GAME ON: Final Words Before Taking The Field

Dear Birmingham - Part 7

“Visions are often lost among the many lights on the horizon of life. Important things are sacrificed for urgent things. What could be is often lost in the flurry of what is. What should be gets buried under what must be…

Regardless of the nature of your vision or visions, if you are not careful, you will get distracted. The daily grand of life is hard on visions. Life is now Bills are now. Crisis is now. Vision is later. It is easy to lose sight of the main thing, to sacrifice the best for the sake of the good. All of us run the risk of allowing secondary issues to rob us of the joy of seeing visions through to completion. Distractions can slowly kill a vision.” ~ Andy Stanley, Visioneering


Three Distractions That Can Take You Out of the Game:

Nehemiah 6:1-2a (NIV), When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it--though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates—2 Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: "Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono."

Nehemiah 6:2b-4 (NIV), But they were scheming to harm me; 3 so I sent messengers to them with this reply: "I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?" 4 Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.

“I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.”

Three Distractions:

1. DISTRACTION #1: Opportunities that are simply a diversion to get you “off mission.”


Dealing With “Opportunities” That Have The Potential To Throw You “Off Mission”:

• Exercise discernment.

• Stay focused on your mission.

• Practice the Christian discipline of learning to say, “No.”

Nehemiah 6:4 (NIV), Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.


2. DISTRACTION #2: Relentless criticism intended to disgrace and discredit you by destroying your reputation or wearing you down.

Nehemiah 6:5-7 (ESV), Then, the fifth time, Sanballat sent his aide to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter 6 in which was written: "It is REPORTED among the nations--and Geshem says it is true--that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these REPORTS you are about to become their king 7 and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: 'There is a king in Judah!' Now this report will get back to the king; so come, let us confer together."

Nehemiah 6:8-9 (NIV), I sent him this reply: "Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head." 9 They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, "Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed." [But I prayed,] "Now strengthen my hands."


How to deal with your critics:

• Refute the lies (Verse 8) – “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.”

• Expose your critic’s motives (Verse 9) – “They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will get to weak for the work, and it will not be completed.”

• Pray for strength – “[But I prayed,] “Now strengthen my hands.”

• Stay faithful. Get the job done!

Nehemiah 6:15-16 (NIV), So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. 16 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.


Nehemiah 6:10 (NIV), 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."


3. DISTRACTION 3: Deception and fear that come in moments when you are especially vulnerable and weak.

Nehemiah 6:11-13 (NIV), 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!" 12 I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. 13 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.

Three Practical Principles for Overcoming Deception and Fear:

• Stay focused on your calling and mission.

Nehemiah 6:11-13 (NIV), But I said, "Should a man like me run away?"

• Practice discernment. Test everything by the Word of God.

• Turn up the heat. Pray like crazy.

Nehemiah 6:14 (NIV), Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, O my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who have been trying to intimidate me.


A few thoughts about leadership:

• The more change a leader enacts, the more resistance the leader will experience.

• The longer you lead, the lonelier you usually become.


Example: Jesus (See Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:39-46)

Hebrews 12:1-3 (NIV), Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Hebrews 12:2-3 (MSG), Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed - that exhilarating finish in and with God - he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. 3 When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!