Welcome to Our Daily Bread.

I'm Sheridan Voizzi, and I've called our reading today Angels on the Walls.

When Wallace and Mary Brown moved to an impoverished part of Birmingham, England, to pastor a dying church, they didn't know that a gang had made the grounds of their church and home its headquarters.

The Browns had bricks thrown through their windows, their fences set on fire and their children threatened.

The abuse continued for months.

The police were unable to stop it.

The book of Nehemiah recounts how the Israelites

rebuilt Jerusalem's broken walls. When locals set out to stir up trouble, threatening them

with violence, the Israelites prayed to God and posted a guard. Feeling God used this passage to direct

them, the Browns, their children, and a few others

walked round their church's walls, praying that he would install angels as guards to protect them.

The gang jeered, but the next day, only half of them showed up.

The day after that, only five were there, and the day after, no one came.

The Browns later heard the gang had given up terrorizing people.

This miraculous answer to prayer isn't a formula for our own protection,

but it's a reminder that opposition to God's work will come

and must be fought with the weapon of prayer.

Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, Nehemiah told the Israelites.

He can even set violent hearts free.

Today's scripture reading is from Nehemiah chapter 4, verses 6 to 9.

So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all

their heart. But when Sanbalat, Tobaya, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the people of Ashdod

...