Return & Rebuild: Episode 1

🏛️ Return & Rebuild: Episode 1 — The Devastation It's been about a year since I last recorded — and I'm so glad to be back. This past year, I found myself falling in love with a part of Scripture I think a lot of us quietly skip past: the Old Testament. We live on this side of the cross, so it's easy to rush toward the gospels and epistles. But studying Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Esther, I discovered these books are beautiful — and every single one of them, beginning to end, points straight to Christ. Welcome to a brand new series: Return & Rebuild, tracing God's people from ruins to restoration. Before we can appreciate the rebuilding, we have to be honest about the devastation. How did God's people — living in the promised land, worshiping in Solomon's magnificent temple — end up dragged away in chains to Babylon? In this episode: • What Israel had, and what they lost • The slow, quiet drift from faithfulness to compromise • Ezekiel's haunting vision of God's glory departing the temple • The fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC • Why the ruins were never the end of the story Before God rebuilds anything, He often helps us see, honestly, what's actually broken. This week's invitation: sit with the question, Lord, what have I been pretending isn't broken? If today's episode touches on grief or suffering that feels unresolved for you personally, my earlier series on Job is still available wherever you found this one.