Godly Vision And Goal-Setting Part Two

Godly vision and goal setting part two

“Meeting the challenge of opposition

Nehemiah chapter 4:1-4:11

Introduction-

Last week we looked at goal setting and vision casting.

We saw that most people have goals and visions as young people.

They aspire to be great protectors of the world as firefighters, policemen, or Doctors or nurses.

They may want to famous people like actors or sports figures.

Usually life realities set in and many do not pursue their dreams anymore and either give up or settle for 2nd best.

Nehemiah had a vision to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem that had been in rubble for more than 100 years.

Nehemiah was a cupbearer for the king and took the opportunity to make a difference

I laid out several building blocks needed to reach your goals and move from dreamer to a visionary.

You remember, there are a lot of dreamers, but few visionaries.

Dreamers just dream and never do anything with that. Visionaries take their dream and make it reality.

Here are the building blocks to write down again.

#1- Vision starts with a concern

If you are to do anything for God, you must be passionate for the things that God is passionate about.

If God puts it on your heart, He will provide the resources to bring it to pass.

Nehemiah 2:4

“The king said to me, what is it that you want?” Before he answered the king of Israel, he prayed to the king of the universe and shared the concern that he had.”

#2- Vision does not necessarily requires immediate response

He sought God before he answered the king.

He wanted God’s blessings in place before he tried to take on this major thing with Him.

He understood he could not do the supernatural in the natural.

#3- Plan expecting God to respond

We feel like God is in it and we act like we are doing it all by ourselves.

If God gave it to you, why would you not expect Him to help you accomplish it?

So that is where we left off last week. Nehemiah was in fact taking his dream to reality. He was rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem. He was putting feet to his concerns and making it happen.

Then a funny thing happened, and it happens a lot of times with us.

You begin doing something for God, you begin to put feet to your dream.

You are working hard and you start to get opposition.

People start coming out of the woodwork to fight you, ridicule you, oppose you, and you have a choice- what are you going to do about it? Take it and eventually stop or push through it by whatever means it takes to accomplish what you have started.

Let’s see Nehemiah’s response

Text- Nehemiah 4:1-4:11

Opposition as you can see starts in many different ways.

Gossip starts opposition as we negatively talk about someone doing things for God or bettering themselves.

Good people with wrong motives can cause opposition.

Just plain evil people. Whenever someone does something good or better themselves, there are people who want to sabotage you or your cause.

Jealousy can destroy a dream. Unless you use Godly wisdom to handle the opposition.

Dispute between rival Persian governments was normal and happened frequent.

Rivals would often taunt and discourage the Jews and keep them from accomplishing greater things.

I. Know if you are doing great things for God, there will be opposition.

(1) “When Sanballat heard that they were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed.”

He was ticked, let’s call it for what it is. He was upset that someone took initiative to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem that had been down for over 100 years.

What do these silly Jews think they are doing?

Negative sayings like- “It’s been tried before” “they won’t be able to do that” ridiculing instead of uplifting.

Opposition is defines as “resistance expressed in action or argument. With that usually comes hostility, objections, disapprovals, criticism.”

Albert Einstein

‘Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

Not only will you have opposition for doing great things for God, but also for bettering yourself as well. The very rut you are trying to get out of takes strength, determination, being focused, but it also takes you getting past others in the rut that once they see you doing something begin pulling you down because they are angered “ticked” that you might get out.

(6) “So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart.”

Nehemiah began putting feet to his vision. He began using people and resources and they built the wall half way to the height of completion.

Scripture says those that did not share the vision, those who ridiculed and tear down, those that wanted Nehemiah to fail plotted together to “stir up trouble.”