So you could go home now. We’ve kind of got it all set up for you. You know what to do. Hey thanks for being here. One of the things I struggle with at the beginning of every year is how long do you say Happy New Year. I tend to go into like February so I’m just going to try and say it one time, Happy New Year, so good to see you guys. For those of you joining us online, Happy New Year; at all of our Atlanta area campuses, Happy New Year and to all of our strategic partners all over the country, Happy New Year. Now today what I would like to do is I’d like to help us think together about this next year. Not something specific but something that is specific to you. This next year there is a lot of things you could do. This next year or during this year there are a lot of things that you will do but there is one thing that you’ve got to do. And so today for the next few minutes I want to talk to you about that one thing. Now that one thing is different for all of us. There is one thing that based on what’s going on in your life, your relationships, your marriage, your finances, whatever it might be, there is one thing that if you could figure out this one thing and if you would do this one thing it would leave you in a much better place a year from now than where you are right now. In fact, if some of you got focused on the one thing whatever that one thing is for you, you could be in a better place six months from now. And, this isn’t going to be new information, this one thing is something you’ve thought about, this one thing is something that someone has suggested to you, this one thing may be something you even tried before but for whatever reason you lost focus, you lost track, you got distracted and you didn’t focus on the one thing.
Now I don’t know what the one thing is for you. It’s different for all of us but all of us have one thing this year if we don’t get anything else done, if we don’t get anything else accomplished, there is one thing we need to focus on and get done this year. So I want to throw out some suggestions and then we’re going to open the scriptures. I’m going to tell you a very cool Old Testament story that made a huge impact in my life and in Sandra’s life about fifteen years ago as we began to focus on a very few things that made a very big difference in our life. When I’m talking about one thing it could be one of these things; it could be a habit that you need to break. There is a habit that you need to break and nobody needs to tell you what it is, you know what it is and you have tried but if you could push a magic button and transport yourself to twelve months from now and you knew twelve months from now that habit would be behind you and it wouldn’t be a part of your life anymore you would push that button because it’s a habit you need to break. It could be a goal you need to accomplish, a project you need to complete, a relationship you need to restore or perhaps a relationship you need to end. Some of you are in relationships right now and the truth is if you could push a magic button and suddenly there would be no emotional shrapnel, there would be no complications but you could magically, supernaturally be out of the relationship you would push that. For others of you again it’s a relationship that needs to be restored and relationships are so emotional, you know you need to; you know you ought to; you need to pick up the phone; you need to have that lunch; you need to reconnect but when it comes down to doing it there is always something else that you would rather do because it’s so difficult.
Or it might be a debt you need to retire. It’s been hanging around forever. Every time you hear us talk about debt, every time you hear Dave Ramsey, every time you hear one of those commercials about debt consolidation you feel guilty; you feel terrible; you have that self conversation of yeah I need to; yeah I ought to; you sit through sermons and if you’re a church person you go hmm-hmm-hmm but then you don’t do anything about it. It’s like a religious experience every time you hear about debt because you feel closer to God because you know God wants you to do something about it and then you don’t do anything about it. But your life and your future and even your relationships with the people that you love the most could be different if you were to just focus this year on getting rid of some of the stupid debt that you’ve been carrying around. So again this is my list. Your thing may not be on this list but I have a feeling if I were to sit down and talk to you or you were to spend a few minutes thinking about it there is something that is kind of hanging over you; there is something that is a part of your life; there is something that this year if you don’t get anything else accomplished, there is something you need to do. It’s that one thing.
So, for the next twenty-seven and a half minutes I’m going to tell you a story from the Old Testament and I’m praying that during the story whatever your one thing is will come to mind. In fact your one thing may have already come to mind. In fact you’re like okay there’s four, I don’t even know which is my one. There are four things; in fact how about there are six. So anyway, I don’t know what it is. Think about this, wouldn’t it be great if whatever your one thing is if something happened this year and at the end of this year you dealt with it, you put it behind you, you moved on, you embraced it or you let it go whatever it might be. Imagine how much better your life might be. Now the interesting thing about this whole topic is some of these things and we’re going to talk about some more in a minute, some of these things aren’t really church things. Some of these things you wouldn’t even consider spiritual things and yet they so impact your relationship with God and they so impact your relationship with others and it’s easy for those of us who are church people especially to sit in church and kind of feel good about the baptisms and sing the songs and maybe you started reading the Bible for yourself and to somehow overlook some fundamental things in our life that could make a huge difference if we would buckle down, focus on them and allow that one thing to become the focus of our life for a year so that we could deal with it, move beyond it or become whatever it is we want to become. And if you’re a Christian or if you believe in God perhaps become what God wants you to become.
So, let me set up this story for you real quick. Fifteen and a half years ago, actually almost sixteen years ago I preached an entire series through the Book of Nehemiah and if you’re not a Bible reader you may not have heard of Nehemiah. I’ll tell you the story in just a minute. And this was back in the old days. Now we do like four week series, six-week series, this was like a fourteen week series. I didn’t know any better. I thought hey here comes Sunday, I have got to preach on something so we spent fourteen weeks going through the Book of Nehemiah and in the middle of that series I preached a through passage of scripture in Nehemiah and there was a verse in that chapter that so go all over me and all over me and Sandra that this became a life verse for us. In fact we quoted this verse so many times we would get in a situation, we could look at each other and we knew what we were thinking about. It was this verse that made such a huge difference. It impacted the way we parented, it impacted the way we managed our money; I had a hobby that took a lot of time; we were setting up house in a rental house and I was about to unpack my hobby that took so much of my time and I was unpacking my hobby that took so much of my time and I could hear little feet running around upstairs, in the upstairs of this little rental house we had and this verse came to mind and I put all my stuff back in the box and I abandoned the hobby because of the power of this verse.
This has been such a big, big deal to us and so what I wanted to do today is I want to tell you the story of Nehemiah. I want to kind of lead you to this verse. I want to teach you the verse, it’s so simple and my heart’s desire and my prayer is that this simple verse will connect with the one thing you need to focus on this year and as a result God will do something incredible in your life and in six months from now, a year from now you would look back and say wow look what God has done as a result of me focusing on that one thing.
So the story of Nehemiah, the story of Nehemiah takes place in about 444 B.C. It takes place around Artaxerxes I who you may have studied in ancient history, probably not. He was the King of Persia. We would call him an emperor because Persia was the dominant world force at the time. But Artaxerxes was the Emperor and Nehemiah worked for Artaxerxes, King of Persia, lived in the City of Sousa which was the citadel or the capitol city of the Persian Empire. Nehemiah if you grew up in church you may have heard that he was the cup bearer to the king which we would consider a wine taster, somebody to make sure that the wine hadn’t been poisoned. But, Nehemiah was much more than that. Nehemiah was a friend, Nehemiah was an official, he was a Jewish man. We don’t know if he had ever been to Israel because over a hundred years before this the Babylonians who were kind of the big dog in the world at that point, the Babylonians had conquered Israel, destroyed the temple, and destroyed the walls. That is back when Nebuchadnezzar carted off some other famous Bible characters, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Daniel, maybe you heard those stories growing up in church. You’ve read those stories if you’re a Bible reader. Well over a hundred years later Nehemiah working for King Artaxerxes I, he gets this burden for his city and he hears how terrible things are in Jerusalem and so he does a very risky thing.
He goes to King Artaxerxes I and Nehemiah is a Jewish man and he says to King Artaxerxes oh King and he prayed a big prayer before he went before the king and Nehemiah Chapter 1 tells us about that prayer. And he goes to the king and he says King, look things are bad with my people and I’d like to go back and bring some organization, bring some leadership to my people. How would you feel about giving me some time off? Now he wasn’t an employee of the king, he was a slave and slaves don’t get time off but he said would you give me a slot of time to go and help my people and King Artaxerxes says I’ll do better than that. I will make you the governor of Judea, basically the mayor of Jerusalem and I will give you whatever you need to help you get your people in shape but you got to come back. You can’t stay away forever. So Nehemiah spends a lot of time preparing for this trip, gets a whole bunch of money, gets a bunch of lumber, building materials and he heads back to the City of Jerusalem. Now here is what you need to understand and it’s hard for us to wrap our minds around this. The people living in the City of Jerusalem, the walls had been torn down for so long no one living there had ever lived in the city when the walls weren’t torn down and the gates weren’t burned. So their entire national self esteem was tied to a city that was basically just open to anybody who wanted to come and anybody who wanted to go. The surrounding region was led by some very strong warlords and they would steal from the city, the would steal the crops, I mean the City of Jerusalem and the surrounding area, it was just the stomping ground for whoever wanted to come, whoever wanted to go.
So there was no national pride, there was no sense that God is with us, they had forgotten their history. Nehemiah shows up, he sees the city and it just breaks his heart even further and he takes an entire day and night to travel around the city and to meet the people and to talk to the people and he comes to this conclusion. If I don’t get anything else done while I’m here, I’ve got to get this wall rebuilt. The most important thing we can do, I mean there is an economy that needs to be propped up, there are leaders that need to be put in place, there is all kinds of problems but the one thing I’ve got to do while I’m here, we’ve got to get the wall rebuilt around this city. It will give people protection, it will give people a sense of national pride and it will protect us from our enemies. So Nehemiah calls all the people together who live in the city; all the people from the surrounding region and he casts this unbelievably compelling vision. In fact, if you are not a Christian or not a Bible reader I want to challenge you to find a Bible and go to the Old Testament and just read the little ancient document that is labeled Nehemiah. There are no miracles in the book; this is way before Jesus so you don’t have to worry about that if that is a problem for you; this is an incredible story of amazing, amazing leadership and somebody who knew how to cast a compelling vision. In fact, years ago when I first taught through the book I learned something about vision casting that I’ve been using ever since because Nehemiah pulled the people together, he said here’s the problem we need to solve, here’s the solution, here’s why we need to do something about it and here’s why we need to do something about it now. And the people rallied together and they began to rebuild the wall around the city.
Now this was a huge, huge task and it took everybody to be involved and they began to make progress. Well as they began to make progress the people from the surrounding regions thought uh-oh there goes part of our economy; uh-oh there goes part of our freedom you know to kind of pillage and take what we want; uh-oh if Jerusalem gets the wall rebuilt they will become a force to be reckoned with. Heck, they may raise an army, they might be competition for us in this part of the world and so the surrounding regions felt very, very defensive and very threatened by the fact that Nehemiah was rebuilding this wall. Now the leader of the opposition was a guy named Sanballat. This might be a good name for a puppy maybe not for a child. I don’t know. We could bring this name back. This is his name, his name was Sanballat and Sanballat had a lot of influence in the region and Sanballat decided we have got to stop the wall. So, they began to send spies into the city to start rumors, they began to infiltrate, they began to try to discourage the people. When that didn’t work they actually sent armed forces against the people to attack the workers on the wall. Nehemiah had to pull everybody off the wall, arm the men so some people would stand guard, others would work on the wall. So they just caused lots and lots and lots of problems but no matter what happened the wall continued to go higher, higher, and higher. So finally they got to the place where the wall was almost complete and they were about to rebuild the gates and Sanballat realized this isn’t working.
So he decided a different strategy. Sanballat decided to try to distract Nehemiah from the work and to actually get him outside the city and once he was outside the city to put him to death because they realized if we can kill Nehemiah certainly the people will become discouraged and they will give up on this crazy idea of rebuilding the wall. And, in Nehemiah Chapter 6, we find this encounter between Sanballat and Nehemiah as Sanballat tries to distract Nehemiah from the work and it’s within the context of that part of the story that we bump into this verse that really impacted our lives in a big, big way. So this is Nehemiah, Chapter 6, let me read these verses to you. You can follow along if you brought a Bible, if not we’ll put them right up here on the little screen. So, here we go, Nehemiah 6:1.
Nehemiah 6:1 (NAS)
1 When it was reported to Sanballat . . .
There is our guy.
Nehemiah 6:1 (NAS)
1 When it was reported to Sanballat, Tobiah, to Gesham the Arab and to the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and that no breach . . .
And a breach is basically a break or a low point in the wall.
Nehemiah 6:1 (NAS)
1 When it was reported to Sanballat, Tobiah, to Gesham the Arab and to the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and that no breach remained in it although at the time I had not set up the doors and the gates then 2 Sanballat and Gesham sent a message to me saying . . .
So these guys realized there is no way we’re going to stop this unless we stop Nehemiah so they write Nehemiah a letter and they give it to a messenger and the messenger shows up and rattles his ladder and Nehemiah comes down and says hey I’ve got this letter and he opens this letter and it’s a letter from his enemy, Sanballat and here is what the letter said.
Nehemiah 6:2 (NAS)
2 Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us meet together. . .
Let’s have lunch. Let’s have breakfast, maybe coffee, maybe dinner.
Nehemiah 6:2 (NAS)
2 then Sanballat and Geshem sent a message to me, saying, “Come, let us meet together at Chephirim. . .
Which was basically; it’s a Hebrew word that means a village so this was basically let’s find a village.
Nehemiah 6:2 (NAS)
2 then Sanballat and Geshem sent a message to me, saying, “Come, let us meet together at Chephirim in the plain of Ono.” But they were planning to harm me.
So Nehemiah gets this letter and he reads this letter and they’re saying hey let’s spend some time together but Nehemiah knew they don’t want to have lunch, they don’t want to have a discussion, they’re trying to harm me so that the work on the wall will stop.
Nehemiah 6:3 (NAS)
3 So I sent messengers to them, saying . . .
Now, what Nehemiah sent messengers to them saying is the thing that just transformed our lives in a big, big way. What comes next is the verse that just jumped off the page at me, jumped off the page at Sandra, we wrote this on cards, this hangs in our house on a plaque, people who have heard us say this so many times they would give us things with this verse on it because it became such a powerful, powerful life verse. We would say this over our children, we would say it over our finances, we said it at every level of our lives and here was the message that Nehemiah sent back to Sanballat.
Nehemiah 6:3 (NAS)
3 So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.
You tell Sanballat I’m doing a great work right here and I cannot come down. Would you just say this out loud with me starting right; I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. One more time, I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. One more time, I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. There is something in your life, there is something in your life, there is a wall in your world that you need to climb up on and make sure you complete whatever the task is, whatever the thing is God has given you to do or you just know in your heart you need to do and you need to say with Nehemiah right here in this spot, in this relationship, in my work, in this part of my life and this part of my profession, I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Well they didn’t give up. In fact here’s the rest of his response.
Nehemiah 6:3 (NAS)
3 So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?”
Why should I stop? I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. By the way, just give them this message, why should I stop doing this great work and come down and spend time with you? How does spending time with you benefit the great work that I’m doing on the wall? So the story continues.
Nehemiah 6:4 (NAS)
4 They sent messages to me four times in this manner, and I answered them in the same way.
So they sent another message, okay well how does your schedule look? You know, get your people to call my people. Surely there is some point in which we can meet. You’re not going to work on the wall 24/7; come on Nehemiah, just take a break. Hey Nehemiah, when it’s convenient for you let us know, we’ll meet you anywhere on the plain of Ono, we just want to get together and every time they invited him off the wall, every time they invited him off the wall he sent them the same message, I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.
Now here’s what is so significant for us. If Nehemiah had come off the wall and if Nehemiah had met with Sanballat and his friends they would have taken his life. Did you know that there are things in your life and there are things in my life that if we do not complete them, if we do not focus on them, if we do not deal with them they have the potential to ruin our lives as well? There are things relationally that if you don’t give attention to; if you don’t tend to they have the potential to destroy, to use Nehemiah’s term, to kill your family, to kill your marriage, to kill your future relationship with your kids and possibly even your grandkids. There are things that if you don’t give attention to them and decide I’m staying on the ladder until we finish this wall that have the potential to ruin you financially. You know that. Some of you are facing that right now because you didn’t pay attention to a breach in your wall. There are things that have the potential to actually physically kill you if you do not pay attention to them. Some of you have health challenges; some of you have health challenges that you just say I’m not going to look; I’m not going to pay attention to that; you’ve told your wife don’t bring it up again; you’ve told your husband don’t bring it up again; you’ve changed doctors; you’ve torn up prescriptions; you’ve just decided I’m going to gut it out; I’m just going to work it out; it’s all going to work out and you’re not paying attention. And, you come to church every Sunday or you watch online every week and you clap along and you sing the songs and you say go Jesus and you get all you know quiver in your liver and it’s just all wonderful and we love that. But you’re ignoring a fundamental and it’s a fundamental that if you don’t pay attention to it, it could literally take your life.
You say well Andy that’s not like church stuff; that’s not like spiritual stuff. Of course it is. God gave you your body. You can’t help anybody without a body. Did you know that? I used to have a seminary professor that said I’ve never seen anybody with a spiritual ministry without a physical body. It’s a good point. There are a lot of things you can’t do without a physical body. Your physical body is part of God’s will for your life and for some of you, you know what your wall is and you’re not paying attention. Listen, it goes to every level of our life. For some of you, for you parents listen, this is what Sandra and I used to do, you need to go in and sit on the bedside by your little kids, you’ve got little kids right now, maybe even infants or little kids that are in first or second grade or getting ready to start elementary school, you need to go sit on their bed and stroke their hair and you need to say out loud right here I’m doing a great work. I’m doing a great work, I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. And there are a lot of things I could do and there are a lot of things I could be involved with but this is the great work that God has called me to do at this stage of my life and I am not coming down. For those of you with teenagers you need to do the same thing. You need to walk in their room when they’re asleep, it may be late, you may have to set the alarm clock to get in there when they’re asleep and you need to look at those big old bodies in those beds and you’re thinking how in the world did they get so big and you look at them and say this is my great work.
This is the greatest thing I could give my life to. I am doing a great work and I’m not coming down and I’m not going to allow anything to distract me from the privilege I have of investing in these young adults who are going to go on and live longer than me and do things I would never have the potential to do. You’re doing a great work and you can’t afford to come down. Men, that picture you have of your wife or that picture of you have of your wife and your kids sitting on your desk at work, everyday you need to look at it and say I’m doing a great work and yeah there are other trips I could take and yeah there is more money I could make and yeah there are more opportunities I could chase and yeah I could be away from home two or three more nights a week and have other people asking me to do things and I could be busy, busy, busy but right there I’m doing a great work; I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. And ladies, you need to look at your husband and say he’s a piece of work. I don’t know what ladies say you know, he’s a piece of work, he needs my help, where would he be without me. I don’t know what woman think when they look at us. You probably feel sorry for us. I understand that. But you understand there is a significant, significant role that you play and I don’t have to tell you what it is. You’re smart enough to know what it is but it’s so easy to get distracted.
If you’re a college student, single adult or teenager, come on you’re smart, you know the critical things don’t you? You know the things you’ve got to do. You know what the wall is for you. You know where the breach is for you. You know what sets you up for disaster in the future. You know what sets you up for success in the future and once you know what that is you are responsible to decide this is my wall, I’m doing a great work and I will not, I will not, I will not come down. You’re cute but I’m not coming down for you. That’s a good opportunity but I’m not coming down for that. I’d love to hang out with you guys, it will be a year from now, I’m not coming down. I know what it is that God has called me to do; I know what it is in my heart that I need to do; I know what my conscious is telling me and I’m not coming down. Now as I’m saying all of this you know what I’m talking about don’t you? It’s like I don’t even have to tell you. I don’t have to give you a list. I could stop now and already things have come to our mind. We know the great work that we have an opportunity to do. We know the opportunities we need to focus on. We know the relationships that need our attention. The challenge for you as you face this next year is this, will you climb that ladder; will you stay on that wall until you finish what you know in your heart and what your Heavenly Father has made clear to you needs to be accomplished. I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down.
Well the fact that Nehemiah wouldn’t come off the wall did not discourage his detractors and did not discourage his enemies. They came up with all kinds of new things. One thing was they started a rumor about him. They started a rumor that they hoped would leak all the way to King Artaxerxes so that King Artaxerxes would yank Nehemiah out of Judea and the rumor was that Nehemiah was trying to establish a kingdom and he was trying to make himself King of Judea and the reason he was rebuilding these walls is so that he could raise an army and rebel against Persia and rebel against King Artaxerxes and they thought perhaps if we get this rumor going Nehemiah will feel like he needs to leave the city, leave the wall, go back to Persia and convince the King and Sousa that hey these rumors you’re hearing, they’re not true. They thought maybe he would run for his life to defend his life to the Emperor and to the King. And when Nehemiah heard about these rumors he just shook his head and said I’m not leaving the wall. I’m not leaving the wall until the wall if finished.
When that didn’t work they tried something else. A friend of his, he thought was a friend, named Shemaiah called him over to his house and he went to see Shemaiah and Shemaiah says hey listen Nehemiah, you need to know you have enemies even in this city. There are Jews in this city whose livelihoods are being threatened by this wall. There are Jews in this city that have commerce deals and marketplace deals with the people outside of this region and the fact that they’re not going to be able to take advantage of the high interest rates that they’re charging your people and our people, they don’t like this wall and there is a group that plans to murder you in your sleep. Now Nehemiah because I’m your friend I’m telling you this. Here is what we need to do. We need to go right now to the temple and you need to cling to the altar because in that day and age if a man or woman fled to the temple and clung to the altar then the law said that you couldn’t put a person to death until they had had a fair trial if they clung to the altar and so there was all this kind of legalese going on and Nehemiah looked at him and said I don’t believe you. And even if it is true I’m going back to work on the wall. We’re not coming down, we’re not going to stop until this wall is complete. I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. I’m not going to let the rumors pull me off, I’m not going to let the threats pull me off, I’m not going to let the missed opportunities throw me off, I’m not going to my fear of the King of Persia pull me off. I’m doing a great work right here and I cannot and I will not come down.
So the Book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah’s story tells us that eventually they finished the wall. Here is how the author writes it. He says it this way.
Nehemiah 6:15 (NAS)
15So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of the month Elul, in fifty-two days.
Fifty-two days which is amazing, they rebuilt the wall in fifty-two days. It wasn’t the entire ancient City of Jerusalem but it was a smaller section of Jerusalem but still it was quite an accomplishment to rebuild the wall from the ruble that had been laying there for over a hundred years in fifty-two days.
Nehemiah 6:16 (NAS)
16 When all our enemies heard of it, and all the nations surrounding us saw it, they lost their confidence; for they recognized that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.
That even throughout the story there are no miracles. I mean they don’t wake up one morning and part of the wall is complete. You know there aren’t lightning bolts from heaven to strike all their enemies dead. There are no earthquakes. There is nothing supernatural in the whole story. These are just men and women that knew in their hearts something needed to be done. This was a leader that understood I can’t come down from the wall and God honored their hard work; God honored their discipline, God honored Nehemiah’s leadership and at the end of the day what happened was so almost miraculous that everybody understood. Even their enemies, wow there is something going on here. This bears the thumbprint of God Almighty. Now at this point in the message you know the temptation would be to say okay you know everybody knows what your one thing is, let’s pray and go out there and do your one thing and have a nice year, see you next time and let you out early. But, we don’t roll that way around here do we? So what I want to do for the next few minutes is I want to prod you. I want to goad you. I want to make you mad. I want to disturb you. You may decide you want to leave the church after this and here’s the great thing about a giant church. If you leave we’re just going to go on without you. We’re not dependent on you. We love you, we do; we love you but we don’t need you. In fact the reason I can love you is because we don’t need you. We just want you here.
So, if I make you so mad you decide not to come back, six months from now, eight months from now when you finally realize that I might have been right, I might have been right, you’re welcome to come back and we won’t penalize you one single bit. We’re all about grace. But, you know what, it would be foolish for me to think because I’m like you; it would be foolish for me to think that by simply throwing out this kind of broad net of yeah what’s the one thing you need to work on when in fact you already know. You already know and you’ve already tried. You might have even addressed some of these things. But because I love you, listen, I don’t want you to get here a year from now and be carrying around the same old stuff and dealing with the same old junk. Why would you want to do that? Your Heavenly Father wants better for you than that. So let me kind of push you a little bit with some specifics. Okay? For some of you, your portion of the wall is a habit that you need to break. For some of you, you just drink too much. You just do. Let me tell you how you can know if you drink too much. Someone has said to you I think you drink too much. That was complicated. Let me go over that again because this is kind of sophisticated. Okay you know, if someone has ever said to you I think you have a drinking problem, you do. Do you know how I know that? Because they didn’t want to tell you that and they didn’t tell you that the first time they noticed it and they prayed about it and they felt guilty about it and they didn’t know if it was any of their business and they got up the courage to mention it to you and you said no you don’t. In fact you may not even remember they said it because you drink too much.
So here’s the deal. Come on, come on, it’s because I love you, this is an issue for you and this needs to be the year done with that; done with that. You say Andy has something against alcohol. It has nothing to do with alcohol. It has to do with you and the debilitating habit that is beginning to ruin and take control of your life and you know it’s true. That’s your wall. That’s your wall. You may do a lot of things this year; you can do a lot of things this year, that’s the one thing you must do. You’ve got to get that under control. It may be a prescription drug addiction and you’ve excused it because they’re prescription drugs and you got a doctor, doctors, lots of esses you know; four doctors think you should be taking this stuff. That’s why all four prescribe it to you. Right? You have a prescription drug problem. This is your year. You need to deal with that and don’t write me a letter and send me an email explaining your situation. Look I know to some extent it’s justified. I mean nobody wakes up and wants to have a prescription drug problem but for whatever reason you’ve allowed yourself to be pulled into this, this is your wall. This is your year. This is the year where you say you know what, I’m not going to be controlled anymore by something in a bottle and whatever I have to do, whoever I have to confess to, this is the end for me. For some of you it’s tobacco addiction. Come on, you smoke. Don’t smoke. Just stop. Whatever you have to do, whoever you have to confess to. You may be sixteen years old, maybe nobody knows but your three best friends. Okay? You need to tell your parents. Well they will freak out. Of course they will. You know why? They love you, they don’t want you to die. Of course they’re going to freak out. We can’t help it. We’re wired to freak out.
All I am saying is this, if that’s your wall, come on, come on, come on, if that’s your wall you have got to decide I’m doing a great work, my health is my great work; my future is my great work; being there for my kids, my grandkids is my great work, I’m not coming down. For you it might be some sort of internet addiction. Come on, this is the year. This is the year. Don’t dance around; don’t try to control it; don’t try to pray and God and no, no, no, whatever you’ve got to do. This is hard isn’t it? See, if it was easy you would have already taken care of it. If it was easy we wouldn’t have to talk about these things. This is the year. What is your wall? What is that habit? What is that thing that’s always in the room with you and your wife, you and your husband, you and your kids, you and your family? There is you and her and then there is that other thing. What is that? They would love to see it disappear. No one can make it disappear but you. It’s a decision you have to make and it takes Nehemiah kind of determination to stay on the wall until it’s dealt with. For some of you going back to what we said earlier, its debt. You need to sell something and move in with your mama or your husband’s mama or your wife’s grandmamma, just find a mama. You’ve got to go somewhere because you can’t afford your lifestyle. You just can’t and you didn’t do this on purpose. Nobody signs up you know, nobody says one of my goals in life is to wake up and no, you’re just there. It doesn’t matter how you got there. Let this be the year that you decide I don’t care what my lifestyle looks like; I don’t care what I have to drive; I don’t care what people say; I don’t care what the reputation is; I don’t care about any of that, I’m staying on this wall until I’m at a place where I can manage my finances in a way that honors God.
What about school? Some of you, you just need to go back to school. You never finished and you feel weird about it. In fact you lie about it. People say where did you go to college and you lie. Well I did go there. Yeah but you didn’t finish there. And there is something in you and if you’re real honest and come on I know this is sensitive; if you’re real honest you know you need to finish. That’s your wall, finish. Whenever young people, whatever young people is, I don’t even know anymore come to me and want to talk about the ministry and I feel like God is calling me into ministry; I’m like open your eyes, look at me. Look right here, okay, hey I’m not very sympathetic, I mean I say have you finished school? No. Well finish school then come back. Well I know . . . no, no, finish school. You live in the United States of America. Are you kidding me? You get to go to school. In some cases it’s paid for. Finish school. That’s your wall. Don’t get distracted by anything else, get back in or finish. You say well Andy is there like a verse for that? No. We don’t need a verse. Common sense, finish school. And then this whole relationship thing. Right? Come on, and the thing about relationships like I said they are so emotional. Right? I mean you can hear and you go yeah, yeah, yeah and then when it comes to having that conversation it’s like . . . and men you know we’re told we’re not emotional. We’re the worst. We’re so emotional we’re afraid to feel what we feel. At least our wives and our girlfriends, they feel it and it’s like I don’t feel that. Yes you do, you’re scared. You are scared to death of feeling something. I understand that, I’m a guy. It’s terrorizing, it’s like if it ever got to here I might cry.
Now look, I get that. Listen, some of you, you know this, your marriage is going like this. Right now it’s here but a year from now it’s going to be here and five years from now it’s going to be there and you know that. Don’t spend another year pretending please. For your sake, for your kids’ sake; for your step kids’ sake, for your grandkids, come on. Would you be willing to say it’s awkward, it’s embarrassing? Would you be willing to sit down with your community group in the next couple of weeks and say hey before we start the curriculum Martha and I; if that’s not your name see how bad; okay, you know my wife and I, we just have got to say you know we’ve been in this group for three months; we’ve been in this group for six months and we’re kind of happy, happy, happy and we eat your food and drink your coffee but it’s not good. We’ve been pretending. We’ve been pretending and we don’t want to pretend anymore. This is our wall and we’re not expecting you to be our marriage counselors but we want you to know when we show up for group every week our wall is we want to move back in each other’s direction; we don’t know how but we decided this year no more pretending. We’re not coming down off this wall. We don’t care how many marriage counselors we have to see and we don’t care who knows, we’re not going to try to protect our reputation because what’s our reputation if our marriage ends in divorce anyway. So come on, that’s your wall and you’re sitting here or you’re watching online going I wish my husband or I wish my wife . . . hey, you’ve got to decide for you. You have to decide for you.
It could be the opposite. It’s like I said while ago, maybe you’re in a relationship that you don’t need to be in; you’ve got a group of friends that need to go and come one they’re good people and you’re good people but when that good people and you good people get together it’s bad. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, it doesn’t matter, you know that’s not a good relationship for you. You know that if you stay in that relationship it will continue to take you in a direction you don’t even want to go. It could be people you work with, somebody you live with, it could be a roommate, it could be a male/female thing and you’ve moved in together and you’ve kind of put on the happy face and one day we’re going to get married but come on. I don’t have any verses, I don’t need any verses, you just know in your heart this isn’t right for me and you’re scared and you’re so financially intertwined you just need to decide okay this is my wall. I don’t know how I’m getting out of this, it’s going to be messy, it’s going to be weird, my friends are going to think I’ve lost my mind, my parents will be somewhat relieved and somewhat disappointed, it doesn’t matter. If you know that’s what you need to do and if you’re a Christian, come one, if you’re a Christian and you know in your heart it’s something God wants you to do that’s your wall. I’m doing a great work, I don’t care what anybody says, I don’t care how afraid they make me feel; I don’t care about the fact that I don’t know if there is anybody else for me, I’m doing a great work and I’m not coming down until this is resolved in my life.
You know all those are kind of negative. There is a positive aspect to this. Do you know what that is? For some of you, you’ve been wanting to start a business; you’ve been wanting to start a charity; you’ve been wanting to launch a ministry and you’ve been thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it and every year you think about it and every year you pray about it and every year you think about it and you’re waiting. I know what you’re waiting on, believe me I know. You’re waiting to win the lottery because if you could win the lottery then you could quit your job and start your ministry or start your charity or start your business. Now maybe you’re different than me, I’ve never heard a story that said oh here is how my story went. I wanted to start a business and then when I won the lottery I started it. Maybe that story is out there somewhere. You know what, if God has put it on your heart to launch something, climb up that ladder, get on that wall and trust God to fill in the gaps. The great news about the story of Nehemiah, there are no miracles but clearly the hand of God was at work and when you lean into what you know God’s will for your life is. When you lean into the plans that God has for you, when you lean into the vision that God has birthed inside of you, you never know what God will do but that’s the problem, you will never know what God will do until you climb that ladder and decide you know what, I don’t know how this is going to work out. I don’t know where the money is going to come from; I don’t know how it’s going to deal with my job and my parents-in-law think I’ve lost my mind but this is something I’ve got to do.
This is the one thing this year I’ve got to begin making progress with and then you watch and you see that every single day, every single day you look at the distractions; every single day you look at the distracting people; every single day you look down that ladder at your reputation and what people are saying and you just say I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. So now you know what your one thing is. It may have been on my list and maybe something I didn’t mention but you know don’t you? Don’t we just know? Now here is the big challenge. When you shut down your computer or when you shut down your iPhone or your iPad or however you’re watching this, when you walk out these doors nothing out there has changed. Nothing has changed. The only thing that has changed is you. The only thing that has changed about you is something in your mind.
You don’t have anymore money; you don’t have anymore time; you don’t have any less responsibility; you don’t have any less obligation. But, right here you know and so you’ve got to make up your mind and you’ve got to say it every single day, I’m doing a great work with my family, with my kids, this is my focus right now. I’m not going to have lunch; I’m not going to play tennis; I’m not going to be part of a club; this is my work, I’m doing a great work. I’m not going to travel more; not going to do more deals; going home and having dinner with my family. I’m doing a great work. I’m not going to worry about what everybody says; not going to worry about what my friends say; I’m getting out of this relationship. I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. And here is the thing and I say this to you so often but it’s so true for all of us, here’s the thing and if I was looking at you over coffee this is what I would look right into your eyes and say, you have no idea what hangs in the balance of your decision to stay on that wall. You have no idea what hangs in the balance relationally, financially, in terms of impact, impact the city, impact the country, impact the world, you have no idea what hangs in the balance of your decision to look down and say I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down.
So whatever your one thing is, whatever your one thing is for this year my hope, my prayer for you, my hope, my prayer for us is that we’ll walk out those doors, we’ll close our computers and we will do it and when the enemy starts whispering and when the people around us start gossiping and when our parents and even our parents-in-law don’t understand we’ll just whisper, I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down.
