When they heard

Now on the second day the heads of the fathers' houses of all the people, with the priests and Levites, were gathered to Ezra the scribe, in order to understand the words of the Law. And they found written in the Law, which the LORD had commanded by Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month, and that they should announce and proclaim in all their cities and in Jerusalem, saying, "Go out to the mountain, and bring olive branches, branches of oil trees, myrtle branches, palm branches, and branches of leafy trees, to make booths, as it is written." – Nehemiah 8.13-15

As they read and studied the word of God they came across things that they were supposed to be doing. There were things they were neglecting that needed to be sorted.

I think we can all identify with that. We might be doing our Bible reading or devotions or listening to a message or see a spiritual post on Facebook or whatever and the Holy Spirit speaks to our heart and we know we need to do something about it, but what do we do next?

These folks were hearing these words and they realised that they had not been keeping the feast of booths. They could have done a lot of things. They could have discussed what to do. They could have said ‘oh well, we do to do something about that.’ The could have said ‘it's too late, we’ll do it next year.’ Or they even could have just ignored it.

But they didn't do any of that. They saw what the needed to do – so they starting gathering materials to build the booths. They did what they needed to do as it was written in the word of God.

What a great example for us. When we read our Bibles or do devotions or are challenged with scripture by a friend or hear preaching in church and the Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts we ought to simply trust God and obey His word. When God’s word is clear it is simply time to just do it.

Think of the grief we would save ourselves if we obeyed as soon as we heard about our need.