To understand today’s quiet time, you need to have faced or in the midst of facing enemies looking to kill you in your sleep; a burning heap of rubble at your feet; and your strength failing under the burdens you are bearing. Actually, you just needed to have lived life for longer than two minutes to understand any which one of these three instances I just mentioned. Every single time you hit a snafu in your life, where things didn’t go as you intended or planned, is a moment when the anxiety within you screams out with suffocating effect in your mind. This is part of the human experience and a painful reminder that we have failed, we will fail and we will meet insurmountable odds. In fact, probably more times than not, we gave up on trying to rebuild or starting something new because we got tired and our strength and drive flickered away.
Yes, I’ve done this with my relationships, I’ve done it to my career, I’ve done it with school; and more importantly, I’ve done it with my faith and my life. I gave up and walked away because all I could see was the rubble that lied before me and circumstances were looking grim. I failed to see what I was working so hard to build and that is our flaw.
In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us.” – Nehemiah 4:20
Nehemiah had a great job in Babylon. He worked directly for the emperor of the sprawling empire. But he left that cushy government job to venture out into a place where his passion could thrive. He left to become a construction worker. Except, he wasn’t constructing homes or office buildings. He was constructing the Temple of God.
He was actually reconstructing the Temple from the heap of rubble that was left littered on the the ground by invading forces of wars past. He had supplies and money to rebuild, but his plan and his intentions weren’t the problem. He had to worry about opposing armies trying to tear down what he had just arduously started to rebuild. These armies had no reason to attack the rebuilding of a temple except for the fact that they were mean spirited and wanted to show Nehemiah that no good work goes unpunished.
From this passage, we can gather that the phrase, “God will fight for us”, is a rallying cry for us to step into action and hold strong to seeing what God envisioned us to do. For the Israelite people, this was no cryptic fortune cookie type of statement that is a lot easier said than done. No, I’m not talking about a symbolic rallying cry; I’m talking about a loud, powerful “call to arms” where somebody cries, “Our God will fight for us,” and we pick up hammers in one hand, swords in the other, and then sacrifice our minds and bodies for an epic battle against the enemies of those who work with us, live with us, eat with us, are with us and are us.
But therein lies the problem– we pray “God will fight for us” blow trumpets and horns and do nothing about it. Isn’t the reason we feel hopeless, alone and abandoned really because we cry “Our God will fight for us” and nobody responds? I believe God wants you to respond to those cries in a tangible way.
I believe God empowers you to respond in His name. I believe God wants people to respond to us in our cries and I believe He provides people to fight for us in His name. But here’s the greatest thing of all, when we gather to fight together in God’s name, He will be there fighting with us in His power and righteousness and justice.
Don’t fail to see what He has you doing just because all you see are set backs, enemies and a pile of rubble. So pick up your hammer and sword and go out boldly because that’s how God fights for us.