Day 261 of Heart Dive 365. I'm your Bible study friend Kanoi. Welcome to the Heart Dive podcast.

Yesterday we finally saw the people returning from exile back into their land, and today they will

begin rebuilding the temple. But of course, anytime you start God's work, the enemy's got to try to come along and destroy it. So they will also face some opposition. And we will be reading from the ESV by Crossway translation in chapters 4 through 6 of Ezra today. But before we get started, if you could please help us out by hitting your roll call button, the thumbs up button. if you're part of our family here at Heartdive, and if you are just now starting or if you're just new here,

we welcome you. We encourage you to take a look at the description box that is just below the

video or the show notes if you're in our podcast and take a look around. We have a lot of answers

there for a lot of the questions that have come up in the beginning of the Bible study. I also have a link to a lot of different supplies and resources for you there. Throughout this month, we are running a discount for the Logos software or Logos software, depending on how you pronounce it. We've got a special link in the description box for those of you who are thinking about purchasing it and you want to take that leap. It is an investment, so I'm definitely not trying to convince anybody to buy it, but I'm just putting it out there if that has been something on your heart. We have a prayer room on Mondays where you can go in and receive prayer from some of our prayer warriors. We've got a Facebook group where we have online groups that are scheduled out from that group every single day of the week, almost, I believe almost every single day of the week. And it's an open door policy. You can come and go as you please, no pressure there, but that is where they're fellowshiping together and going deeper into the Word of God and into life using God's word. So lots of stuff there for you. Make sure you check that out. You can always go to our website as well, heartdive.org. Otherwise, if you're with us in real time, happy hump day. Let's go ahead and pray that the ending of this week will be even more glorious than the former glory of the beginning of the week. So Heavenly Father, thank you for this day.

We thank you so much, Lord, for the middle. We thank you that you are right here with us in it.

We thank you that you are with us at the beginning and the end as well. You are the alpha and the

omega, the beginning in the end. And so we know that you hold all time in your hand. You hold all

of the earth in your hand, everything in it. You are in control. You are sovereign,

but you are also very caring. Your providence is so evident every single day in the way that you nurture,

you encourage, you bless, you strengthen, you heal, you protect. And so we bring all of our baggage

to you today and we dump it at the altar. Thank you for allowing us to do that, Lord. Thank you for allowing us to take a load off. We thank you for the peace that you give to us, Jesus. Thank you for the work that you've done on the cross, to be able to wash our sins off of our record and to be able to give us a place in the Book of Life. We're so grateful for the eternal hope that we get to look forward to. So please forgive us

for our sins right now as we continue in this journey of life right here in the middle, Lord.

Give us a clean slate today, allow us to have a pure heart, clean hands so that as we read your

word, we can hear it clearly. We pray for wisdom and understanding. Make this word make sense

today to us, God.

We thank you for Ezra and for the work that He did.

Pray that we will be mighty warriors.

Pray that we will be prophetic.

Pray that we will be encouragers just the way that he was.

But Holy Spirit, have your way within us as we nourish ourselves in your word today.

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