August 2, 2010 – That’s a day that we will long remember here at CFC.  Demolition began today on the building site where the fire occurred last November 11, 2009.  As Gandalf in Lord of the Rings said, “The board is set, the pieces are moving…”

Albeit with a bulldozer and a man in an air-conditioned cab – the movement has begun.  Nevertheless, the walls came down on August 2, 2009.  What has seemed like it would never happen has begun.

But that, naturally, made me think of other walls that came down.  Jericho’s walls came down when the Children of Israel obeyed God and marched around them per His instructions.   Walls that appeared to be impenetrable by the Children of Israel were, nevertheless, flattened by God’s response to their obedience.  (Joshua 6:20)

David said that he could run through a troop and leap over a wall because of God’s help in his life.  Walls that prevented David from obtaining his victory were, nevertheless, by God’s grace, leaped over.  (Psalm 18:29)

Paul wrote that He (Jesus) was our peace; that He has broken down every wall – walls that separate us from Him.  The very thing that was separating us from our loving God was, nevertheless, by our loving God, broken down so that we might be at peace. 

(Ephesians 2:14)

The Psalmist invites us to consider Jerusalem, her walls and her ramparts and to esteem their beauty.  This year we were privileged to be able to stand outside the old City of Jerusalem and do just that - gaze upon her walls, thousands of years after those verses in Psalms were written, and I was also amazed by the beauty of this city which Jesus declared He loved.  (Psalm 48:12 – 13) A city consumed by so much trouble is, nevertheless, a beautiful city to behold.

The writer of Proverbs declared that there are some walls that exist in our lives built by our own conceit.  (Proverbs 18:11) – But those, too, must fall when they are brought to accounting before our loving God.  He will, nevertheless, respond to our call even when the problem is of our own choosing.

Each of these walls requires us to come before God in the state of our “nevertheless” – an old 14^th century word which means “in spite of”.  We must come to God in spite of our disobedience, in spite of obstacles to our victory, in spite of the things which work so hard to divide us, in spite of the times we cannot see the beauty of a thing, in spite of all our own wrong thoughts and attitudes – we must occupy (take up our positions) within these places of nevertheless.  But we can know this – our God is a great God and He wants to see our walls of opposition fall out of our obedience to Him.  He wants us to know the joy of leaping over walls that want to stop us, He wants us to be our Peace, and He wants us to see Him and not ourselves.  This happens when the Holy Spirit just bulldozes into our lives, at our invitation, and He begins to remove the walls in our lives!  Gandalf had one more line to that quote:  “We come to it at last.  The great battle of our time.”

Father, please allow our readers to “occupy their own ‘nevertheless’” and allow them to see the walls that have hindered, hurt and harmed them to come down under the influence of your Spirit and the strong right victorious arm of Your Son, Jesus.   Amen