Tag Archives: Nehemiah

40 days of truth: day 26—The Enemy Will Try To Call Me Away

“So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing important work and cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?” Four times they sent me the same proposal, and I gave them the same reply.

Nehemiah 6:3-4

Quick review: Nehemiah was a Hebrew living in Persia, and received permission from the king to return to Jerusalem to rebuild her wall. This work was opposed by the Samaritans, under the leadership of a man named Sanballat. In today’s verses, Sanballat sent messengers four times to get Nehemiah to meet him outside of Jerusalem. But Nehemiah knew it for what it was – an attempt to not just harm him, but to stop the work.

Lord, open our eyes to see the scheming of our enemy!

  • Prayer
  • Fasting
  • Giving
  • Discipleship
  • Serving
  • Evangelism
  • Meditating on His Word
  • Forgiving others, bearing burdens, encouraging others

Just some of the work of the Kingdom that the enemy schemes to call us away from, using apathy, busy-ness, fear, disappointment, guilt, offense, and all manner of such things.

I can search my pockets and find plenty of excuses. My plate is too full as it is. I’m worn out. I’m an introvert (my go to for most things that involve other people). It’s not my gifting. I’m not called to that. I feel inadequate. Seriously, my pockets are quite full.

But I need to know truth so that I can walk in truth.

There is an enemy who is always trying to call me away from the work of the Kingdom.

But on a practical note, walking in this truth will take discernment, and an ear that hears the voice of God. Because I need to know whether it is the enemy calling me away from the work, or, if God is saying “that is not the work I have for you to do right now.”

So I pray for you and for me, that the whisper of God will be louder than the shouts of the enemy.

from disgrace into grace

rebuilding-the-wallFive women sitting in a living room, taking turns reading from Nehemiah. We are studying that book because in the rebuilding of a wall God can speak much about rebuilding lives. And in that second chapter, starting right there in that 17th verse, something speaks to me.

‘Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.”’

Disgrace. (It rhymes with shame.)

Nehemiah saw his broken city with broken walls, and women see their broken lives in much the same way. And in the time it took to inhale that 17th verse something grabbed hold and won’t let go.

The only way out of disgrace is to step into grace.

And I find myself stepping in, in more ways than one. As I sat on that couch in that circle of women, I had no idea that God was searching something out in me. Something that caught my heart by a painful surprise.

Later that night something was said that pulled a trigger and a dam broke open and disgrace spilled out, and I learned that scar tissue won’t hold a wall together because grace is the mortar of God’s rebuilding.

running awayI discovered, as I tried to stop the flow of pain and tears and years of pent-up shame, that the city walls begin to fall into ruin when a little girl is held to a secret as hands go where hands aren’t supposed to go. Shame makes a little girl feel alone and somehow ‘wrong’, and in her attempts to feel ‘right’ again she runs as hard as she can away from her pain, only to discover she has just been running with her pain. Until one day she falls in a heap. Disgraced.

at the cross

But God. He knew where she would fall and He made sure it was at the feet of Grace.

(Because sometimes the only way out of disgrace is to fall into Grace.)

For days now God has been pulling away scar tissue and putting grace in its place. And for once, I understand His timing. Because the women who are studying Nehemiah are the staff at Grace House. And this is where God has me now, about to step into full-time ministry to women with broken walls. To cities in ruin. And I needed to know that God doesn’t rebuild with scar tissue, but with grace.