Pastor Jonathan Burgess
November 8, 2015 - W1545

Pastor Wayne Cordeiro:

We're here at the Umpqua Community College in front of Snyder Hall where on October 1, eight students and one teacher were shot down.  It's a time of rebuilding here. We, with our dancers and our singers are going to be sharing with the victims' families and the first responders a presentation of inspiration and hope because they're in the midst of rebuilding.  They're going to have to rebuild their lives, some rebuild their faith.  Some will have to rebuild their confidence. 

The message today is when you're surrounded by enemies or naysayers ?? and in the rebuilding process you're always going to have that. But they're not always going to be on the outside. Sometimes those naysayers can be in your own mind, on the inside, negative thoughts saying that it can't be done. 

I want you to know that you have to fight the greatest battle within. It's on the plains of your own heart.

When you heal, make sure you heal correctly.  You see, you can heal incorrectly.  Suffering will change you, but not necessarily for the better.  You have to choose that because you can have adverse reactions to past situations and experiences.  You can define them poorly.  It can be warped on the inside, and it changes your disposition, your opinions, your perspective, everything.

You'll heal, but can I encourage you, when you're rebuilding and you're surrounded by ?? maybe without and within - with naysayers and people who give you negative reports, remember this...go to the one who is called the great physician. He'll help you to rebuild.  He'll give you the correct blueprint, as it were.  And sometimes He may have to reset something that's healing the wrong way. Let Him, because He knows how things go together, and He will rebuild. He's the one that designed us. He created us, and He'll help us to heal correctly.

Pastor John Burgess:

You are here because you are following the spirit of God and not letting your circumstances or situations dictate your involvement and the purposes and healing process that God has for us.  But sure enough, the moment you make a stand, the Enemy is going to push back.

 Such was the case in Nehemiah 4:1-3 NLT: “Sanballat was very angry when he learned that we were rebuilding the wall. He flew into a rage and mocked the Jews, saying in front of his friends and the Samarian army officers, ‘What does this bunch of poor, feeble Jews think they are doing? Do they think they can build the wall in a day if they offer enough sacrifices? Look at those charred stones they are pulling out of the rubbish and using again!’ Tobiah the Ammonite, who was standing beside him, remarked, ‘That stone wall would collapse if even a fox walked along the top of it!’” (Nehemiah 4:1-3 NLT)

The enemy wants us to run. We are all going to endure spiritual attacks. The moment that you draw the line in the sand and you say that you are going after God with all that you've got, the enemy is going to push back. 

Likewise, Nehemiah recognized and overcame the enemy’s plots.  

1. GAPS: Attacked from the outside.

   “Then I prayed, ‘Hear us, O our God, for we are being mocked. May their scoffing fall back on their own heads, and may they themselves become captives in a foreign land! Do not ignore their guilt. Do not blot out their sins, for they have provoked You to anger here in the presence of the builders. ’At last the wall was completed to half its original height around the entire city, for the people had worked very hard. But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs, Ammonites, and Ashdodites heard that the work was going ahead and that the gaps in the wall were being repaired, they became furious.” (Neh. 4:4-7 NLT)

   Amazingly, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem started out by trying to pretend they were friends of Nehemiah. In Nehemiah chapter 2 they said, “We serve God. We would like to be a part of this amazing work. Let us build with you.” So you're going to have a lot of times people that come alongside of you, and it's going to seem like they're going in the same direction you are in your pursuit of Christ, but watch out. Look at the fruit of their lives.

   The enemy uses people in our lives to tear us down when God is trying to build up. It is a spiritual battle, but the darkness takes on flesh and blood.

   Who is tearing me down while I’m building up?

   The back breaker.

   This is the person in your life that throws a massive amount of guilt on you and weighs you down with expectations that you can't possibly meet. Every time you're moving forward, the back breaker is there to throw something on you about how you messed it up or you haven't done it perfectly or how you'll never be able to get it right.

   The nail biter.

   This is the worry wort. I do enough worrying on my own. I don't need someone else helping me with worrying.

   The drama queen.

   Everything is blown out of proportion. Everything is bigger than it needs to be. Reality gets left behind in favor of attention that comes from the over?display of irrational emotion.

   The gutless king. This is the person that encourages you to hand over the authority. They say that they want to help, but they're actually asking you to give up, to give in, and to face defeat instead of fighting for what's right.

   The Lucy QB.

   I like to refer to Charley Brown and Lucy. This is someone in your life that sees problems but not solutions. They're setting you up for a fall even though they sound like they're there to help.

   So where do we start? We start by repenting ourselves first. All of us have participated in some of these at one level or another in the relationships in our lives, and I for one am tired of the enemy using me to tear down what God is doing in someone else. Anytime God begins to do a work, the work always starts in us. We're not going to walk out of here pointing fingers at everybody else. We're going to look at this list and say, “God, where has the enemy been using me as a pawn in someone else's life to tear them down?”

   2. RUBBLE: Fatigue from the inside.

   “They all made plans to come and fight against Jerusalem and to bring about confusion there. But we prayed to our God and guarded the city day and night to protect ourselves. Then the people of Judah began to complain that the workers were becoming tired. There was so much rubble to be moved that we could never get it done by ourselves. Meanwhile, our enemies were saying, ‘Before they know what's happening, we will swoop down on them and kill them and end their work.’ The Jews who lived near the enemy came and told us again and again, ‘They will come from all directions and attack us!’" (Neh. 4:8-12 NLT)

   In the efforts to take these old stones and build up a new wall around the entirety of the city, what's making it more cumbersome? Fatigue is coming from having to work around all these small rocks. They're tripping over them as they're trying to bring these big boulders to the wall.

   Sometimes it’s the small things that are the biggest problems. The things that we would just pass off as no big deal are the things that are actually getting in the way of the big thing that God is doing.

   It's bad enough that Nehemiah is getting all these threats from the enemies on the outside. People are echoing what the enemy is saying to Nehemiah on the inside.

   Let me tell you...if we're not careful, this exact thing tears us down, and you know how it happens...through social media. We hear the lies of the enemy because we plug into it 24/7 through Facebook, through Twitter, through our news media, constantly feeding the fears and the lies of the enemy. And Nehemiah is saying, “Stop!” Why is the enemy keeping this up? Because he knows confusion leads to complaining, and complaining leads to compromise.

   Our hurts, habits, and hang-ups hold us back.

   My Hurts:

   Our hurts are those physical or emotional things that were done to us in the past and we keep trying to pretend that they didn't happen, but they're the rubble in our lives that everything else has to work around. The habits, they're the destructive patterns of behavior in our lives. These things are wearing us down. And the hang-ups, those are the persistent sources of our frustration of delay in our progress.

   My Habits:

   Here's one of my habits. I like to eat and I don’t like to exercise. This and many other habits are destructive patterns of behavior in our lives.

   My Hang-ups:

   Exercise is painful and difficult for me.

   Our hurts, our habits, and our hang?ups can be small. We keep trying to move past them and do the good big thing for God, but we keep tripping over the same small things every single day.

   So don't listen to the enemy. Don't let him wear you down. Don't let him say that it's never going to change. If we can get honest with the Lord right now, we bring our hurts and our habits and our hang?ups to Him and then begin to let God do amazing things in us.

   And that's the final point here. Keep your eye on the lines, the line of sight between you and your savior and you and the people around you. Yes you are surrounded by the enemy. But who is surrounding the enemy? The Lord. You're totally surrounded by Jesus.

2. Lines: Surrounded by his presence. “So I placed armed guards behind the lowest parts of the wall in the exposed areas. I stationed the people to stand guard by families, armed with swords, spears, and bows. Then as I looked over the situation, I called together the leaders and the people and said to them, ‘Don't be afraid of the enemy! Remember the Lord, who is great and glorious, and fight for your friends, your families, and your homes!’ When our enemies heard that we knew of their plans and that God had frustrated them, we all returned to our work on the wall.” (Neh. 4:13-15 NLT)

   Don't be afraid of the enemy. Is he going to continue to rage, threaten, mock, and lie? As long as you're moving forward in Christ, the answer is yes. But our thought tonight is, “I will not be afraid because my God is greater.” Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. Don't be afraid of the Enemy. Remember the Lord who is great and glorious. And fight for your friends. Fight for your family. Fight for your home.

   And here's what's so good about what Nehemiah did. He said yes, you're going to stand in the power and at the authority of God, but you're also going to stand hand in hand with each other, with your friends, your family, your home.

   Who am I fighting? Who am I fighting for? Who is fighting for me?

   Let me give you a couple people that you need to make sure are in your life.

   You need someone that I call the editor, someone you trust to edit the manuscript of your life even if it's painful to hear. Someone who says something to you even if you don't want to hear it

   You need someone like a Yoda. And for those of you who do not know Star Wars, that's the little green guy with the ears from the Dagobah system. He's the guy that would say everything backwards but say exactly what needed to be said when it needed to be said.

   We need someone who is not just covering themselves, but as the Spartan would fight, their shields would actually cover the person next to them. We need someone who isn't just fighting for themselves, but someone who is fighting for the person next to us. We need someone who is not just thinking about themselves but is thinking about us.

   A few week ago, Conrad, one of our Levites, got sick and passed out. And what were so awesome were two things. One, first of all, all of us stopped, and we all prayed for Conrad. We asked that Jesus would heal him. Secondly, we had a paramedic, we had a nurse, we had a doctor's assistant, we had all kinds of people with medical backgrounds get up, not because they were asked, but because they saw the need. They got up and they went to the back room. And then we also of course called the paramedics, and after he got some sugar, he was back up to where he was supposed to be. And that, to me, is not an interruption of church. That is church. That is who we've been called to be.

   Questions:

1. Why does the enemy want us to run?

2. How did Nehemiah recognize and overcome the enemy’s plots?

3. What are the five types of people that will tear you down?

4. What are the three things that constantly wear you out every day?

5. What are the three people that you need in your life