Be Aggressive

This week at ZBC we wrapped up our summer message series in Nehemiah. If you like happy endings, Nehemiah 13 is not for you. After 12 chapters victory, revival, & renewal, we fast forward several years into the future to find that Nehemiah has had to return to Persia to serve the king before making a return visit to Jerusalem. What he finds is depressing to say the least. The people have descended back into the same lifestyle that had cost them in the past. The same temptations had brought them down again. The same things they had identified as chronic problem areas in Nehemiah 10 had reared their heads again, & the people had succumbed to the temptation. In Nehemiah's own words he was "greatly displeased." His confrontation of both the leaders & the people of Jerusalem seems overly harsh to some people, but there is something we have to remember: Nehemiah had invested years of his life into leading these people to honor God.

His frustration was directly connected to his sense of responsibility for these people. He knew what God could do in & through them when they submitted themselves to God's will, but He also knew what would happen if the people chose to rebel against God & pursue their own ways. There was a lot at stake. Most importantly, God's glory revealed & reflected through His people was at stake. Nehemiah took on the leaders in really aggressive ways. When the people violated the Sabbath by continuing to conduct business, he put the city on lock-down. When Nehemiah found out that his old enemy Tobiah had been given a place to live INSIDE of the Temple, he literally threw Tobiah & all of his things out. After years of leadership, instructions, & correction, the time for a soft warning had passed.

"Aggressive Temptation Requires Aggressive Accountability."

These chronic problem areas had been handled too softly for too long, & while getting physical like Nehemiah did probably isn't the best way to confront someone you care about, we should have the same sense of urgency & responsibility for one another. After all, how many of us have watched people we care about begin to drift away from God, but we hid behind phrases like "Who am I to judge?" The truth is that if the two of you are followers of Jesus, you are brothers or sisters in Christ & have a responsibility to protect one another from the dangers of sin & temptation. Our enemy is relentless & aggressive. Should we be just as relentless & aggressive in guarding one another & seeking to rescue or restore one another from his attacks?

Who do you need to reach out to in love in order to guide them back from a path that will lead to their own self-destruction? Be proactive, be aggressive, don't assume that they'll figure it out or learn their lesson. Rescue them. Perhaps you need to invite this kind of accountability into your life. Perhaps you are stuck in a cycle of defeat by the same temptations that take you down all the time. Who can you invite into your life as a sort of spiritual bodyguard? Do we really care about one another enough to confront one another in love in hopes of rescuing one another from the relentless, aggressive attacks of our enemy?

Looking Back So We Can Move Forward

The past is a tricky thing. We all look back fondly at "the good ole days" & think about the good times in our past, but at the same time, we're also prone to get stuck in the past. Looking back & celebrating the good times is great, but when you get to the point that you try to recreate or live in the past, you have a problem. On the other hand, if you have some past hurt in your past that you can't seem to move on from, that past hurt will impact almost everything about your future. The past is a great place to go back to & visit in our memory to celebrate the good time, to mourn the bad times, & to learn from it all, but living there or trying to export the past into our present is dangerous.

In Nehemiah 12, Nehemiah & the people are about to dedicate the newly reconstructed wall around Jerusalem. If you've ever been to a dedication, ribbon cutting, or grand opening ceremony, you know those events are extremely future oriented. It's all about the excitement of what the future holds for a new facility, organization, or business. However, Nehemiah begins this section of his memoirs by looking back. He looks at a couple of generations from the past. One generation led the initial return from exile back to the Promised Land. They resettled the land & rebuilt the Temple. They were bold, courageous, & faithful. Then Nehemiah looks at the next the generation, the one that immediately preceded his. This group of people weren't necessarily bad or evil people. They were just negligent. Their lack of faith stands in stark contrast to the generation preceding them who rebuilt the Temple & the generation that followed them who rebuilt the wall. It's not that they did anything overtly bad; they just did nothing. Perhaps they were content with the fact that the Temple had been rebuilt. Perhaps no one was ever bold enough to say, "Let's rebuild this wall & city." No matter what was going on, it's clear this was a part of Israel's past that needed to be learned from but not celebrated. Nehemiah then turns his attention to his generation & those who would come after him. Those generations had already demonstrated their faith, but there was so much potential for the future too. As they looked forward to the future, they needed to look back: to celebrate & to learn.

There's something really important we can learn from this passage that can be so important for us in our faith, our families, our ministries, & our communities.

"Learning From The Past Can Direct Our Future,

  But Living In The Past Can Destroy Our Future."

Our past is going to play a part in our future. We can't escape our past, but we don't have to be imprisoned by it. We get imprisoned by the past when we either choose to live there because those were "the good ole days," & there's no way God could have anything else in store for us or when we choose to live in the past & be defined by some of its hurts & defeats. The truth is that if you're a follower of Christ, you should assume your best days are ahead of you. God is still at work. Your past is filled with things that you can celebrate & things you can learn from, but God is leading you to take those things & follow Him with bold faith into the future.

What things in your past are you holding onto that are actually holding you back? They may be past victories or past defeats, but either way, their in the past. What can you learn from your past so that you can follow God faithfully into the future.

Confession That Transforms

Confession is a tough word. It's tripping with negativity. After all, just about every time we hear the word confession it's in connection with some guilty criminal or a child caught in an act of disobedience sheepishly saying, "I'm sorry," complete with protruding bottom lip. We've been conditioned to see confession as a negative thing, something that is always connected with guilt & shame.

However, if you take a look at Nehemiah 9 & 10, you see the other side of confession that gives us a more complete view & a more hopeful view of what confession is all about. After all confession really means "to tell the truth." It doesn't necessarily have to be negative or guilt ridden. It's just the truth. In fact, real repentance & confession actually is the way out of the guilt & shame that seems to hold us captive. The key is total confession. In Nehemiah 9 the people of God are moved to confess together. In fact, we learn that they spent hours in confession & worship. The interesting thing is that their confession doesn't start with them; it starts with God. Before they declare what is true about themselves, they declare what is true about God. He is powerful, majestic, holy, just, but also abounding in love & slow to anger. He is holy & just & simultaneously gracious & merciful.

It's these important truths about God's character & nature that moves them to also tell the truth about themselves. They are not holy. In fact, they are incredibly rebellious. God established a covenant of love with them, & He has always acted faithfully toward them, yet all the while they have been rebellious toward Him. But instead of being locked up in their guilt & shame, they are moved to not only confess their unfaithfulness to God, they are also moved to begin to change. In fact, in Chapter 10 they renew their commitment to the covenant God established with them by identifying 3 areas where they had consistently been unfaithful. By walking in faith to God they can be changed, transformed. I believe there's an important principle that we often overlook in our relationship with God.

"Confession That Starts With What's True About God

  Has The Power To Transform What's True About Us."

These people were moved not simply by their guilt. They were moved by God's faithfulness to them in spite of their guilt. Understanding that God is not just a holy & just God but also a compassionate & gracious God moves them to acknowledge the truth about themselves & be set free from that guilt & shame. Perhaps we need to spend more time reflecting on the character & nature of God than we do on our own shortcomings. Believe me, if you really spend some time in sincere reflection on God's character, you'll recognize yours too! You'll see the gap between God's holiness & your sin, His faithfulness & your unfaithfulness. However, you'll also be moved to run toward Him, not away from Him because you also know that He is slow to anger & abounding in love. That truth will move you to confess so that you can find freedom from your guilt & shame, & as you experience His faithfulness, you'll want to grow, to change, to be transformed.

Vision Invites Opposition

We talk a lot in church & leadership circles about discovering God's vision & pursuing it. However, we don't talk as much about what to do when opposition to that vision comes. It's totally understandable. After all, if people haven't been gripped by God's vision for their lives, reminding them that doing so invites resistance & opposition may very well insure they never embrace God's plan. However, failing to share this important truth & how to deal with it is just as crippling because if someone is energized by a vision from God for his life & then encounters heavy opposition to pursuing that vision, there's a pretty good chance the discouragement that comes with that will knock him off course, possibly to the point of never seeing what could have been become reality.

Vision invites opposition. It always does. Vision challenges the status quo, & there are always defenders of the status quo. That's where the "we've never done it that way before" crowd comes from, & that mindset is not just alive & well in church. They are in every area of your life. When parents decide to really begin to lead their children in a more godly way, you can bet their kids will push back because "we've never done that before". That same mindset exists at your job, in your family, in your friends, & to a degree in your own heart. You better believe that if you decide to get behind God's vision, you will face opposition. That's not up for debate, so what do you do when the opposition come?

Nehemiah 4 & 6 sheds some light on how to handle all kinds of opposition. Nehemiah & the people encountered constant opposition during their 52 day building project. Their enemies loved to try to intimidate them. They mocked them, ridiculed them, & spread rumors of a literal military attack on Jerusalem all in hopes of intimidating the people into simply walking off the job & giving up on the vision that God has called them to. They also tried to distract Nehemiah from his calling. On the surface, what they were asking Nehemiah to do didn't seem bad, but it would keep him from God's call. So how did Nehemiah lead the people to respond to this opposition. Nehemiah responded to the intimidation with prayer & preparation. When the intimidation began to take root in the hearts of the people, he redirected their attention away from the object of their fear to the object of their faith. He told them to "remember their God who is great & awesome." When faced with distractions that on the surface seemed to be good things, Nehemiah responded with focus on God's things. Over & over again, Nehemiah said, "I am doing a great work & cannot come down." Prayer, preparation, faith, & focus were key in responding to the opposition, & in every situation he reminded them of their God & the vision that God had given them to rebuild the wall & restore God's glory among the nations.

The next time your faced with resistance to pursuing God's vision whether it's intimidation by those who don't want to see change or whether it's simply a distraction that will dilute your focus respond by focusing on the vision because...

"Opposition To God's Vision Is An Opportunity

To Rally Around God's Vision."

Intimidation is usually nothing more than a scare tactic designed get you & I to quit before we ever start. The way to respond is to simply "remember our God" & remember what it is He's called us to do, & then we must move forward with that vision. When opportunities come our way the question isn't whether they are good or bad but whether or not they help us see God's vision become a reality. Always go back to who you're God is, who He's calling you to be, & what He's calling to do. Rally around that in the face of opposition & God will grant you the grace & faith to stand & advance toward God's call on your life.

Your Place On The Wall

As we continue our series in Nehemiah at ZBC, we come to Chapter 3 where we see an important
shift. Chapters 1 & 2 are focused on Nehemiah & the vision that God gave him to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall. However, in Chapter 3 the focus shifts dramatically away from Nehemiah & onto the people who got behind the vision & then got to work on the wall. The list of workers includes everyone from the priests & Levites, even the High Priest himself, to city officials, to perfume makers. The construction crew even included people who weren't from Jerusalem but who recognized that God was doing something, & they wanted to be a part of it.
Everyone on that wall may not have been qualified to work on the wall,
but they were willing, & that was what really mattered.
They understood this vital principle of following God.

"God Has Done A Great Work In His People; 

Now He Wants To Do A Great Work Through His People."

The vision God gave Nehemiah was too big for Nehemiah to complete on his own, & God wasn't going to magically start stacking stones around Jerusalem. Instead, God in His grace chooses to use His people to reflect His glory. Scripture is filled with examples of how God chooses to involve His people to reveal His glory to the world. Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, & Paul are just a few examples of how God uses people to fulfill His plans. The problem is that sometimes we forget that God wants to use US. That's right, God wants to use you individually. He has a place for you on the wall. It's up to you to discover that place & then get to work. The work God wants to do through your local congregation is too big for any one person or small group to fulfill; it needs you on the wall. God's work needs all of us on that wall doing what we can to reflect & reveal God's glory through our lives to this world. 

Where is your place on the wall? God is going to reveal His glory; are you going to be a part of that?

Godly Vision Needs Godly Wisdom

Currently at ZBC, we are in a teaching series in the book of Nehemiah. In the series we're looking at the vision God gave Nehemiah not to simply rebuild the wall around Jerusalem but to restore God's glory among His people & the nations. The vision that Nehemiah had was undoubtedly from God, but in Nehemiah 2 we see Nehemiah also exercise godly wisdom as he pursued God's vision. We see that godly wisdom played out clearly in three ways:

1) Prayer
Nehemiah soaked this vision from God in prayer. Nehemiah 1 is almost completely a prayer. In Chapter 2 when Nehemiah has the chance to finally present his vision to the king. He paused to pray before speaking. We also see that he took 4 to 5 months to pray for God's guidance as he prepared to present this vision to the king.

2) Planning
Nehemiah didn't just pray however. He planned. He asked God to give him an opportunity to speak to the king & to give him favor with the king, but it was up to Nehemiah to be ready to present the vision & the plan that would help the vision become reality. Prayer & planning aren't in opposition. They work together. Prayer asks God to do what our planning cannot, but planning helps us to be ready to do what we can.

3) Perspective
Nehemiah prayed & planned, but when he arrived in Jerusalem, he took some time to get the proper perspective of conditions on the ground. His plan may have been great, but it had been put together without having actually seen the city, the wall, or the people. So Nehemiah didn't just march into Jerusalem as if he had all the answers. He took time to get a grip on reality before bringing his vision & plan to the people.

All of this teaches us an important principle:

"A Godly Vision Must Be Directly Connected To Godly Wisdom."

You may have a vision from God for where you want to lead your family, or where you want to go in your career, or how you want to handle your finances, but are you pursuing that godly vision with godly wisdom? Why is this so important? It's important because typically the shortest distance between where you are & where you want to be involves compromise, & what's important is not merely wanting to get to the fulfillment of that vision, it's also to honor God along the way of pursuing that vision. Pursue God's vision for your life, your family, your career, & your ministry with passion, but make sure that passion is guided by godly wisdom so that God is glorified in your life with every step along the way.