If All Else Fails
Tom Shrader examines the final attacks on Nehemiah's leadership as the wall nears completion, showing three tactics enemies use: attempting to destroy, discourage, and discredit the leader. He emphasizes that spiritual opposition never stops and that leaders must stay focused on their mission rather than defending themselves against false accusations.
“There is never this once-and-for-all experience that you have where the challenge ends.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Just Do It (2004)
Recorded: 2004
Duration: 40 min
Themes: leadership, opposition, persecution, focus, mission, attacks, enemies, courage, pastor, elder, mentor, leader under attack, facing criticism, ministry opposition, church conflict, young adult
Scripture: Nehemiah 6:1-14, 1 Corinthians 10:12, James 1, Romans 12:17-19
Theological Themes: spiritual warfare, biblical leadership, servant leadership, perseverance, faithfulness, calling, stewardship, sanctification
Full Transcript
Today marks session 7 of our 8-session series, which we'll wrap up next week. We're coming back in two weeks. This is probably the greatest series we've ever done in the history of Priority Living. I can just feel it coming here.
We're looking at Nehemiah, and I want to spend some time as we do, especially in summer. I apologize for a little bit of the repetitiveness, but there are so many of you who are gone on vacation and coming back in. I want to make sure we build this case correctly.
Understanding Nehemiah as a Leader
When we talk about Nehemiah, it really is a discussion on leadership. That's how we know Nehemiah. Nehemiah is a leader, and within Christian literature is frequently cited in principles that you pull from His life on leadership. Whenever we're going to talk about leadership, though, we're also talking about how to be a follower, and there are some great aspects that we can learn from that.
Although the material that we're looking at was written 2,500 years ago, it's as fresh as today's paper because people don't change. The nature of man doesn't change. The circumstances and the creativity and the technology of man's sin intensifies, but man's heart doesn't change.
A Modern Perspective on Ancient Truths
I was just at summer camp. We had 650 junior high and high school kids and staff over in San Diego. It was very interesting to me, and I learned a lot. I'm putting together my lesson for Sunday where I'm basically going to talk about what I learned at summer camp.
One of the things that I learned shocked me absolutely. I was shocked at how young these kids are when they're getting into stuff. At 12 and 13, so many of them - the drinking is just a given by that age. By the time you're a sophomore in high school, you've seen it all.
I was thinking about this this morning. I woke up a little bit before my alarm, so I was laying there, because there's something fundamentally wrong with getting up before that alarm goes off. I was thinking, I know that in 1968, when I graduated from high school, we had a guy or two, a gal or two in our class that were sexually active. There might have been a couple more, but nothing like this. It hasn't always been like this.
Yet, I do believe man's the same. What's happened? We're just listening to an ad the other day that's selling pornography screening to block it from your computer. They said the pornographers know to crank it up during summer, because that's when kids are home and on the computer. It's just a different world that we're living in. But man's fundamentally the same. Man still sins, and man's going to look for ways to sin. All this technology does is appeal to the heart of a man or woman who's a sinner and gives them a vehicle in which to sin.
The Lostness of a Generation
I'll tell you, I'm struck by this. We've got a lot of church kids at this camp, and then we've got a lot of their friends. We're not really dealing with this whole general mass of people. I am absolutely struck by how lost the generation is.
We had a girl there, cute little girl, 16. She looked and talked like she was 30. A friend had invited her on just a fluke. She came, and she was standing there the third night. She was just crying, and she said, "I had no idea that there was anything like this. I had no idea there was a place where you could go, and there wouldn't be the drugs and the sex. I just didn't even know it existed." I imagine there's a tendency for some of you to think she's blowing smoke, but I don't think she was.
Amazing the number of kids that we had at church camp that never heard of Jesus. They had not the foggiest idea. Those are really good things, and that's the world you live in. But the heart - those circumstances are changing, the heart of man is the same.
Timeless Lessons from Nehemiah
To study Nehemiah is to study lessons that are important to us today, now, where we live. That's what we're looking at. Today, as you look at your outline, the title is, "If All Else Fails, Shoot the Leader." At this point, we're talking about leadership, but now we're talking about Nehemiah as the focus of this.
Let me make sure that you and I are on the same page here as we plunge into our last two weeks of the study of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is God's guy, doing God's job, God's way, God's timing. Nehemiah is a guy who understands who God is, and when He understands who God is, He understands who He is. He understands how He fits in the world. He understands a lot of the world, because He has, in our context, a Christian worldview.
Understanding Opposition
He understands that sin stops God's work. We've looked at that. And He understands that He has opposition. He understands, ultimately, that opposition is Satan, or the devil. But it's manifesting itself humanly here in some other people.
There's external opposition: Sanballat and Tobiah. Remember them? We met them a couple of weeks ago. They're going to return on the scene today. And then there was internal opposition. The Jews were using extraordinary interest rates and usury, putting a burden on other Jews. So there was an intramural problem. There were all sorts of problems in this equation and opposition.
Here's where we are. We're building the wall. I said last week that we'd never really talked much about the wall, but we talked about it.
The Challenge Continues Despite Success
I was watching a television show yesterday about the city of London, talking about how the Romans came in and were trying to establish this as a city. They said they built a wall around London that was nine feet thick and eighteen or twenty feet high. That was obviously to protect the city. I thought immediately of Nehemiah. That's what he's trying to do—construct this wall around the city.
We're now almost done with this project. In fact, you're going to see today that we just have a few little cleanup things and a punch list to get through, and the wall will be built. Nehemiah might have reached a point where opposition would be expected to stop. Let's give up—they're going to build this thing anyway. But that doesn't happen.
Here's an important note. It's important for you to remember that there is never this once-and-for-all experience where the challenge ends. First Corinthians 10:12 says, "take heed lest you fall." As we said last week, some of the greatest testing in our life will be in the midst of prosperity, not necessarily adversity.
Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish historian and author, said that for every hundred people who can withstand the test of adversity, there's only one who can stand the test of prosperity. So now here's what's happened: Nehemiah's had a lot of struggles, but now everything's starting to work together for him. Now comes one last push.
Testing in the Midst of Success
When we think of struggle and adversity and testing, they seem to go hand-in-glove. We think of hard times. But oftentimes the greatest testing we have is in the midst of success.
I was teaching at a session with two or three other pastors about how to prepare and preach a lesson. When we finished, they had a question and answer time. One of the questions was, "How do you handle Mondays?" I thought, what an odd question. The first guy said, "Oh, they're really difficult. Mondays are a really hard day." I thought, well, that's strange.
Then the second guy said, "Oh, I fight discouragement and depression on Monday. That's a hard day." Everybody there was saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." They asked, "What about you, Tom?" I said, "It's the best day of the week. It's my day off. I play golf. I watch Oprah. I do whatever I want to do. I read."
Apparently, now that I know it, I'm going to have to experience it, I guess. Apparently Monday is supposed to be a tough day because you're coming off the high of Sunday—the preaching, the message, and all that goes with it. Now Monday is this radical downturn. I didn't know it. Apparently we just need to be told we have this problem, and then we'll discover it. But there again, the testing of prosperity or success.
Three Strategies to Stop the Project
The same thing happens to Nehemiah. Nehemiah is almost done, and now comes this great challenge. Let me give you point A, B, and C:
A. Destroy the leader, and you stop the project. That's still what this is all about. The opposition does not want this wall built. They want the city of Jerusalem to lay vulnerable.
B. Discourage the leader, and you stop the project.
C. Discredit the leader, and you stop the project.
Destroy the leader, discourage the leader, discredit the leader.
There are about fifty-two days it takes to build this wall. Interestingly enough, I observed yesterday that we're only going to look at the first eight chapters of the thirteen chapters of Nehemiah. When we're done, we will have spent about a week longer in the study of those eight chapters than it took him to build the wall, which is kind of interesting to me.
The Enemy's First Attack: Destruction
Here comes the attack. They're trying to destroy the leader. They're coming at Nehemiah with three approaches under point A: the enemy's appeal, the enemy's intent, and the leader's response.
If you have your Bibles, open them to the book of Nehemiah chapter 6. "Now it came about that when Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall and that there was no breach left in it, although at that time I had not set up the doors in the gates."
Here's what he's saying: the enemies have understood that this wall's almost done. We've got a couple of doors to hang. We've got a few things to do, but we're almost done.
"That Sanballat and Geshem sent a message to me, saying, 'Come, let us meet together at Hakkephirim in the plain of Ono.'" So they appealed to him. That's their appeal. Here's what they're saying: Let's talk. We want to have a meeting.
They know if Nehemiah's gone, they're going to stop this project. They're trying to do anything they can to stop this project, to tear it down. They sense what's going on. Those who are highly spiritual at this point are starting to high-five each other—the project's about complete. The non-spiritual ones are saying it's Miller time. Either way, they're getting the idea that we're at the close of this thing.
They're saying, "How do we stop him? Let's get Nehemiah to come and talk to us." Let's meet on the plain of Ono, which would be in Sanballat's area. It would be an away game for Nehemiah. It would take him some time to travel there—about twenty-five miles from where they are.
But Nehemiah refuses.
The message comes to Nehemiah: meet us in one of the villages in the plain of Ono. But as verse 2 says—oh, this is almost too clever—Ono to Ono. He says, "No, I don't think so. I don't think I'm going to be doing that." The reason is found in their intent, which you see there under point two: the enemy's intent. But they were planning to harm me. That's what this was all about. They're going to deter me from this task. In this particular instance, their intention is to harm me.
Now, here is the leader's response. "So I sent messengers to them saying, 'I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?'" Why would I go through this process? He understands the situation. He says, "I'm not about to do that."
And he sent that message to them. In verse 4, "They sent messages to me four times in this manner, and I answered them in the same way." So here's what happens: They send a message and say come down, and Nehemiah says no. They send another message to come down, and Nehemiah says no. They send another message to come down, and Nehemiah says no. They send one last message down to Nehemiah, and Nehemiah says no. "I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to compromise. I'm not going to compromise this job."
The Enemy's Relentless Intensity
Look at the enemy's intensity. We're talking about perseverance. This job is essentially done, but here comes the enemy again and again and again and again. The enemy is relentless.
Let me tell you when the attacks are going to stop in your life: when you die. It's like stress. I used to do a talk—and I imagine I could still do it if I could find it—called "Five Guaranteed Ways to Eliminate Stress in Your Life." I would always begin by saying, "In reality, there's only one guaranteed way to eliminate stress in your life, and that's to die." The very way that we define stress in that context is the wear and tear of living. Life is tough. Life is difficult. Life is hard. Life has challenges.
As you lead—and I'm going to expand this just a bit because you see here the context of Nehemiah is the context of leadership—but in your life, as you follow, as you follow Jesus Christ, as you're following Him, your relentless enemy will pursue you till the end. James chapter 1, James is talking about sin. He says, "Don't let anybody say when he's tempted that he's being tempted by God, for God does not sin. God does not tempt anyone. But we are tempted when we are enticed or carried away by our own lusts."
So the enemy—or the flesh, or the world around us, or the demons—they will come and they will come with one bait. They'll just put it up there and they'll just wrap it all together. They'll just throw that little bait out there in front of you. Maybe that bait is power. That bait is power. And you go, "Power? Power doesn't mean anything to me." Don't think the enemy's done. He just reeled that baby in, rewired it, and he'll throw it again. He'll just keep coming and coming and coming at you. That's the same thing here. These enemies never stop. Four times he has to go through this. He's single-minded.
Learning Focus from Life's Limitations
I talk obviously a lot about Larry Wright. Larry and I had lots of conversations over the years. I remember one time telling him I really thought that his arthritis was an extraordinary blessing in his life. Now, that's always easier to say if you're on the outside and you're not the one that has it, and I understand that. But I remember him saying, "Why? Give me an example."
I said, "Well, number one, it's given you a compassion for people and hurting people that you would have never had otherwise." He said, "Yes." I said, "But its greatest thing is it's kept you focused on what you do." Because especially in the latter part of his life, he was so weakened by it that things that are distractions for lots of us weren't distractions to him. He wasn't going to go play a round of golf. It was unusual for him to say, "Well, I'm going to go to the ballpark to a ballgame." His life was limited physically. Because it was limited physically, he understood that the finite amount of energy he had had to be devoted to the thing that was the priority in his life.
So if you said to Larry—and I heard this a thousand times—if somebody said to Larry, "What do you do?" he would say, "I teach Bible. I teach Bible." I learned a lot from him. That's the way my life is in this sense. My life is really very—I'll say I don't have any life, and by that I mean I got a great life. I love my life. But I really only do two things: I really only do Priority Living and the church. That's really all I do. That's all I'm engaged in.
The Challenge of Saying No to Good Things
There are other things, and periodically there'll be a round of golf. But I used to do a lot where you'd travel and speak and do all those things. Then I realized I just can't do that anymore. We used to do two studies down in Tucson. A lot of you remember that, I think. We had 550 people down there. I remember maybe one of the most difficult decisions I ever had to make was to go to those people and say, "I can't do this anymore. I'm out of gas. I'm winding down here. I'm pooped."
One of the things in your life—now we got the pause button going on Nehemiah here, we're talking about your life—one of the things in your life is you've got to figure out what good things you're going to say no to. It's obvious if somebody comes to you and they got something that's bad, whatever it is, you go, "Nah, I don't want to do that." But now, here you are, especially as you grow in your Christian faith. As you grow in your Christian faith, you get serious about your faith. All of a sudden now you start to get plugged in. All of a sudden now you start to do things that God's laid on your heart. You start to do things and meet needs that you see around you. If you go especially into a church setting, there's generally a huge vacuum in areas where you can sweep in there and just get pulled right into this.
Let me tell you what they'll do in a church. They'll let you serve on a lot of committees. They'll let you do all the work. If you want, you can do all of it. That'd be great. And after a short period of time, you've got to figure out what you're going to say no to. And you're going to have to say no to some very important things. And that's okay. And everybody ought to understand that.
God Uses Your Unique Background
God's called you. He's given you a unique background. Again, summer camp fresh in my mind, but you've got all these kids and they're from these vastly different backgrounds. We had kids who were living with their biological mom and dad and they've just never done anything wrong and they're just great kids and that's just the way they are and that's the way they've been. And God saved them at age five and they're growing up and they're reading Jonathan Edwards and they love it.
You've got other kids that are kind of in a church setting and they're not really in it and they're not really out of it. A little bit of problem at home. Lots and lots and lots of divorce that's just ripped these kids apart. Every time somebody's going through a divorce, I'll say, how are the kids? And they will always say they're doing great. Let me help you out. They're not. They're sucking gas.
I watch them. I listen to them and they stand there and say, you know what, my dad was my hero. I love my dad. I just wanted to be like my dad. And then all of a sudden my dad went away on a business trip and never came back. I mean, you've got all this diversity.
What I do when I'm at summer camp is every session, and I teach seven times, every session I have a student share their testimony. And it's incredible to hear these testimonies. Again, we'll get the full gamut of them. We'll get the one who's, hey, I don't really have—this is always my favorite—I don't really have a testimony. I just love Jesus and I always have. And it's almost like saying, gee, I wish I would have done heroin for a while so I had a testimony. Which we go, no, no, no.
But it's amazing. These kids, they'll get up and say, you know what, I was 12 and we started drinking. By the time I was 13, I was pretty much an alcoholic. And then the drugs would start at 14. And let me tell you what comes with this. Always, then the sex starts. And to watch these girls and guys say, you know what, by the time I was 16 they were where a lot of you were at 30. Which is amazing. And to say, God's come in and changed my life. And now, you know what, those kids are connecting with kids and God's using that.
That's what I'm saying to you. You've got a unique experience. I don't know what it is. You've got a unique background. I don't know what it is. You've got unique personalities and stories and all those things. I don't know what they are. But God will use them. And you've got to figure out where He's going to use them and how He's going to use them.
The Enemy's Strategy: Discourage the Leader
They're trying to stop old Nehemiah, but he won't be discouraged. He won't be stopped. It's point B on your outline: Discourage the leader and stop the project. Here's the enemy's appeal. The enemy comes in and says, you know what, better defend your reputation. It's verses 5, 6, and 7.
So here's what happens. And I'm writing from the New American Standard. "Then Sanballat sent his servants to me in the same manner for the fifth time with an open letter in hand." Now, the New American Standard says open letter. I think the NIV says unsealed letter. That's really important. We're going to come back to that in a minute. It's really important the kind of letter it is.
"And it was written, it's reported among the nations. And Gashemus says that you and the Jews are planning to rebel. Therefore, you're rebuilding the wall. And you are to be their king according to these reports. And you have also appointed prophets to proclaim in Jerusalem concerning you a king is in Judah. And now it will be reported to the king according to these reports. So, come now, let us take counsel together."
The Attack on Nehemiah's Reputation
Here's what they're doing. It's an unsealed or open letter. Here's what's happening. This is an attack. This is a total fabrication. What they're doing is leaking the information to try to slander his reputation. That's what's going on.
And now here's what they're saying. I know Nehemiah said to you he wants to rebuild the wall. And he said he has these sort of religious affections for this. And he thinks it's an important project on that basis. But that's not what's going on here. What's going on here is he's got alternative motives. He's going to rule. They're going to be aggressive. So, you better stop, Nehemiah. Because this letter's now open and the word's out there. You better stop and you better start to defend yourself. That's what's going on. And the minute he does that, what's happening? He's off the job again.
Getting Off Message
Yesterday morning, I'm in the office early. And I've got everything done. And I'm waiting to go to Teach Priority Living. And I just go and check my website just to see what's on the news. And it says, Bush off message. And I'm not making a political point here. I'm just making a human point here.
And the article says that, listen, for Bush to win in November, he has got to get this discussion—and I don't know, I'm not advocating any of this, I'm just saying here's what the article says—he's got to get this discussion on the economy. He's got to get this discussion in the area of health care. He's got to get this discussion in this area. He's got to get it off Iraq. Bush is off message. He's getting distracted defending himself. I'm not trying to argue that one way or the other. All I'm saying is that you see how what happened to Nehemiah applies in that situation. It's the same thing.
They're trying to get Nehemiah off message. They're trying to get him to defend himself. They're trying to get him to get out there and
save his reputation. They want Nehemiah obsessed with his legacy.
They've got a great role model for this. Nehemiah does have, in a second, a little bit of a response. So there's some wisdom in here too. You've got to figure out how you respond sometimes and how you don't. But generally, I think the general rule of thumb is you don't answer this stuff. You let this stuff go.
Role model? Jesus. Jesus on the cross. Jesus in His life. They're constantly slandering Jesus and making accusations against Jesus. But when Jesus is hanging on the cross, they're slurring these things at Him. And there's the one guy, and I know I've talked about this with you a billion times, because it's the moment in me that would have just, if I'm Jesus, would have pushed me over the edge, I think. When the guy says to Him, "Oh, He saved others, but He couldn't save Himself."
For whatever reason, that just drives me. I don't know why that gets me, because I always see Jesus at that moment. If I'm Jesus at that moment, I'm just kind of climbing down and saying, "Come right over here, little buddy." But that's how I... I don't know why, but I feel that way in that one instant. I don't know why that is. And in reality, it's true. He did save others, and He couldn't save Himself and still fulfill His mission. He had to die. So there's your role model.
I don't think the instantaneous response, the minute there's an accusation, should be them fighting words. We have to battle everything out. Talk about you and your life here. Somebody says something to you, you've got to figure out, do I need to respond? Is it necessary? There's a reputation in mind. Here's what it says, let's talk. The word's out, you better start defending yourself.
The Enemy's Intent and the Leader's Response
So the second, or the first point, under letter A, is the enemy's appeal: you must defend your reputation. The second point, the enemy's intent, is to cause emotional dismay for the leader. All of a sudden, there's supposed to be problems in the midst of this. Nehemiah writes, "For all of them were trying to frighten me, thinking they will come discourage me in the work, and the work will not get done."
And I'm going to combine that with the third point, the leader's response: reject the enemy's appeal. That's what he does in verse 8. He said, "Then I sent a message saying, such things as you were saying have not been done, and you're inventing them in your own mind." And then he prays, the second part of verse 9, "But now, O God, strengthen my hands."
It's important in this whole area. And it gets into words, into gossip, malicious gossip, conversation, and it's sorting out. When I was a kid, you heard this. When you were a kid, you heard the same thing. "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me." My experience in life is that's not true. Sticks and stones kind of beat you around a little bit, but I have found words to be extraordinarily damaging.
I had a guy one time who came up to me and said, "I need to apologize to you." And I said, "Really?" And he said, "I just need to apologize to you." And I said, "Well, no harm, no foul, that's fine, don't worry about it." "Do you want to know what I did?" And I said, "Part of me really does, but I don't need to know." And he said, "Well, let me tell you what I've done."
He said, "There's a guy in town," and then he gave me the guy's name. And he said, "For years, I thought he was you. And so I have, literally, for the last five or six years, all over town, seen this guy, watched this guy, and then I thought it was you, so I would put your name in there, and then I would just slander you to all of my friends." And I said, "Really? All of your friends?" And he said, "Do you have a lot of friends?" He says, "I have a lot of friends." And I said, "Well, how do you think you're going to be able to correct this?" And here's what he said, "I can't."
And I know that that did a lot of damage for me. But that's fine. It all shakes out in the end. It just kind of tends to fix itself. Stuff like that gets righted, corrected. Paul writes this, he says, "Be careful what you say."
If You Can Discredit the Leader, You Stop the Project
Here's the C. And now, if you can discredit the leader, you stop the project. The enemy's appeal: you must ensure your safety. And the enemy's intent is to cause spiritual compromise for the leader, and the leader's response is to reject it.
This is so subtle that you could miss this. Look at what happens here. In verse 10, "When I entered the house of Shemaiah, the son of Delaiah, son of..." and all these guys, "he was confined to his home. He said, 'Let us meet together in the house of God within the temple, and let us close the doors of the temple, for they're coming to kill you, and they're coming to kill you at night.'"
So there's this guy. He is, at least on the surface, a prophet. And he says to Nehemiah, "Come. Look, they're going to kill you. Come into the temple." And I don't know how much you know about the temple, but you have the outer court, the court of the Gentiles, the inner court, then the holy of holies, where the priests would go. Sacrifice would be made. And he said, "I want to take you in there. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to save you, because they're coming to get you. And you need to understand that they're after you, and they're not going to back off."
Nehemiah says, verse 11, "Should a man like me flee, and could one such as I go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in. Then I perceived that surely God had not sent him, but uttered his prophecy against me, because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. And he was hired for this reason, that I might become frightened and act accordingly and sin, so that they might have an evil report, in order that they might cause reproach against me."
Here's what's happening. This guy says to Nehemiah, "Come into the holy of holies," and Nehemiah is saying, "This guy can't be from God, because the only one in the holy of holies is a priest, and that's not me. God
When you're facing relentless opposition and psychological warfare, God will not ask you to do something sinful in response. The charge comes, and the challenge comes, and Nehemiah recognizes what's happening. He says, "You're trying to frighten me. You're trying to cause me to sin. You've done everything you possibly can to undermine me in this, and now we're at the last straw."
All Nehemiah has done is been a man after God's heart over and over again. And suddenly, his Jewish friends would look at him and say, "Something's wrong there." The enemies want to stop the project, but he refuses to do it.
Leaving Vengeance to God
In verse 14, Nehemiah adds something really important: "Remember, O God, Tobiah and Sanballat, according to the works they've done. And also, Noadiah, the prophetess, and the rest of the prophets, who are trying to frighten me." You might miss it because it's a little bit subtle, but he's trying to exercise what Paul would write about a few centuries later.
Paul writes in Romans chapter 12, verse 17: "Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If it's possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men." Then Romans 12:19: "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God. For it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay,' says the Lord."
Here's what Nehemiah is saying: "Get them, God. Sick them, God. I'm not going to get distracted in this. I'm not going to respond to this. I've said no to this. I'm done with this. That's the end of it. We're finished, God. You get them."
Recognizing Satan's Many Forms
When you're a leader - and I guess you can learn this as a father - when you're a leader and in life in general, there's just going to be attack after attack after attack, and your enemy is relentless. He's never going to back off. You need to be prepared, and you need to understand that Satan morphs. Your enemy morphs.
Remember, Satan comes as a roaring lion, or a subtle serpent, or an angel of light. Satan comes in a variety of different ways. Nehemiah says, "You know what? I'm using my head here. I'm understanding what's going on here. If God's indeed trying to speak to me, He's going to speak to me, and He's not going to violate His word."
I've been in situations where I'm dealing with people who've gone to secular counselors, and they've said, "We've got problems in our marriage. What should we do?" The counsel has been, "Listen, there are some problems here. You're a little bit dysfunctional sexually. You need to have a really good affair to spice things up again." That seems to me to be a violation of what God would say. So I would say that's not really good advice.
The Place for Constructive Criticism
Yet you see the other side of this - there are times when legitimate correction comes. There's going to be gossip and slander, but there's also a place for constructive criticism. I don't know if you have those people in your life. Susan is the one person that has carte blanche to say anything to me, and she's really helpful.
So we're over at summer camp, and I always want to make sure I'm trying to connect with these kids. After the first session the other day, I said to Susan, "How was it?" She said, "Not very good." I said, "Really? Not very good?" "No, not very good." I said, "You know, this is a hard thing to do." She said, "Whatever, you're over here doing it. You'd think you'd do it right."
I said, "Well, what's the problem? What was wrong?" She said, "You didn't apply it. You set the table well with these kids, but you never really applied it to their life. There was no application at all. So it was fine as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough. It wasn't very good."
I just realized yesterday - today is our anniversary. Yeah, so this is great. God's blessed me with 26 years of honest input like this. How terrific. I'm going to celebrate that today. But I really do value that. In your life, you've got to have that. There's going to be construction, and her read is generally pretty right.
After the second session, I said, "How was it?" She said, "Perfect. That's exactly how that's supposed to be." Or I'll have something and I'll take it to her and I'll say, "Here's what I'm thinking. What do you think?" And she'll say, "I wouldn't do that." I'll say, "Why?" And she'll give me her thought process. Sometimes I'll listen to her, and sometimes I'll say, "That's not legitimate."
Staying Focused on Your Mission
But you've got to begin to distinguish between those things. Do you see that? Here comes the enemy. He's going to try to stop you. I know this sounds really dramatic for 7:45 on a Thursday morning sitting in a bar, but God's got you here on a mission. God's put you here for a reason, and you need to understand that the enemy will do anything he can to stop you.
You have to be filled with enough discernment to be able to understand how to stay focused and stay on track. It's fascinating to me to look back at all of the attacks on Nehemiah - the physical attacks, all the different attacks. Now we're at the end, and now they come with this psychological warfare that's supposed to stop the project cold. Nehemiah's smart enough to say, "Uh-uh. Here's why I am here. Here's what I'm doing. Here's what it's all about."
Next week we finish this up. As I said, we will have spent more time studying these eight chapters than it took Nehemiah to build the wall. But that's okay, and I look forward to that next week.
Father, help us see this truth. Let it affect our lives and the way we live and how we think. God, to all of us who are in a position of leading...
We pray that in our lives and leadership, let us lead in such a way that we bring honor and glory to You. We pray it in Jesus' name. We'll see you next week.