From His Heart

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Today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, a message that will bring understanding to your fear, faith, and the fight of your life.

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Yeah, there are things that make you afraid, but there's fear and then there's faith, and then there's action.

And you trust God and you stand up and fight and you call upon his name.

And when we call upon God's name and we believe God for great things, God shows up.

Because God loves to answer the prayers of his people.

There is hope that you always dream.

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Love.

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He can hear every scar.

Speaker 1

One of the reasons that we get defeated in our spiritual life is that we fail to understand that there is a battle we're in. We simply don't understand our enemy. But in Nehemiah chapter 4, we see a very vivid picture of how the enemy operates. You see, the devil uses people as his pawns to get his devilish work done.

Pastor Jeff will help us see this very clearly in Nehemiah chapter four. You're listening to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve. Today, we continue in the series Strong and Courageous with a lesson called "Fear, Faith and the Fight of Your Life, Part 2." In it, Pastor Jeff shares three insights concerning how the devil works to oppose us and how we are called to courageously stand up against the enemy and fight for truth.

Today's lesson is the fifth of six in this series. You can listen again or download a free MP3 of any broadcast at fromhisheart.org. Click the Listen link now, though, and open your Bible to Nehemiah chapter 4 to better understand fear, faith, and the fight of our lives.

Speaker 2

Hey, how do you stand firm against the schemes of the devil? Well, you recognize how the devil works. Opposition will always come to those who do God's will. Now, sometimes we get the idea that if we're doing God's will, everything ought to go smoothly for us. But that's just not true. The Apostle Paul said in 1st Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 18, "For we wanted to come to you, Thessalonians I, Paul, more than once. And yet Satan thwarted us." Satan stood in our way. Satan opposed us. Nehemiah is on a mission from God, and there is opposition to the will of God and to the work of God.

Now remember this: the devil doesn't waste his time on compromisers. If you're compromising and you're not walking with God, the Bible says you adulteresses. Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to make himself a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Do you want to be an enemy of God or do you want to be an enemy of Satan? So opposition will always come to those who do God's will. Just get ready for it. It is coming.

Secondly, opposition will come in various ways. And so this is how you understand the devil. What did he do? What do we see in chapter four? Well, he works through Sanballat, who is the governor of Samaria. He likes it when Jerusalem is weak because when Jerusalem is weak, that helps him be strong. He begins to mock the Jews on this plan to rebuild the wall. What he does, along with his buddies Tobiah and the others, gives us an insight into how the devil works.

First of all, the devil will use ridicule to try and come after you and me. They make fun of the builders and they make fun of the wall. Tobiah even says, "You know, they're building this crummy wall. Even if a fox should jump on it, he would break it because the work is so puny and so pathetic." If you get mocked or ridiculed because you take a stand for Jesus Christ, you're in good company. But that's how the devil will work. He will work with ridicule.

Secondly, he will use threats—threats to get you to stop the work. They threatened Nehemiah and the people, saying, "We're going to come and we're going to kill you." The devil uses ridicule, threats, and discouragement. It says in verse 10 in the God's Word version, "Then the people of Judah said, 'The work crews are worn out and there is too much rubble. We can't continue to rebuild the wall.'" They began to look around and say, "You know, I guess it is a pretty crummy little wall. What were we thinking? Why were we thinking we could do that? We can't do this. Never could do anything." We get discouraged. That's one of the devil's chief tools: to discourage you and me.

One of the things that you can do to really make a difference is determine to be an encourager. Encourage one another. Hebrews 3:13 says, "Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, lest any of you should be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." They said, "We can't do it," and they were so discouraged. What's the use? The devil uses all those things—ridicule, threats, discouragement—for what purpose? He uses all that to get you to fear and to quit. He works overtime to get you to do those two things: to be afraid and to quit.

Now, remember this about the devil. The Bible makes it clear he is a defeated foe. The only way he wins is if you quit. He's a defeated foe. But if you don't show up on the battlefield, he wins by default. If you throw down your weapons and run away, he wins—not because he beat you, but because you quit. You can't quit, no matter what's going on in life. In the Christian life, I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back. I'm not going to quit.

I told you about the motto of the French Foreign Legion: "If I stumble, pick me up. If I falter, push me on. If I retreat, shoot me." There is no retreat in the Christian life. There is no quit in the Christian life. A righteous man falls seven times and he rises again. He keeps getting back up. But see, that's how the devil works—to get you intimidated, to get you fearing, to get you feeling the threats, and to back up and retreat and quit.

Now, listen, in the Christian life, you and I do get knocked down, but we get back up. But it's high time that God's people did some knocking back, that we say, "Hey, we're going to come at you." And the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church of the living God. And that's what happens in Nehemiah, chapter four.

See, opposition will always come to those who are doing the will of God, and it comes in various ways to get us to fear and to quit. But opposition, insight number three, is conquered by prayer, faith, and action. By prayer, by faith, and by action. So how did the people respond to what was going on? In chapter four, when they said, "We're going to conspire together," verse eight, "to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause a disturbance in it," Nehemiah said, "But we prayed to our God."

You say, "Well, what did he pray?" Look over in verse four: "Hear, O our God, how we are despised. Return their reproach on their own heads and give them up for plunder in a land of captivity. Do not forgive their iniquity and let not their sin be blotted out before you, for they have demoralized the builders." He prayed what is known in theological circles as an imprecatory prayer. That's when you're calling down the judgment of God on somebody—calling down the judgment of God on His enemies, those who are standing in the way of the Lord's work and the Lord's will. And he prayed that kind of prayer. And people gasped, "Well, you're not supposed to pray like that." Well, Nehemiah prayed like that. You know, we...

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We.

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We are so concerned about just being so nice and kind and conciliatory and just getting along with all the enemies of God. Listen, Jesus said, if the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you. A slave is not greater than his master. If they kept my words, they'll keep yours also. If they rebelled against me, they're going to rebel against you. They're going to come against you. You can't make friends with the people of this world who hate God. You can speak the truth in love to them. You can love them. But as far as coming to an agreement, that ain't gonna work.

And so this idea of, well, we just gotta be peacemakers. Peacemakers. Peacemakers. That has to be in balance with the fact that Jesus said, do not think I came to bring peace on the earth. I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword. And when we preach the gospel, the gospel is strange because the same wind of the good News that blows one ship into the safety of the harbor, it blows another ship onto the crashing rocks. And the Bible says that the preaching of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For we are a savor, a sweet aroma of death to death or life to life. It depends on how someone receives the gospel message.

And what is offensive about the gospel is that when you preach the gospel to someone, they have to understand that they are sinners on the highway to hell and there is no hope for them in and of themselves. And that is offensive. People don't like to be called sinners, but the Bible makes it clear. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And the wages of sin is death. And so we preach the truth, we pray the truth, and we are not ashamed and afraid to pray. God, you see what's going on? God, you judge them according to your will. They prayed.

Now, it has well been said we can do more than pray after we've prayed, but we can't do more than pray until we've prayed. Prayer is always the first thing that we do. And when difficulty comes and opposition comes, the very first thing that you need to do, that I need to do, that we need to do is fall on our knees and pray and call upon God and seek his face. Lord, you show us what to do. Lord, you know the situation. God, we need your help. So we must cry out to the Lord.

Secondly, we must remember the God we serve. So it says in verse 11, our enemies said, they will not know or see until we come among them, kill them and put a stop to the work. When the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times, they will come up against us from every place where you may turn. Then I stationed men in the lowest parts of the space, behind the wall and the exposed places. And I stationed the people and families with their swords, spears, and bows. When I saw their fear, I rose and spoke to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people. Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome.

Hey, everybody gets afraid. Nehemiah in chapter six, he's going to get afraid. Everybody gets afraid. David got afraid. He said in Psalm 56, verse 3, "When I'm afraid, I will put my trust in you, in God, whose word I praise. In God I put my trust. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?" Now, David seems like this courageous, bold warrior guy that never gets afraid. He had a T-shirt that said, "No fear." You know, you've seen those T-shirts. No fear. The guy. Everybody gets afraid. So no fear is just a lie because you do get afraid. We do get afraid. And Nehemiah got afraid and the people got afraid. And Nehemiah said, when I saw their fear, that's when I told them, don't be afraid. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome.

You're looking at the horizontal. You're looking at the circumstances. You need to get your eyes on Jesus. You need to remember the Lord who is great and awesome. We forget how great and how awesome our God is. We forget how big our God is. And when we remember the Lord, we remember who he is. He's the faithful God. He's the God who always keeps his promises. He's the God who is full of compassion. The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth. Who keeps loving kindness for thousands of. Who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.

We remember how good God is. We remember that when we blow it in the Christian life, we can come to him in repentance and ask for him to forgive us. And we come before him. Lord, I've blown it. Lord, please forgive me. And he does. Because if we confess our sins, 1 John 1:9, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Remember who he is. Remember that he is the mighty God who can do anything in your life and in my life. He is the all-time undefeated, undisputed heavyweight champion of the universe. That's who our God is. You remember who he is. He's great, he's awesome, he can do anything.

And you fight. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome and fight. So we must trust him and fight for what is right. Now people, they back off on that one fight. I don't know about that. Well, that's what he tells them. Remember the Lord, who's great and awesome and fight. And what are we fighting for? Fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses. We fight for what matters. We fight for what is right. And we don't back up in fear. The stakes are high. And so we fight.

And we are asleep at the switch if we don't realize that the enemy is working to try and destroy families, to steal, kill, and destroy, and to push everything into this world system to set up his one world leader, the Antichrist. And we're seeing that happen around us. And we need to stand up and fight for what is right. We need to stand up and preach the truth. We need to stand up and tell people, hey, guess what? Thus says the Lord, I made you male or female, there are only two genders and that is it. And your sex and your gender are the same thing. Homosexuality is a sin against God. God didn't create it that way. He created one man, one woman for life. Marriage is for life.

We stand up for those things. We recognize that the. And we recognize people struggle in those areas. We don't throw them to the dogs, but we stand up and speak the truth in love. People need to hear the truth. You come to church, what is church supposed to do? It's supposed to tell you this is true north. We always tend to drift from true north and true north of the word of God says, thus says the Lord. And we are reminded Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, this is the truth. And we need to walk in the truth. We align our lives to the truth. We don't align the scripture to our lives. And that's what's happening in a lot of churches. They water down the truth to make it more palatable for their sinful lives. That's not what you do. You fight for what is true and what is right.

Remember the Lord who is great and mighty and fight. Now here's the thing. We must trust him and fight for what is right. And we must remember that God will fight for us. You say, how does that work? That God fights for us, but we have to fight. And he says that as you go down this passage, it says in verse 15, when our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had frustrated their plan, then all of them returned to the wall, each one to his work. From that day on, half of my servants carried on the work, while half of them held the spears, the shields, the bows, and the breastplates. And the captains were behind the whole house of Judah.

Those who were rebuilding the wall and those who carried burdens took their load with one hand doing the work and the other holding a weapon. Charles Spurgeon had a paper for a long time called the Sword and the Trowel. It was from Nehemiah, chapter four. They had a trowel to do the work, and they had a sword to protect themselves. As for the builders, each wore a sword girded on his side as he built. While the trumpeters stood near, I said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, the work is great and extensive, and we are separated along the wall from one another. At whatever place you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us.

Remember the Lord who's great and mighty, and remember that God will fight for us. How do those things fit together? Remember David when he went up against Goliath? Wouldn't it have been nice if David had said to Saul, hey, let no man's heart fail on account of him. Your servant will go fight him. But then David said, but, Lord, I know I'm not going to have to fight him, because I just had to say I was going to fight him. And then you're going to hit him with a thunderbolt and he's going to come down there and I'm just going to really go slow to get on the battlefield. And you're going to kill him with a thunderbolt from heaven. Lord, you're going to give him a heart attack, Lord. You're going to strike him with some embolism and he's just going to drop dead. You're going to hit him with a meteorite from heaven. God didn't do any of that.

David had to go out there. David had to fight Goliath. And he told him, the battle is the Lord's and he will deliver you into our hands. But David had to take the stone. David had to put it in the sling. David had to whip that sling around, and David had to let it go. And then from there, God fought the battle. Hey, if we're not showing up for the fight, don't expect God to fight for you. God will not do what you can do, and you cannot do what he can do. And when we step out in faith, that's when God shows himself to be mighty and strong because we're trusting him.

Do you remember what he said in John chapter 11 to Martha? Roll away the stone. She's at the tomb of Lazarus. Lord, we don't want to roll away the stone. He's been dead for four days, Lord, he stinks. We don't want to roll away the stone. Did I not say to you, if you believe, you'll see the glory of God. Roll away the stone? And when they rolled away the stone, Jesus didn't roll away the stone. They had to roll away the stone. When they rolled away the stone, Jesus did what they couldn't do. Lazarus, come forth. And Lazarus came forth from the grave.

God will not do what you can do, and you cannot do what he can do. And he is waiting on you to take that stone step of faith. And when you take the step of faith, when you remember the Lord, who is great and mighty and great and awesome and fight, then God fights for you. God fights for you. And God is waiting for people to call upon his name, for people to trust him, for people to take a stand on the word of God, for people to say, I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back. And I am going to do what God has called me to do. And I am going to understand the word of God and understand the will of God for my life as I study the word of God.

And I'm going to do what God's called me to do. Hey, when we do that, when we take that kind of stand, then God works in our lives and God makes the difference, and God gives the victory. And they were able to rebuild the wall in 52 days because the good hand of God was upon them. The power that comes when you stand and fight. Yeah, there are things that make you afraid, but there's fear and then there's faith, and then there's action. And you trust God and you stand up and fight and you call upon his name. And when we call upon God's name and we believe God for great things, God shows up. Because God loves to answer the prayers of his people.

Speaker 1

Well, we've seen today how important it is to fight for the truth of God's word. Not a physical fight, but a spiritual fight against wickedness in high places. And I hope these have been emboldening truths for you today. If you'd like a copy of the message you've heard today on From His Heart, click the listen link when you go to fromisheart.org.

Hey, would you like to help From His Heart proclaim God's truth and call people everywhere to stand strong and courageous for Jesus Christ? Would you love to equip more men and women to live out the truth in our world today? Fear is everywhere in today's world, but God calls us to live with bold faith, and you can multiply your impact by joining with us at From His Heart to help people get strong and courageous in their witness to people around the world.

From His Heart is heard on more than 850 radio stations around the nation each and every day and around the world as well. From His Heart was created over 20 years ago to simply disseminate the truth of God to a lost and a hurting world. Dr. Jeff Sharif pastors a congregation in Texarkana, Texas. From His Heart is a separate nonprofit commissioned to broadcast around the world, and that is exactly what we're doing each and every day.

When you join us this month with a gift of any amount, we'll say thank you for joining us in this ministry by sending you Pastor Jeff's new six-message series, Strong and Courageous, where he'll unpack God's command to Joshua to stand firm and move forward in the face of fear. This series will help you stop letting fear call the shots in your life, learn to walk confidently in God's promises, and live out your faith boldly in a culture that desperately needs the truth of Christ.

To request your copy today, call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-24253) or go online to fromisheart.org. We can't thank you enough for your generosity in supporting From His Heart Ministries. Together, you are helping us broadcast across the nation and around the world, calling men and women to stand strong in their faith and live courageously for Christ. Thank you so very, very much.

By the way, we also hope that when you visit our website each day, you can sign up for the weekly Real Hope email encouragement letter that'll come into your inbox every Friday morning. It's a wonderful devotional to start the weekend. You can also download an MP3 of any broadcast you may have missed, all for free.

Well, that's all the time we have for today. So glad that you joined us, and we encourage you to be here tomorrow to begin the last lesson in this Strong and Courageous series. Join us for the message, "Cut to the Quick," when Pastor Jeff Shreve will open up the Word of God and share real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart. Here on From His Heart.

Speaker 2

There is tremendous.

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From his heart is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world. Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more@fromisheart.org.