Jan 22, 2017 - they were facing, they also had these raiders saying, âYou won't know when, you won't know how, but soo
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Against All Odds
Against All Odds
Brandon: I readjusted this layout to better fit the formatting needed when I print. If you will just keep all your text within the blue margin lines on this page, I shouldn’t have any more issues ☺. Thanks! Dr. Brandon Park | January 22, 2017
The enemy always fights the _______________ when he knows God has something great in store for you. One of the most important truths we must learn as we pursue the dreams God has placed on our hearts is this one: the work of God never goes forward without opposition. Doing a work for God is like swimming upstream. And all Satan has to do to slow down or to stop a great work of God is to discourage the people of God. Nehemiah was a visionary leader who kept the work going despite the opposition. He kept the dream alive in the hearts of the people.
1. God-inspired dreams will encounter many _____________.
In Nehemiah’s case, a handful of local government leaders despised his taking an interest in Jerusalem. Why? Because his interest threatened them. So, they unleashed an all-out assault of lies, criticism, mockery, and confusion in an attempt to stop God’s work from being accomplished. If you want a test case for how attacks work, go no further than the middle chapters of Nehemiah.
On the road towards our dreams, we will face: • _________________ attacks - These are the voices in our heads that tell us we can’t do it. We don’t have what it takes. • _________________ attacks - These are people or circumstances that put on the brakes, expecting your dream to come to a grinding halt. • _________________ attacks - There are times when both internal and external attacks fail, and the devil makes an all-out blitz on your life.
There are six primary ways the enemy will try to derail you: 1. Your enemy will use __________________. What will you do if someone accuses you of having the wrong motives? Immediately after Nehehiah’s inspiring, rally-cry speech (2:1718), the very next verse says: “But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us, and said, ‘What is this thing that you are doing? Will you rebel against the king?’” (vs. 19). NOTE: These enemies had used this tactic previously and it worked a few years prior when they were rebuilding the temple (see Ezra 4:4-6). 2. Your enemy will use __________________. This tactic has been around since the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1). “But it so happened, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, that he was furious and very indignant, and mocked the Jews. And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, ‘What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish—stones that are burned?’” (Neh. 4:1–2). 3. Your enemy will use ___________________. Neh. 4:3, “Now Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, ‘Whatever they build, if even a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall’” (4:3). Mother Teresa said, “We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully.” Don’t take yourself too seriously. You show me your ______________, and I'll show you WHERE GOD WANTS TO _________ YOU. Our enemy, Satan, likes to make humiliation his tool when a project or relationship fails. The only way that you can be humiliated is if you allow the other people’s vain comments to shape your identity. 4. Your enemy will use ________________. Neh. 5:1-2. If the enemy can’t destroy you, he’ll divide you. He’ll pit you against those people that are closest to you. That’s what was happening with the wall builders. After experiencing the extreme persecution from the outside in, now they began seeing division from the inside out. That’s the natural progression of opposition. Once we feel the external weight of pressures and persecution, we start to take it out on those closest to us. 5. The enemy will use ______________________. Satan knows that if he cannot discourage you with suffering, he will attempt to derail you with sin.
2. God-inspired dreams will be surrounded with _____________________.
Discouragement is used by Satan to pry open the Christian's heart to begin his assault with the rest of his arsenal. There are usually four factors that lead to discouragement: • FACTOR ONE: _______________. Vince Lombardi said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Nehemiah 4:10, “Then Judah said, ‘The strength of the laborers is failing and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall.’” The word "failing" means "stumbling, tottering, staggering.” Their strength was depleted! They were staggering under the load! Physical exhaustion is the river that will lead you to the lake of discouragement. That's one reason we need to take of ourselves physically! There’s a Greek Proverb that says, “You will break the bow if you always keep it bent.” Vance Havner said, "If we do not come apart and rest, we may just, come apart." • FACTOR TWO: ____________________. Nehemiah 4:10b, “There is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall.” Halfway through the project, they lost their vision of completing the wall. They began focusing on the rubbish and took their eyes off of the goal. And therefore, became discouraged. Before God can do a work in your life, you have to first remove the ______________. • FACTOR THREE: ___________________. Nehemiah 4:10 again, “The strength of the laborers is failing [fatigue], and there is so much rubbish [frustration], that we are not able to build the wall [failure].” Fatigue and frustration are a good recipe for failure. They were basically saying, “We’re fed up and we can’t do this anymore.” Negative talk is infectious, spreading like a virus that infects a church! FACTOR FOUR: _________________. Nehemiah 4:11-12, “And our adversaries said, ‘They will neither know nor see anything, till we come into their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease.’ So it was, when the Jews who dwelt near them came, that they told us ten times, ‘From whatever place you turn, they will be upon us.’” With all the problems they were facing, they also had these raiders saying, “You won’t know when, you won’t know how, but sooner or later, we’re going to come in and we’re going to destroy you.” Nothing derails the work of God’s people like a negative word.
3. God-inspired dreams will require you to persevere through ______________.
We live in a world filled with distraction. As you work hard and your God-inspired dream begins to build momentum, good things will start to happen. Opportunities will open up. However, if you’re not careful, you can inadvertently allow the “good” to rob you of the “best” for your life and dream. As we approach chapter 6, Nehemiah had almost finished the wall. There were just a few more details to finalize. His enemies were at their wit’s end. So, the men trying to stop the progress wisely shifted their focus from attacking the builders and zeroed their target finders on the boss. They decided to make a last ditch effort to distract Nehemiah personally with a “meeting.” “Now it happened when Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall, and that there were no breaks left in it (though at that time I had not hung the doors in the gates), that Sanballat and Geshem sent to me, saying, ‘Come, let us meet together among the villages in the plain of Ono.’ But they thought to do me harm” (6:1–2). Regardless of their intent, Nehemiah had his mind made up. He was determined. He was not going to let any “good” opportunity rob him of the “great” that he was working on. Here’s how he responded: “So I sent messengers to them, saying, ‘I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?’” (Neh. 6:3). The work that you are doing, building your wall, living out your God-inspired dream, is a great work. It is a calling. A passion. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So why let “good” opportunities derail it so you never reach the “great” that lies ahead? We don’t become masters of the big decisions until we become ________________ at making the small ones.
