Your Fearlessness Reminds the Enemy That He is Already Defeated

Last week, I talked about how it’s the enemy’s plan to distract believers and get us to pay attention to him. If you haven’t already, you should read part 1, Persisting Through Opposition When You Know God’s Will before reading today’s article. 

The devil will taunt, he will scorn, he will do everything in his power to get us down. He hates us more than anyone else. 

But did you know our enemy has more than one strategy when it comes to beating us down? Did you know he tries so many different things, so many different ways, to get us to stop doing God’s work?

One of those strategies is to make us fall into fear. 

The enemy will try his absolute hardest to get fearful. 

Sanballat and Tobias— Nehemiah’s enemies— sent a false prophet to go and convince Nehemiah to come down to the temple and hide for his life. After saying “NO”, Nehemiah’s next response was stunning. 

“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 could reproach me.” (Nehemiah 6:13).

Nehemiah considered falling into fear something that could be held against him as sin. 

And do you know what? He was absolutely right. Romans 14:23 says that whatever is not from faith is sin. 

For the longest time, I believed that sin was “anything you think, say, or do that doesn’t please God”. I even taught that to children! And then the mind–blowing day came when someone asked me to define sin, then showed me Romans 14:23. Huge perspective shifter!

You see, not only is fear not of faith, but over and over again we are told to not be afraid.

There is only one way to truly be rid of fear— that is when we let the perfect love of God cast it out (1 John 4:18).

I discussed fear (and how to let it go) in this blog post, Fear Wants To Destroy Your Destiny. I encourage you to go and read that if you haven’t already. 

Well, although Nehemiah’s enemies did everything they could think of to get him to stop his work, it wasn’t successful. Finally, the day came when the project was finished. 

Nehemiah 6:16 says, “When all our enemies heard of it, and all the nations surrounding us saw it, they lost their confidence; for they recognized that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.”

Our enemies are terrified when they see God’s work on display, because they see that they aren’t fighting against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12), but that God is involved in our situations, and they don’t stand a chance. 

God tells us to be fearless, because there is nothing to fear when we are working with Him.

Our enemies know that in the end, they lose, and God wins. They know that God has more authority, more power. 

How much more of a double-whammy when they see that even His servants have complete confidence in Him + His ability to protect them!

I believe that our enemies in the spiritual realm can sense when we are fearful. I also believe they know when we are fearless. 

You are called by God to do His work fearlessly! 

Remind the enemy of his defeat by showing Him that you trust God dauntlessly, because He who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23), and He has given you everything you need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).

Our God is trustworthy, and He will accomplish such great works through us that our enemies will tremble, lose their confidence, and be reminded of their defeat! 

Walk courageously, because our God has already won the battle, and will give us success (Nehemiah 2:20) to do His work.

I’d love to know what your thoughts are on this topic! Are there other aspects in the life of Nehemiah that you find inspiring or interesting? It means more to me than you know when I get to chat with you all in the comments!

Lastly, if you’d like to read more content like this, you could check out…

• Trusting The Only One Who Can Be Trusted
• Don’t Lose Heart In Doing Good
• Biblical Affirmations for the Anxious Heart (+ A Freebie)