One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, “Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you-by night they are coming to kill you.”
But I said, “Should a man like me run away? Or should one like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!” I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him.
He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me. Nehemiah 6:10-13
By this point, Sanballat and his forces had become desperate. With only the city’s gates left to be hung, if they did not stop the Jewish builders soon, Jerusalem’s defenses would be completed.
In order to deceive Nehemiah, Sanballat hired a false prophet named Shemaiah. Shemaiah told Nehemiah that he needed to hide in the temple because men were coming to kill him.
Nehemiah, however, saw through the false prophet’s ploy and refused to be intimidated. “Should a man like me run?” he asked Shemaiah. “Should I try to save my life by hiding in the temple?”
With the last attempt of their enemies foiled, Nehemiah and his men quickly finished their work on the walls.
The questions asked by Nehemiah in his response to the false prophet are directly applicable to your life today. Maybe, like Nehemiah, you find yourself in a situation where everything in you wants to take flight and run away.
Whether it is a horribly troubled relationship that only seems to be getting worse or a painful situation in your local church, even though you know God has placed you there, you still want to run away. In my own experience I have found that once the enemy gets a person on the run, it is difficult for him to ever stop running again.
Typically, if that person can be run out of one church, it becomes even easier for the enemy to run him out of his next church. It is no different in your relationships; once the enemy of your soul learns how to manipulate you through fear, you will be running for the rest of your life, unless you turn around and face him through the power of God’s Word.
Nehemiah’s next question may be even more important to you than his first one.
Should you go into the church to save your life? Although this question may seem strange, it probably captures one of the major needs in the church of the Western world today.
Many Christians simply see the church as a place where their lives and the lives of those they love can be saved. Whether it is hearing the message of Jesus as Savior and Lord or learning the principles of child-rearing, their local church has become a place of refuge from the wicked, cruel world around them.
Although the church is obviously an instrument of salvation, many Christians refuse to see it as anything beyond that. Tragically, this view of church life has produced a generation of Christians who are more interested in escaping form the world than transforming the world.
From Christian cruises to Christian television, believers have settled for the creation of their own culture instead of penetrating the dark culture that surrounds them.
If history is any indicator, the Christian counter-culture of which we are so proud will eventually digress into spiritual ghettos.
Unless you and I, like Nehemiah, are willing to stand and build what God has called us to build, the cities and nations we love so much will die.
© Copyright 2005 by Jim Laffoon
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