Nehemiah 4

Learn from your word today. God, we worship you because you really are that good Father in heaven who loves us and who wants us to be your children. So Father, I pray that our praise was worthy, that we would have believed what we have just sung to you, that we really believe you're the one who gives us life, who gives us hope, who gives us peace. I'm gonna pray now that your word would enliven in our hearts.

It would be changed because you have showed us who you are through your word and what you can do in our lives when we apply it. And Jesus, I pray, Amen. You got to see? You grew up, how you doing?

How was Arlington? Who's good? Just hang on, hello. All right, hey, open up to Nehemiah chapter four.

Nehemiah, it's an Old Testament. You can use your table of contents, no problem. Nehemiah chapter four. We are in a series in the book Nehemiah, we're actually just walking through the book and we started at four weeks ago and we started talking about this guy Nehemiah and why he was crying.

We found him battling ugly crying like a baby, like he just watched Marley and me. He was just, he was bawing his eyes out because he heard that his hometown, he heard that his family was, his ancestors, a place that was supposed to be, the place of worship for God, that the walls were crumbling, the gates were burning, people had lost their sense of identity and who they were, they lost their sense of who God was, they lost their passion for God's glory. And so he started weeping over this news. And then what happens is he goes and he prays for four months.

Talk about having an issue in your life and then taking a long time to pray. So he prays for four months praying that God would open up an opportunity and then finally he does in the presence of the king, the king of Persia at that time and he takes it. In 20 seconds of courage, we talk about this last time, 20 seconds of courage, he takes it. And he not only was able to find safe passage too, Judah and Jerusalem to rebuild the walls and the gates and to restore hope to his people, but not only did he get safe passage there, but then the king agreed to supply all the materials for it.

Just how God showing favor to the DMIA. He was given a vision, he had a burden to build God's people back up. And because he had a faith in what God had called him to do, he trusted in God and God provided. Now, whenever God gives you a vision, whenever God gives you something on your heart that he wants you to accomplish, you can bet that you will face opposition, that you'll face challenges along the way, why?

Because Satan does not want us to succeed. He does not want us to succeed in what God has called us to do in this life. And so today we're gonna see Nehemiah and Nehemiah chapter four and he is gonna find himself with a challenge in front of him. But before we dive in, I was thinking through this week about what maybe illustration for my life posed a challenge and for some reason, my football senior year of high school just kind of kept on coming back to me.

So I'm gonna share with you a story from my first game, it's super embarrassing. As you can tell, I'm not the most athletic person, I'm only five foot five, okay? So that means in almost every sport, except for ping pong, I'm pretty bad at it. So anyways, I was a senior in high school, I was the starting nose guard for our football team and I worked really hard at it even though I wasn't good.

I went to a school that was so small that if you showed up, you made the team, you guys know any schools like that, right? Whether it's so small that if you just show up, you get your name on the roster, that was the school that I went to. And so I was a senior year, so they're like, well, I guess we need to make the senior start. So they put me in a nose guard, right?

It was great, defensive line. Still loved it, it was tough, but I did it. Well, first game in the season, our coach wanted to give us a challenge. He wanted to give us a test.

And he said, you guys are gonna play for your first game, Tampa Catholic. I was like, what? They're not even in our division. Like they're like the highest division in Florida.

Like you know you have divisions, you have small schools and then you have big schools that all the D1 people will recruit out of. Okay, that's what they were. And so I'm like, we're gonna get creamed. Like going into this game, like there's no way we are going to win.

So the game comes, I get up there, defensive line, first kind of go at it. And I decide to size up the center that I'm gonna be going up against. And it didn't take me long to find him because he was the biggest guy in the field. He was six foot four and 350 pounds.

And I was five foot five and I was a lot skinnier back then. So it's probably only maybe like a hundred and like, 60 pounds, okay. The guy was like double my weight and height. And they got a huge, he was massive.

He was a man child, just huge. And I remember thinking, okay, this is not gonna do well, but I'm gonna do my best. Right? So the first snack goes off and I'm thinking my head, okay, how do I want to get around this guy?

I said, well, I don't know if I can get around, but let's just see what he's made of. Let's just see, you know, you know, really how hard he can hit. So I tried to go through him. All right.

And so snack goes off, I go try to go through him and I literally bounce back like eight feet, right? It was not successful. So second snack comes up. Okay, I can't go through him.

Maybe if I'm quick enough, you know, because I am like half his weight. Maybe if I'm quick enough, I can get around him. Maybe that's a good, you know, plan. So snack goes off and I, you know, throw my arm, try to get around him.

And he just kind of used one arm this time and just kind of pushed me off to the side, like a rag doll. And it was no contest like that. My confidence is draining right now that I'm gonna be able to do anything against this guy. So I thought to myself, okay, I can't go through and I can't go around.

You know, I took science. There's a thing called gravity. Maybe if I jump on top of him, my weight with his weight would cause him to go down to the ground and I can just take a call over him because that's how science works, right? No, it's not how science works.

I apparently didn't do well. Right, so I did it anyways. So I remember getting up there and I jumped on top of him, my arms were flying out and he picked me up and I looked like this. All right, that's what I look like.

I was the girl in this picture. All right, this is dirty dancing, but I was like, oh, there's a girl here in the middle of the fold. He's like holding me up, right? He was so embarrassing.

So finally, it's like, okay, last, you know, another snap, I was like, okay, I can't do any of this. Okay, maybe I can go through. I mean, I can go underneath him. All right, I can't do anything.

I can just sit there and hopefully grab some laces if anything. Right, so I'm just gonna flop down, give up and grab laces. So snap comes, you know, I just kinda dive under his feet a little bit and I'm just trying to grab any laces and I have given up on going through. Now, I don't know if you've ever experienced a football version of Xamu jumping on your back, but that's what I experienced, okay?

And really, the guy hit me so hard, it shattered my left arm in three places. All right, I'm not going to throw my arm in three places. So I get off the field and my coach is like, why did you do that? Like, why did you just like, just go underneath him and stop moving?

Like, that was the stupidest thing you could've done. He said, why did you give up? And I had a long time to think about that because I couldn't play for the rest of the game. And so he sent the second string nose garden.

Now this kid was less effort at than me, which pretty much makes him useless at this point. And he is skinnier than me. And he was like a seventh grader or something like that. He wasn't even, I felt bad for the kid.

So he gets up there, snap gets off, he gets pummeled. Snap goes off, he gets pummeled again. Snap gets off, he gets pummeled again. Forchnap in one of the series, you see him sneak through.

He gets the quarterback. And I was like, whoa, what just happened? And then he got pummeled a few more times, and then he found a way through and got in. At the end of the game, they were looking through their place.

And he said, 40% of the time, he was actually able to get by this big monster that was in front of him. And the question was, how did he do it? And it was easy. When he faced a challenge, he didn't give up.

When he faced a challenge, he was able to push through and have perseverance and endurance and keep going. He responded in a good way to a challenge, whereas I responded in a poor way. I just gave up and guess what? More harm came to me.

And I had to sit out most of the season because I require them. Now I use that story just because I think it shows you that it doesn't really matter how big you are or how talented you are. Oftentimes, God uses those who are going to persevere. And Nehemiah is in a moment where he's going to see a lot of challenge coming up to him.

They're going to start out with some criticism, but then they're going to even start plotting against Nehemiah to do some pretty heinous things. And he can give up halfway through. He can give up at this moment and lose out on seeing the vision that God has given him fulfilled. But by God's grace, he doesn't do that.

And that's what we're going to talk about. But let's just catch us up to this point before we jump into the text at verse 6. So Nehemiah has sent out his work orders in chapter 3. Now his haters are come out, sent in ballot, and Tobias, either as a criticizer.

And they start out just by mocking their wall. So they're building up this wall again, trying to give themselves some safety. And they're like, dude, that wall is so pitiful. Like, a fox could come, jump on your little tiny wall, and break it down again.

They're like, dude, that wall is so bad, it can just vaporize like the Avengers. I hope that wasn't a spoiler alert for anybody. But anyways, he was so bad this wall. Sorry for those of you who are really angry about me, just spoiler me, but hey, oh, oh.

So listen, that's where we're at. Nehemiah is at the moment where he is feeling this criticism, and that's where we're picking up in verse 6. So we built the wall, and all the wall was joined together to have its height, for the people who had a mind to work. So Nehemiah said, the people are coming together, we have a passion, we have motivation to build this wall, and they get it halfway done.

And what we're gonna see is the first thing, when we face criticism, is the first point is to avoid the temptation to give up halfway through. Avoid the temptation to stop halfway. Look at verse 7, Beltman sent back into Bayah, and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashidites, heard that the repairing other walls of Jerusalem was going forward, and that the breaches were beginning to be closed. They were very angry, and they all plot it together to come and fight against Jerusalem, and to cause confusion in it.

So what's happened is they're actually making progress. The wall is being built, and they're very angry at this. And that says in verse 9, and we prayed to our God and said, God against us, as a protection against them. Dan Knight, and look at verse 10, this is really, really interesting.

It says, in Judah, it was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing, there's too much rubble by ourselves, we will not be able to rebuild the wall. So what they have happening here is Nehemiah is saying they were encouraged, they were excited, they were motivated, they had a mind to work, but then because of all the plotting, because of all the criticism, because all the challenge and opposition that they faced, three things happened in verse 10. They're strong, their strength was failing, they were physically exhausted. They had, have you ever worked out so hard that the next morning you just don't wanna get out of bed?

Dan and Dan out, their muscles are sore, they're on fire, just walking upstairs is a burden and a chore, not let alone building rubble, like lifting rocks over your head, right, they are physically, physically exhausted. And then it says they're mentally exhausted. Look at, there's too much rubble. That is a signal about their mental state.

The Hebrew here actually means that the rubble seemed endless. Day after day, all the same rubble, it was if they had a pile of stones in the corner, they're looking at what they did, and they still, like it's like they didn't even make a dent in the pile that they had in front of them. Oh, in front of them. And so they are mentally, have you ever worked out, or like this is for me, right, have you ever ran before?

And you just get so exhausted, you're mentally exhausted, physically exhausted, you're thirsty, and then you realize you're only halfway through the run. And you're like, if it was that hard, how can I even continue to do the other half? I just wanna quit, right, get a milkshake, right? That's what I wanna do, right?

And that's what he does, right? They're mentally exhausted at this point. And then they say here that they're, that by ourselves, we will not be able to rebuild one. Now this is interesting because it's a very true insight because by themselves, they could not build a wall.

Just think about this up to this point. God is the one who had to give Nehemiah a burden and a vision for this. God is the one who had to provide an opening for the king to be able to provide them, the necessary resources to do this job. God was the one that had to make sure he got there, save God was the one who had to make sure that all these different people were gonna join together to build this wall.

They could not do that by themselves, but what happened was while they were building this wall, the more success they sought, the more they sought as their success. And so when they started seeing the wall being built, they started thinking to themselves, look at what we've done. Look at what our strength has accomplished. And so the moment when criticism came, they're like, we can't do, we cannot do this by ourselves because they're looking to them to build this.

Their focus shifted while building this wall because they were getting too consumed with what they could do, with they could handle, and that what God can handle. But Nehemiah's gonna be a great leader in a moment. He's gonna point them back to who God is and reorient them. But before we go on to that, I started thinking through a story that I heard about this exact thing, about stopping halfway, or getting frustrated, or getting mentally weak, or getting physically weak that has some damaging consequences.

I heard a story about three climbers that it was the last day of their climb on the summit. And they had about seven hours left of this climb to the very top. They had been working months toward this. A lot of money went towards training them to climb this mountain.

And they only had one more stretch to go. And right before they left, they took the obligatory picture of the group and they said, okay, whatever we do, we just need to get to the top. Let's not stop, we're gonna persevere. We're gonna endure.

No matter how tired we get, we are gonna get to the top today. Seven hours, we're just gonna burn through it. The first three hours went by in no time. They had made really good time.

They were focused, they were driven. And then about three and a half, four hours in, they started to feel the pressure. Pressure being in high altitude, the colds, they started feeling their lambs on fire. They needed oxygen, right?

Cause they were so little up there. And so they were just exhausted. One of the climbers that was in the front said, hey, we gotta keep going. We gotta keep going.

One of the climbers, I got to know, like, yeah, I guess we can. Let's just keep going. And the one of the guys in the back said, listen, I wanna get there today. But what if we just spent 10 minutes?

Just 10 minutes for our bones to warm up a little bit, for us just to take a breather, get some food, that kind of stuff. And so they all together said, okay, let's do it. And in the corner of their eye, they saw a little cave that was just off to the side of the trail that they were climbing. And so they go over to the cave and a climber number one, the one who was complaining in the first place, sees this kind of rock that's in their shape like a chair.

So he sits down and immediately his muscles start to relax and he can kind of feel his muscles just breathing a little bit. And he takes off his shoes and starts rolling his ankles around and he takes off. He's been skiing and you're so hot that taking off your jacket and freezing cold feels really good. So he takes off his jacket and it feels amazing.

And he's just breathing in all that air and he's just feeling good. While the second climber pulls out a notebook and she starts writing in all that's happened in the past four hours. Oh, we took this, this ridge and we did this. All of it was excruciating.

That part of trail was so tough. I remember my leg was hurting really bad in this. And she's just writing down everything about what happened in the past few hours. And then the third climber's in his back, just trying to find something.

He's just rummaging around. He just looks frantic trying to find something. We don't know. Then it goes back to the first climber, the one who's sitting in his chair.

He says, guys, just 10 more minutes. I'm just going to close my eyes for a minute. He closes his eyes. He's relaxing in the chair.

All the while climber number two is writing. Oh man, when we got to this point, climber number one did this. That was so stupid. And she's running in this journal.

And she's just filling it up. And then you see the last climber continuing to pull in his back and finally you see him grab a letter. And that climber looks at the letter and reads it over. And it's probably from a wife or a colleague or something.

Just an encouraging note. And he says, guys, we can't stop. We got to keep going. We got to go.

We got to keep going. So he shoves that letter back into his back. He says, I'm going to be outside the cave. Come out when you're ready.

We got to go. We got to climb this mountain. He walks out of the cave. That moment, climber number two, the one who's journaling on her notebook writes a few words in the journal that says, is this really a question?

Is it worth it? And she kind of circles in. And underlines it. Is it worth it?

And she just can tell mentally. She's just plagued. And she just says, you know what? It's not worth it.

The summit is no longer looking that appealing to me. And so she gets up, walks out of the cave, and walks all the way down the mountain, back to base. And the last guy, the first guy who sat in the chair, realizes he can no longer move his legs. He no longer move his torso.

And his eyelids won't actually open that they've been frozen shut. 2006, this climber died in that cave on Mount Everest. Why? Because he stopped in a place when he didn't need to.

He felt the ramifications of stopping halfway in an atmosphere where he needed to keep going. Some of us, when we face a trial, when we face a challenge, when we have opposition in our life, we actually do more harm to ourselves because we stop halfway. When God has given a vision to us, we sometimes hurt ourselves because we stop halfway. It gets too difficult.

It's too mentally draining. Or whatever it is. And we just stop. And the only way you can accomplish what God has called you to do is through his strength and his spirit, keep on going and persevering and enduring through it.

And Nehemiah knows this. Nehemiah knows this. And so he's going to tell the people on verse 14, look at this. He says, Nehemiah, I looked in the rows and said to the nobles and the officials and to the rest of the people, do not be afraid of them.

Remember, the Lord who is great and awesome and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes. And what he does in the face of opposition, instead of stopping halfway, he gives them a rule. And it's this. He says, you need to follow in faith, and then follow in action.

You need to have faith that leads to action. The faith part here is, remember that the Lord is great and awesome. There are other challenges that is in front of us. No matter how big this military is, or the Arabs and the Azteidites and the Ammonites, how big Tabbiah is or Sambadis, God is bigger.

No matter what the vision or the cost would be to accomplish this. No matter what the steps would be to accomplish, the vision God has given you, he says, no, stop, press forward and door because God is bigger. And he is awesome. You know what that word means?

It means he's out, he's mind blowing amazing, and he can't, I mean he can do whatever he wants. So if we can't see a path to the vision that God has given us, guess what God has seen a path to it. And we just need to trust in a step that he is gonna show us exactly where that trail is going to lead that gets us there. And so what we have to do is we need to have faith.

That God is great and God is awesome, but we always have to take action as well. Whenever you look at scripture, you never see faith being talked about without action. Faith is hoping in something that we cannot see, but it's always followed with action that precedes it. Look at Hebrews quickly, it's gonna be on the screen.

This is just a short section in Hebrew chapter 12. He talks about Moses, you guys remember Moses? He says, by faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents because he saw that the child was handsome and they were not afraid of the edict of the king. Now, it doesn't mean that they just loved their kid because he was good looking, right?

He was a cute little baby. The idea there is that they were so precious to them. So in faith, his parents, because their child was so precious to them, when the king said, let's kill all the baby boys, they said, no, we don't care about that edict from the king. And they in faith put Moses in a basket and sent him down the river.

And then it says, by faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing instead to be mistreated with the people of God rather than to experience the transistory enjoyment of Sam, considering reproach endured for the sake of Christ's greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. And so Moses says, I'm not gonna consider myself probably the Pharaoh's daughter. I'm not gonna have the excellent lifestyle. I'm not gonna have the great things at my feet, the best education, all this other stuff.

He says, no, I'm faith, I'm believing that the true people are the people of God, the ones who are enslaved right now, and I'm going to identify myself with them. And so he goes under mistreatment. And then it says, and by faith, look at this, by faith, he then goes in verse 27, he left Egypt, not fearing the anger of the king, where he preserved as if he saw the invisible one. And by faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood and order the one who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them.

So Moses, by faith, again, he's having faith in God's promises. If you remember the story, Pharaoh's heart was hardened would not let God's people go. And so the 10th plague was God sending an angel of death, right, death over houses. And if you did not put faith in the blood of a lamb, that you would spill the lamb on the blood of your doorpost, then your firstborn would die.

And so Moses says, guys, you need to have faith in what God has said. Kill a lamb, get its blood, spread it on the wood of your doorpost and you will be saved. That's why we celebrate Passover. That's why Jesus is called a Passover lamb.

It's a foreshadowing that for us as Christians, we don't put our faith in a lamb, we put our faith in Jesus. Instead of putting our faith in the blood of a lamb on a doorpost, we put our faith in Jesus and his blood on a cross. You see the foreshadowing that's happening here with the story, but it's all about faith and action. It's not just to say, oh yeah, I believe that the blood of Jesus would save me.

It's saying, no, I believe it. And I wanted to change my life. And so as an outpouring of my gratitude, I'm going to live my life for him. That's what faith and action is supposed to be.

And then he says in verse 29, my faith they crossed the Red Sea as if on dry land and the Egyptians, well, they made the attempt, but they drowned. Well, it's talking, I love how they put these words together because we're saying in one section, it's saying, if you can trust Jesus, if you can trust God to save you, you can trust him in the unseen. So they didn't know what was gonna happen after the sea split. They didn't know what was gonna happen about the wandering in the desert.

They didn't know any of that stuff. They had no clear path in front of them. They had to walk through a river and a sea for crying out, right? They had no clear path, but they had to have faith that God opened the path.

And so they said, you know, if God can save me, if God can trust him in my salvation, then I can trust him with every day after that I live for him. Even when it's unclear, even when I can't see the path, I can trust him that, and Nehemiah knew that. And so he says you need to have faith with action. But he says you also need to go a little bit deeper than that.

And you also need to develop perseverance and endurance. Look at verse 21. So we labored at the work and half of them held spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. You know what that means?

They held spears all day long. That's what that means. Verse 22 also said to the people at that time, that every man in his servant passed the night within Jerusalem, that they may be on guard for us by night and they labor by day. So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guards who follow me.

None of us took off our clothes. Each kept his weapon at his right hand. That's what this means. He says you need to develop perseverance and endurance.

So there's two different things here. Perseverance is more like an offense. I mean, it's a lot of sports nowadays, like offense. But perseverance is pushing forward, advancing forward.

And he says, listen, but every man stand, right? Let every man do something. You guys need to do this thing in order to push forward. You guys need to be working hard.

You guys need to have one shovel in your hand and a spear in the other. You guys need to work. You guys need to persevere through the challenge. But at the same time, you need to have endurance.

And that's more of like defense. That's when things happening to you, you endure it. You make a plan. Right?

It's more defensive. It's more passive. And so what do they do? Well, they said they didn't even take their clothes off.

They didn't shower. They kept their spears and their swords and all the utensils on them. They kept everything on them getting ready. Because at any moment, they could be attacked.

That is endurance. That is perseverance. And so one is not better than the other. But to persevere is to move against all odds.

And to endure is to trust in the Holy Spirit that when things get difficult, you're continuing to trust. And you're making defensive plans to guard yourself from giving up or from going into temptation to give up halfway. But all this would be silly if we thought that their problems just relied on the ammonites and the astrodites and all that kind of stuff. It'd be useless for us to talk about this.

If our problems were just a physical problem that was in the world. It was just a situation. Or it was just a person who did something to us or a job that criticized us or something like that. We have to remember that our greatest opposition is not other people.

Our greatest opposition is spiritual warfare. It's the devil. It's 20, 30. It's Ephesians.

Again, not Hebrews. I just put a lot of Hebrews in the name. But anyways, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Our greatest battle and our greatest enemy is not physical.

It is spiritual. And this is why it's important. In marriage, your spouse is not the enemy. The devil is.

In a relationship, your partner is not the enemy. The devil is. Friendship in workplace. And whatever's going on, that is not the enemy.

Satan's the enemy. There's spiritual warfare going on, and we have to remember that. Now we talk about it all the time, Jesus being that Passover lamb, that substitution for us, that his blood paid for us, and that is certainly the way the Bible describes Jesus. But he describes it also in the way of what I call a Christess vicar.

And that just means that Christ came to abolish evil. What this means for us is that when we put our faith in Jesus, he not only takes our place on the cross, but he fights with us in this spiritual warfare that's going on. And guess what? He is the victor.

If you're on Jesus' side, we know that we were going to win in the end. But Jesus is going to vanquish evil in the future. And that is a beautiful, beautiful thing to know that you are on the winning side of the spiritual battle that's going on around us. And so what do we do when we challenge in front of us?

What do we do when we have that mountain to climb, or whatever illustration or metaphor you want to use? Well, it's simple. Avoid the temptation to give up halfway through. Lest you go freezing the cave.

Remember that just like the climber who found a piece of paper that kept him going, we have a whole Bible that says, there's a God who loves us, who cares for us, who wants our best in mind. And that should be enough to keep us going, even when we're physically tired, even when we're mentally spent, even when we're emotionally spent, even when the circumstances seem too great, that should keep us going. Why? Because God is great, and God is awesome.

And then we need to remember that we need to follow in faith. Trust in God. But then put our money where our mouth is, and actually work in our relationship with God to build ourselves up. We need to work in this relationship to grow in our relationship with God.

It's good to have faith in Jesus. But it is better to have faith in Jesus for what he's done for us, and then follow him. That's what Jesus has said to us. If you have faith, follow me.

It's an action. And then we need to remember. We need to develop that perseverance in that endurance. That we need to put things that are like that cause us to move forward, and we face opposition.

We're not going to shy away. We're going to put this in our path. We're going to build this into our life. And we're going to take wise steps and overcoming.

So it could be a sin in your life that you say, I need to get over this. Well, it's good to say, yeah, I've got to sin. And I believe that God doesn't want it in my life. That's a really good start.

But what you might need to do is be perseverance. OK, I've got to build in some steps in my life to overcome this sin. And then I need to start memorizing scripture. So when those temptations come, I've got it like the swords in my hip.

And now it comes to my mind. And I can fight sin at a moment's notice. You see how this all works together? And that it's not just about the physical, but it's about the spiritual warfare.

It's about the things that we cannot see. And sometimes cannot control. God allows this story to illuminate that in our life and show us that we are able to be like Nehemiah and have that endurance, have that perseverance, and not be tempted to stop halfway from what God wants to accomplish with our life. Identify a lot with Nehemiah just because of what he was trying to do.

We've had a lot of church planting stories over the past few weeks. Because what he's doing is he's going to a place that was spiritually, it was broken down. And he's trying to build back up identity and purpose. And just as a church, the past few weeks, I've been trying to give us a vision and trying to encourage us in some ways.

And here's what I want to encourage us. I really feel like the Lord wants to motivate us to continue to go, to continue to move. See, I think Satan would rather see a church stop halfway than see its fulfillment. Wouldn't you agree?

And so I think Satan's going to do everything in his power to say, you know what? You've done some good work, but you need to stop halfway. I don't want to be a church that just stops halfway. I don't want to be a church that just half loves our community or our neighbors.

I don't want to be a church that's half worship's God. I want to be a church who fully steps into what God has for us as a church in this community and around DC. I want to be a church that believes that God is going to use us in great ways. Guys, it has been amazing just to hear stories over the past few months.

And really just this, again, I told some of our friends here in Tennessee, guys, it's been amazing. We've had people come to know Jesus almost every month since December in our church. That has a lot of life change. That is beautiful.

That is amazing. And we get to thank God for that. And we can say, you know what, God, we're not done yet. We're only halfway.

Actually, we might only be a quarter way. But hey, you know what it's the same deal. We are only a quarter way. But we got three-fourths to go.

We got a whole track of us. So that's persevere, lesson to work. That's a belief that God can do great things. And then let's follow that with action.

I think we're going to see God do some amazing things not only in our community, but around DC. It's just going to be awesome. So let's just go ahead. We're going to take a moment of just reflection time.

And so we don't do an altar call. What we do is ask everyone just to bow their heads and close their eyes. And I just have time for me just to ask some questions. And for you just to think about maybe what God's calling you to do.

I don't know if any of you have a vision that God has given you, or maybe it's a sin in your life that you're trying to overcome. But you feel like you're halfway. And it's too difficult. Or you're halfway and you're too tired.

Or you're halfway and you feel beaten down and discouraged. If that's you, would you raise your hand? Amen. I want to encourage you just to trust that God is good and God is great.

Now for some of you, you have put your faith in Jesus, but you haven't filed it through an action. You may say you believe in the blood of Jesus washing away your sin and his sacrifice on the cross. But if you were to look at your life, what has he actually saved in your life? Even if it's you and you're thinking, man, I don't even know if I believe in Jesus or I don't even know if I've been saved by him.

Just walking and talking like I know. But I've really seen no change. Let's see, would you raise your hand? No, some of us in this room who need to remember that this story is just a greater picture of a more beautiful story and that is of Jesus.

Yeah, Nehemiah was given a vision to go build identity and purpose in the people of God. But in a greater way, he reflects Jesus who came to this earth to in a more fulfilling way, give us our identity in who Christ was, in himself. He came to restore our relationship back to God. Just like Nehemiah who felt opposition and persevered Jesus in a much greater way.

Not only was abandoned by his disciples and his friends, was put on a court, mistrialed. He was innocent, but they put him on a cross anyways. They beat him, they hung on, they mocked him, and he endured. He persevered.

He did that all for us. A love hepersed by, but says during his earthly life, Christ offered both requests and supplications with loud cries and tears. The one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his devotion. And it says although he was a son, he learned obedience through the things he suffered.

See Jesus in a much greater way, he persevered and endured for our sake. So that through him, not only could he vanquish evil, but through him, he could take our place on that cross. And as that Passover lamb, it's his role on the cross that we trust and that we have faith in, that allows us to find our strength not in ourselves, but in who God is and what he's done for us. If God has saved us for our salvation, we can trust him in that every day after, and the visions that he gives us, and the burdens that he places on our lives.

We can trust him in that. For some of you, you may have walked in here not believing in the Son of God and Jesus when he's done. And sometime during the message, or even the worship you thought to yourself, I believe that Jesus has done this, and I want that everlasting life. I want to have a relationship with him.

If that's who would you raise your hand? My prayer is that God would continue working your life and you would find those who will pour in and help you grow and accomplish the vision that God is giving you to live for him and to make his name famous in the world. Lord, we just thank you for this time. Whatever that we can learn from Nehemiah's life, we can learn from the beauty of the story of a man who put faith in you, and he's going to restore identity to a whole group of people.

Lord, I pray that you would use Mercy Hill as a beacon of light in DC to restore his hope in people's lives and you. Lord, I pray that you would just be glorified in how we press on and persevere and how we endure. And Jesus, I pray, amen. We go ahead and be sing a song as every flexion, so you can stand.