Dear all,

Leadership is identified in Romans 12:8 as a gift, and in the scriptures you can see how God uses those with such a gift. Moses, Joshua, Peter and Paul are all fine examples.

Yet leaders, particularly effective leaders, are constantly under the Enemy's attack. We've seen that illustrated by the attacks on Nehemiah throughout our sermon series, and his enemies are being particularly devious in Nehemiah 6. Anything to stop him from completing his God given mission to rebuild Jerusalem's walls.

Dear all

We were delighted to have Yonghua Ge speak to us on Sunday at the time of this Chinese New Year. He reminded us of the saying that there can be no good ending in the absence of a good beginning. And of course, the earth had the best of beginnings. It was God who created and gave order, as is described in Genesis 1.

Dear all

It was a biographer of the Duke of Wellington who said that finding the Duke's personal account ledger was a far better clue as to what he thought was really important than reading his letters or speeches. We talked on Sunday about how Nehemiah refused to take his rightful income as Governor of Judah, so that taxation would not be a burden to the people. Our passage also described how he was also an extraordinarily generous host, extending daily hospitality to 'Jews, officials and visitors.'