ignore that work for the sake of individual focus, and we both know that's not good. So go ahead, focus on you this week. Be on day eight of something next Monday. We'll turn our attention to others soon. But today, just between you and me, can I ask you a question? Are you a 52 or a 90? Thank you so much for listening in today. If you enjoyed this program, will you share it with someone you care about? One thing I've learned over these five seasons is that there's nothing as powerful in advertising as word of mouth sharing between friends. Speaking of friends, let me once again commend you to give John Cunningham a call. He and his team have a wide variety of tools to help you use your present budget in life to build towards a more secure and hopeful financial future. Once again, you can reach him at 205 326 7364. And always remember whatever you choose to do today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, excel still more.