Transforming Society: In Your Face “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” James 4:7 Nehemiah 2:10 Can you imagine LeBron James coming back to the bench talking about, “I could score a whole lot easier if I didn’t have that other guy putting his hands up in my face all the time.” Lebron’s coach would tell him, “Lebron, if there were no opponent, it would be easy to score. We’re paying you millions to score with that guy in your face.” As Christians, we have an opponent in our face too. Whenever you decide to do something significant for God, Satan will show up, usually in the person of people like Sanballat and Tobiah. Not everyone wants their culture transformed by the influence of godly people. It displeased these men that Nehemiah had come to seek the welfare of Israel. They took it upon themselves to stop him. See, Satan’s job is to keep God’s people from carrying out God’s will. By the way, this isn’t just true for the big projects such as rebuilding a community. Satan’s job is to destroy you and your family because he knows Christian families populated by committed Christians are the foundation to transforming society, So he spends day and night plotting your demise. Just like we have angels assigned to us, Satan has demons with our names and addresses on their “to do” lists. That’s why the Bible says, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12). Do we need to fear Satan and his demons? No, not at all. We need to resist and overcome them in the power of Christ. Nehemiah wasn’t afraid of his adversaries, but neither did he take them lightly. For the rest of his rebuilding project and well beyond it, he kept a close eye on those characters. But too many of us are like puppets on a string to Satan. All he has to do is yank our string a little, and we go where he tells us to go and get mad when he tells us to get mad. Once you understand what Satan is up to, you will get down on your knees and say, “Not today, Satan. Not me, not my marriage, not my family, not my community….because we are submitting ourselves to God. Stand firm for god and against Satan, and the Sanballats and Tobiahs of this world will melt like snowmen in summer. I love the story about the day Hall-of Fame baseball player and homerun king Hank Aaron came to bat in the All-Star game. Yogi Berra, the great Yankees catcher, was catching. Yogi loved to talk to hitters to distract them. I used to do that when I was on a softball league team playing catcher. You get behind that hitter and say stuff like “You sure you know what you’re doing.” Or you ask him, “So how’s your mama doing today?” You play with his mind and talk to him. Yogi Berra was great at that, so when Aaron came to bat, Yogi started in. “Hank, you’re holding your bat the wrong way. You should be able to read the label.” Aaron just kept his focus on the pitcher and didn’t say anything. Berra was chattering away, trying to get hank to worry about where the label on his bat was instead of concentrating on the pitch. Finally Aaron had heard enough. “Yogi’” he said, “I didn’t come here to read. I came here to hit.” That’s keeping your focus and concentration where they need to be. Nehemiah had that kind of focus. He didn’t let anything distract him. He was about God’s agenda, and he knew what he had been called to do. How about you? If something is distracting you from what God wants you to do, put it behind you and stay focused on what’s truly important. Posted by David Coleman of The DC Ministry “Sharing The Gospel.”
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 12:13:20 +0000
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