Handling Opposition—Lessons from Nehemiah 6

I am constantly amazed at how much we can learn about living life from the Old Testament. I hear people all the time say how the OT is irrelevant and that we no longer need to live by it because Christ came to defeat the law so it is now not applicable. That has to be the farthest from the truth! God gave us His whole Word. If it wasn’t pertinent to us, then He wouldn’t have had it written and combined with the New Testament for us to read. Just taking the time to study the book of Nehemiah has opened my eyes to the vast amount of knowledge and wisdom for us to learn.

Chapter six of Nehemiah continues to show the opposition he experienced when rebuilding the wall. He was doing what God called him to do and Satan didn’t like that so he sent many people to try to stop him. People spread rumors about him and threatened him. We can learn much by how he handled the opposition.

When we are living for God, we will be attacked! If you are living a carefree, easy life, then you might want to worry about whether you are living right. If you are living for Christ, then Satan will want to ruin your testimony and break your spirit and will try to deter you from living for Him. (8-9)

This reminds me of the website that is out saying that someone will pay one million dollars to whomever can provide photographic proof that Tim Tebow is not a virgin. Just because Tim is influencing many young people for Christ, they want to bring him down. They are doing everything in their power to ruin his testimony. How sad is it that some people have nothing better to do with their time and money than to attack Christians?

Commit your accusers and their accusations to the Lord. Nehemiah just calmly stated that what they had heard was not true and then took it to the Lord. He prayed for strength to continue on with the work and to withstand the accusations. (9)

Stand fast! Do not let false accusations and those who fear what you are doing stop you. Stand up to them and do not be moved. (11)

Seek wisdom. Nehemiah could have easily been deceived into doing the wrong thing. One of his own people had turned against him and was trying to help those who wanted to stop him. God granted him the wisdom to perceive what was going on (12)

Give God the glory! When you succeed in God’s plans, make sure you give God the glory. When we are able to accomplish much more than “should” be accomplished, people will know it is because God was on our side, but we still need to make sure we give Him the glory and not try to take it for ourselves. Our goal should be to live our lives in a way that all we do directs people back to God. (16)