Today, we're going to take a posture of peace by not falling apart when people oppose us.
Hi, I'm Lindsay Van Zale.
Posture is a podcast that serves as a short, audible fist bump to remind you that God is
in everything.
Together, we're going to be emboldened to take a daily posture of perfect peace.
In Nehemiah chapter 6, verse 9, it says,
For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking to themselves,
Their hands will drop from the work, and it will not be done.
But I prayed, O God, strengthen my hands.
Nehemiah was a restorer, just like you.
He had come to Jerusalem to rebuild and restore the city's walls.
And just a quick background on his story,
the Israelites had returned to Jerusalem after decades of exile in Babylon,
and slowly, like, oh so slowly,
they had begun to rebuild the rubble of the temple and the city,
and really, they were reconstructing their way of life,
what they had left behind decades before.
And Nehemiah, he's still in Babylon, serving under the king,
when he gets a discouraging report that the walls and the gates of Jerusalem
were rubble, they were broken down,
which essentially meant that the exiles who had returned to rebuild the city
were without protection and security, and really,
they were without the dignity of city walls.
And so in Nehemiah chapter 1, verse 4, it says,
When he heard the report, he sat down and he wept.
And then it said, For some days he mourned, fasted,
and prayed before the God of heaven.
I find this as a helpful framework for whenever I am stirred by brokenness
or injustice in this world, or when I am feeling stirred to restore something,
because the temptation is to immediately just react out of my own pain
and opinion and grief about the situation.
But we see from Nehemiah that instead he brings his opinion and his pain,
and he grieves before the Lord, he goes to the Lord to seek the Lord's favor
in moving forward with restoration.
And God blesses Nehemiah with favor from the king of Babylon
to go back and rebuild the walls.
So skipping ahead back into chapter 6,
there's been opposition to rebuilding Jerusalem the whole time,
and with Nehemiah it's no different.
From his very arrival he's been opposed, he's been mocked,
so that's what we see here in chapter 6.
Those who were opposing him asked him for a meeting,
but really it was a scheme to harm him,
and Nehemiah discerned that, so he responds in chapter 6, verse 3,
and he says, I'm carrying on a great project here,
and I can't go down to meet you.
Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?
And it says that four times the people who were opposing him sent messages
to come meet them, and each time he gave them the same answer.
And then the fifth message came from those that were opposing him,
and it was an accusation against Nehemiah.
It was basically accusing his motives, his integrity,
and Nehemiah responds and he says, you are making this up in your head.
And then that's in verse 9 where he says they were trying to frighten us,
thinking we're going to be so intimidated
that we're going to drop the work of our hands
and we're not going to get it done.
But Nehemiah prays, not rescue from the opposition,
he prays to God to strengthen his hands in the midst of opposition.
And when the wall was completed, it says in verse 16,
that when the enemies, those who were opposing them,
heard that the wall was completed, all of the surrounding nations were afraid
and they lost their self-confidence because they realized
that this work had been done with the help of God.
Yet, they still opposed him and they still tried to intimidate him
even after the restoration was completed.
What's the point of the story?
Restorers, you are going to face some opposition.
Nehemiah is just one story throughout the entire Bible
of many restorers who all faced opposition.
Not even Jesus received approval from everyone.
Opposition used to be so devastating to me
because I just wanted everyone to get along,
I wanted to be liked, I wanted to be approved of,
and I used to confuse people's approval and acceptance of me
with approval from God.
And let me just tell you, that is a horrible way to live.
You will never do anything significant
if your goal in life is to get unanimous approval from everyone.
And if you interpret people's approval as God's approval,
you're never actually going to feel approved of.
You'll never feel the security of his love for you
because you're not going to feel it.
you'll be too busy jumping through hoops
to keep people pleased with you.
Now, don't hear what I'm not saying.
We still seek counsel from others.
We don't go at it alone.
We seek wisdom from people who are trustworthy and wise.
Even Jesus wasn't a one-man show.
It says in John 8, 28, Jesus said,
I do nothing on my own,
but I speak just what the Father has taught me.
So before we move on,
how do we know if people are people
we should be getting advice from or counsel from?
Here's a few questions to consider
when you're seeking to receive counsel from people.
Ask yourself, are they always critical of you, of others?
Does it seem that no one ever has a good idea but them?
If so, I would be cautious
about seeking advice from people like that.
Another question you can ask is,
do they disciple me to Jesus or themselves?
Another way of asking this is,
do they trust that you can hear from God for yourself
and do they encourage you
to seek to hear his voice for yourself?
Or do they always insist or imply
that they can hear from God for you better than you can?
I'd be a bit cautious.
And then the second one is, do they,
I mean, the third one is, do they provide helpful feedback?
Because they should be providing feedback.
Not everything can be great and wonderful all the time.
That doesn't help you get better at all.
So you should expect feedback
from people that you receive counsel from.
So simply ask yourself, is the feedback they're giving me,
is it helpful?
Is it moving me forward?
Is it bringing solution?
Or do I just feel like I'm constantly under critique
and I can't move forward in any way?
Here's the thing.
It's rarely our wise, trustworthy friends and counselors
who hold us back.
They may question, they may have questions,
they may have feedback, they may have ideas and solutions
for helping you get better,
but they're not intimidating you from moving forward.
Instead, it's often the people in the cheap seats
of our lives, watching us from afar,
the people on social media
who you haven't had a face-to-face encounter with
since high school or ever,
or it's the comments from acquaintances,
people you barely know.
Maybe it's words spoken long ago by a teacher or a relative
that you have allowed to negatively define yourself
over the years.
Maybe it's even the people in your life
who you just wanna impress because of their position
or influence in the community or industry,
but there's really no real relationship between you.
It may even be your own critical thoughts about yourself
or the fears that you have about the hard work ahead
that are manufacturing feelings of being opposed.
Here's what we need to settle in our hearts today.
We are restorers.
You are a restorer.
And you're not going to please everyone.
You're not going to be understood by everyone.
Even when you pull it off, like Nehemiah did,
even when you make an impact, make a difference,
bring positive change,
there's still gonna be some people who oppose you.
There's still gonna be those who mock you,
accuse you of wrong motives, question your integrity.
Our prayer in those moments, in the midst of opposition,
should not be, Lord, keep me pleasing to all the people
so that I don't have to face this opposition.
Instead, be like Nehemiah and pray,
Lord, even in the midst of this opposition,
strengthen my hands as I do your work so that I please you.
The promise of perfect peace is found in Isaiah 26.3.
And in Hebrew, it is shalom, shalom,
meaning complete wholeness, nothing missing,
nothing broken.
This is who you are in Jesus.
Let's declare this together.
Today, I am kept in perfect peace.
With my whole heart, I trust the Lord.
I am strong, I am victorious, I am whole.
Remember, friend, you are a living testimony
of Jesus's ultimate win, not because of anything you did,
but because of what he did for you.
With every step you take today,
you're putting Jesus's victory on display
and Satan's defeat on replay.