Persisting Through Opposition When You Know God’s Will

Since there are two major aspects in the life + story of Nehemiah that I’ll be evaluating, I’m breaking this discussion into a short, two-post blog series. If you would like to be notified when the next part of this post goes live, join the email community to get an email sent to you the very day part two is available!

God gave Nehemiah a job. A big job, where he was supposed to rebuild something that was desolate and broken down. The few people left dwelling there were in distress. Their home—their Jerusalem— was in ruins, and God had called one man to oversee the rebuilding of the whole thing.

There were people around who didn’t want Nehemiah to accomplish his great work, who would mock and even try to kill him to make sure it didn’t happen. 

Yet God had already given Nehemiah a miracle— the king let him go down to Jerusalem and work to restore things even though he had been in service to the king.

But now, here he was, in the middle of all the despair and destruction, and his enemies were gathering around him and being anything but encouraging.

Do you know how Nehemiah responded?

Nehemiah 2:20 says, “So I answered them and said to them, ‘The God of heaven will give us success; therefore, we His servants will arise and build, but you will have no portion, right, or memorial in Jerusalem.’ ”

Can you imagine what must’ve been going through the heads of his enemies? Shock, confusion, fear, mockery. Regardless of how they may have felt, however, they didn’t catch the memo that Nehemiah was determined. He wasn’t going to quit. 

After countless instances of being mocked, ridiculed, discouraged, and threatened, the enemies finally decided to take matters into their own hands and try to harm Nehemiah. 

They sent a false prophet to go and convince Nehemiah to come out and meet the enemies, Sanballat and Tobiah, to “discuss” things.

Nehemiah’s response was this:  “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?” (Nehemiah 6:3).

This verse stands out to me because it points out something very important; but often overlooked. 

The enemy wants to sidetrack us and get us to lose focus of what we’re doing. He wants us to pay attention to him and not our important work that God has given us. He wants to get in our heads and distract us.

2 Corinthians 10:5 explains to us how we are to keep our thoughts in alignment with what God wants for us. “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” 

I discuss more of what this looks like in my post It All Begins In Your Mind. 

You see, Nehemiah was so determined to finish his work that mockery, threats, and attempted murder didn’t even faze him.

He knew that if God gave him a job, God would give him everything he needed to get that job done.

And he did.

I want to encourage you this week to remember Nehemiah’s example of determination and focus, and follow it. 

Don’t give your enemy any ground in your life through distraction— remind him that there is nothing worth stopping God’s work over! Then continue doing the mission that God has given you.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments, did this post encourage you? What is one mission that God has given you where you’ve seen the enemy trying to creep in and cause distractions? How did you persist through it?

If you’d like to read more posts like this one,  check out these:

• Don’t Lose Heart In Doing Good
• Joy In The Midst Of Trials
• God Always Finishes What He Starts