Nehemiah’s keys to achieving victory in life.

March 2, 2009

Nehemiah:Keys to achieving victory in life.

Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between a winner and a loser? Victorious people seem to share an inability to accept defeat. The alternative to winning seems to be completely unacceptable. They seem to have a capacity to work out what needs to be done and then they go after it with all of the resources at their disposal. Within these terms Nehemiah did nearly everything right in order to accomplish victory in the completion of his project.

1) Victorious people have a compelling purpose.

Nehemiah 2;15 and I answered the king, “If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favour in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.”
Nehemiah did not just have a particular journey but also the destination in mind. He could see both the problem and the solution and yet he had never visited Jerusalem.

Victorious people see

a) Further than others can see:

Victorious leaders and people can see further. Nehemiah was able to see the problem but he was also able to picture the solution. What difficulty are you facing today, what challenge are you experiencing, God wants you to see not just the problem but its potential  solution.

b) More than others can see:

He knew that the wall could and should be re-built. He also knew what it would take to accomplish the task in terms of human and material resources.

c) Before others could see.

Many of the neighbouring people groups around Jerusalem did not want to see the wall re-built and several enemy leaders conspired to prevent the completion of the task. Nehemiah saw the danger in advance and planned a strategy accordingly. Many of the struggles described in scripture are about territory and who controls it; in this respect the Bible echoes life itself .For example the struggle around Isaac’s wells in the book of Genesis was about territory and influence. The greatest example of territory  and struggle is the area of the human heart and who influences it.

In History we have the example of Churchill .Churchill did everything in his power to win. He deployed troops in the Mediterranean against Mussolini, although he hated communism ,he allied himself with Stallin and the soviets and even sent them supplies. He developed his relationship with Roosevelt though the president was reluctant to join the war. In time his efforts paid off. When the USA entered WW.2, Churchill is reported to have said, “So we have won the war after all” One of Churchill’s most famous rallying calls is contained in the following quotation:
“What is our aim? I answer in one word Victory-victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.

What do you need to do? ,What alliances need to be made? ,to accomplish the purpose that God has for you as an individual .Big doors can swing on little hinges. Sometimes your breakthrough is tied up in a relationship, or someone who can show you the favour that you need to succeed. Sometimes your destiny can be tied up with a particular person.
2.Victorious leaders/people create a sense of momentum.

Momentum means a force or speed of movement; and impetus, John Maxwell declares that momentum is the key that unlocks victory. When leaders and people lack momentum, they look worse than they are ,when they have momentum they appear to be better than they are. With enough momentum any kind of change is possible. With sufficient momentum a tipping point becomes inevitable. We need momentum in our individual lives, in our corporate lives together. If you have ever driven behind a new learner driver ,who keeps stalling the car you can see how difficult it is to build any momentum.
The way to stop a great work is to stop its leader,One way to stop him is to break his momentum.
Momentum is often easier to stop than to start.

A) Momentum breakers come from a tidal wave of negativity.

4:1 –2 When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall; he became angry and was greatly incensed. He ridiculed the Jews.In the presence of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, “What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble–burned as they are?”

As a result of this negativity, workers became discouraged .We need to recognise that our words create or destroy, discourage or inspire, heal or hurt, so choose yours carefully today! Think about it for a minute, what are your words saying about you?, do you sound like a child of God or a live-in lodger with the Osbournes? The Bible says we should be, swift to hear, slow to speak. (James 1:19 NKJ) King Solomon adds, even fools are thought to be wise when they keep silent. (Proverbs 17:28 NLT) What he means is? stupid people show the world  how vacuous they are by speaking too readily .

b)The impact of multiple voices.

12) Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times over, “Wherever you turn, they will attack us.” Notice here that on ten separate occasions they came with a negative report.

The impact of this was to discourage and to break the momentum in the re-building process.

c) Momentum creators include prayer and strategic planning .

He relied upon God.
We need to remember that whatever part we have to play in things the battle belongs to God. Out of prayer and connection with God, a plan was created to address the problems.

4; 12 Therefore I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families, with their swords, spears and bows.
His plan was to strengthen the weak points in the wall. Sometimes momentum is the only thing between winning and losing. That’s why in football when a team is on top their opponents sometimes will try to disrupt the momentum by giving away a number of fouls to slow the game down and break the momentum. We need a strategy in order to maintain momentum.

Nehemiah’s strategy was simple:
From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armour. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah.
1) It had an offensive capacity. Half of the men continued the work.
2) The other half were engaged in defensive duties protecting the workers.

You and I need a sense of momentum in our spiritual lives. If we are not moving forward then we could be stuck in a rut. Yet progress can take time. It may take you five years to learn to stop people- pleasing, or ten years to stop feeling sorry for yourself, or twenty years to stop going back and reliving your childhood. All the while God is telling you, ‘Stop it,’ and you’re saying, ‘Yeah, I know. I’m going to do better.’ Then finally a crisis happens and the truth hits you. You need to change. At that point you say, ‘you know what? I’m going to forget those things, which are behind, and start reaching for those things, which are before. Then the momentum has a chance to build.

3) The Power to prevail.

Ch4;22
 Hear us, O our God, for we are despised. Turn their insults back on their own heads. Give them over as plunder in a land of captivity.

There is something about the anointing of God that enables you to not only prevail but also prosper in adversity. Joseph prospered whilst in prison. The people left Egypt with their pockets full and the chains of their captors empty. Jesus preached freedom in a prison that could not contain him.                        

6:15″ so the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days”
The real miracle in this book is the fact that the wall was completed in 52 days despite many adversaries. The tide begins to turn once the project is successful. The purpose of rebuilding the wall was not just to make the city secure again. The purpose was to change the spiritual climate.
6:17 When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.

If we are victorious in building the kind of lives God wants then we will transform the situations we touch around us. If we are victorious in building the kind of church God wants to build we will transform the world around us.

 

Written by william · Filed Under Articles 

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