How to Handle Hindrances
Neh. 6
Vance Havner once wrote Any housewife knows that the best way to remember the things she meant to do and forgot is to start praying. They will come to her mind to divert her from prayer.
I’m not a housewife, but I know that happens to me all the time. Almost every time I try to pray, my mind starts ticking off all the other things I need to be doing. The phone rings, the dog barks, somebody knocks on the door. Have you ever noticed that every time you try to do anything for the Lord, something tries to hinder you? It may be anger, or fear, or worry that hinders your service to the Lord, but It happens too regular to be accidental. I suggest to you that whether we know or not, those hindrances can be traced back to our old enemy, the devil. How do you handle these hindrances? How do you keep doing what you know the Lord wants you to do when the devil tries to distract you? This is what I want us to talk about tonight as we look at how a man named Nehemiah handled some hindrances the devil sent his way.
PRAYER
Nehemiah gives us 5 keys to handling hindrances when you’re trying to serve the Lord:
1. Don’t get involved in negotiation. (v.1-4)
One of the devil’s greatest strategies to hinder us from serving the Lord is negotiation. He negotiated with Eve.
I recently read the legend of a guitar player named Robert Johnson. He was a common laborer back during the 1930s who wanted to be a musician, but every time he played he was booed off stage. Johnson became a drifter, jumping trains to ride from town to town. Legend says that years later he came back home, got up to play the guitar, and shocked everybody by his amazing guitar playing. The story was that out on a dark, lonely night at a Mississippi crossroads, he met the devil, and offered his soul in exchange for the talent of playing guitar like nobody else.
You’ve probably read some of those stories about people who make a deal with the devil, and who usually end up with the short end of the stick. There are even some of those in the Bible.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
Eve, let’s get together and think about this logically. Let’s talk it out: do you really think God is looking out for your best interests here? By the time the devil finishes his negotiations with Adam and Eve, they’ve lost it all.
In this chapter, Nehemiah is a man who is dedicated to serving the Lord, but the devil sends some of his servants to try and bring Nehemiah to the negotiating table.
Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem were all enemies of Israel, who were bent on finding anyway they could to hinder the work of God. Here they invite Nehemiah to sit down and talk with them at a small town called Ono. But Nehemiah knows that he will never get ahead by negotiating with these sly scoundrels. Four times they ask for a meeting; four times Nehemiah replies the same way: I’m too busy to come out and play with you guys. I’ve got more important things to do!
The devil loves to call you up and spend time talking. He wants to keep you on the line so he can subtly hinder you by planting seeds of doubt or discouragement in your mind and heart. He’s like a diabolical telemarketer. The longer he can keep you on the line, the better chance he can get to hinder you from faithfully serving the Lord.
You know the best way to stop this strategy? Give him a busy signal. Don’t answer when he calls. Ignore his temptations, and instead fill your mind and heart with the word of the Lord. There are times when you and I must stand strong in the Lord against the devil, but there are other times when the best strategy is to turn a deaf ear. Refuse to listen or entertain thoughts that hinder your relationship with Christ.
Martin Luther once said, Temptations, of course, cannot be avoided, but because we cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, there is no need that we should let them nest in our hair.
Don’t ever allow yourself to begin to negotiate right and wrong with the devil, or it will always end up costing you everything. But here’s another key to handling hindrances:
2. Don’t give in to intimidation. (v. 5-9)
If the devil can’t talk you into not serving God, he’ll try to scare you out of serving God. When Sanballat and Co. see that Nehemiah won’t negotiate, they go to plan B: intimidate. He sends a letter to Nehemiah, accusing him and his workers of rebelling against the king, and promising that if Nehemiah doesn’t meet with him, he will report this rebellion to the king.
This was a serious threat. Only a few years earlier, the Persian king had stopped reconstruction on the walls of Jerusalem for this very same reason. Sanballat’s letter could not only hinder the work of God, but could stop the work completely. How can Nehemiah respond to this hindrance of intimidation? He sends back a response: Dear Sanballat- your losing your marbles! Everybody knows what’s going on here in Jerusalem! The king knows we’re not trying to start a rebellion! He’s the one who sent me here! Put a sock in it! You can’t scare me into quitting my work for the Lord!
I like Nehemiah’s courage and boldness. He refuses to be intimidated by the devil. How about you? Does the devil ever try to hinder you with intimidation?
You can’t do this for the Lord! You’re not smart enough/talented enough/strong enough/good enough! If you try to serve the Lord, you’re just going to fall flat on your face and make a fool of yourself! Do you really want to risk losing your friends by doing what God says to do? You’ll never be able to do what God is asking you to do—it’s too hard for someone as weak as you are.
Your enemy will use every trick in his book to hinder you from serving the Lord by intimidating you with fear, worry and doubt. How do you keep from being intimidated? Quote the words of
Psalm 27:1 The LORD is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid?
2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
Don’t ever let the devil hinder you with intimidation. When he tells you how small and weak you are, agree with him, but then remind him of how great and powerful the Lord Who lives in you is!
1 John 4:4 …He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
Still another key to handling hindrances is
3. Don’t fall prey to elimination. (v. 10-13)
Notice how the conspiracy to hinder Nehemiah begins to widen, now including Shemaiah, who may been a false prophet and priest, and a false prophetess named Noadiah (v. 14). They pretend to be on Nehemiah’s side, and tell him he is marked out for assassination. Shemaiah suggests Nehemiah hide in the Temple to escape this plot. There is only one problem with this plan: by God’s law, only the priests are allowed in the Temple, and Nehemiah is not a priest. Once again Nehemiah realizes their plan is …that I should be afraid and act that way and sin, so that they might have cause for an evil report, that they might reproach me. (v. 13.) They want to discredit Nehemiah before his own people, and before God by tripping him up in sin, and eliminating him from the scene.
How the devil would like to eliminate you and I by tripping us up in some sin or offense. If he can get us to lose our temper, or build up our pride, or get involved in some questionable business or personal matter, he can cast doubt in our own minds and in the minds of others. If he can get us just this once to do the wrong thing, he can hinder us so much that we cannot serve the Lord where He calls us to. You can still be saved, and yet get disqualified from doing God’s work. This is what Paul means when he writes
1 Corinthians 9:27 But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.
The devil will try to ruin your witness before others, and neutralize your influence for Christ. He will try to disqualify you from leadership for the Lord, and leave you discouraged and defeated. This is why Nehemiah was very careful in his choices. He is a good example for us to do as
Ephesians 5:15-17 15See then that you walk circumspectly (= carefully), not as fools but as wise, 16redeeming the time, because the days are evil. 17Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
The 1908 National League season saw a fierce struggle between the Chicago Cubs and New York Giants. The last game for the championship was tied, and in the bottom of the ninth, the Giants were at bat. There were two outs, and two men on base. The winning run was on third, and a rookie named Fred Merkle is on first. The batter hits a single, and the runner on third lumbers home. The Giants had apparently won the game and the pennant. Jubilant Giant fans poured onto the field while Fred Merkle was still on his way to second. Alarmed by the crowd suddenly bearing down on him and convinced the game was over, he ran straight for the clubhouse. He didn’t go all the way to second base.
The Chicago 2nd baseman noticed the Merkle hadn’t bothered to touch 2nd. If he could get the ball and touch second himself, the winning run would be cancelled by the force-out. First he had to find the ball. One of the New York coaches saw what was happening, and he ran for the ball and threw it into the stands. A fan in a brown bowler caught it and started home with his trophy. Two Cubs players chased the man through the mob and took the ball away from him, ran back to the field, and threw it to their second baseman, who, holding the ball, jumped up and down on the bag to make sure the umpire saw what he had done. As a result, New York lost the game—and the Pennant.
It’s just that easy for the devil to hinder you from working for the Lord by eliminating you because of some foolish mistake. Be careful how you live! Don’t fall prey to elimination!
4. Maintain your supplication. (v.14)
The entire book of Nehemiah demonstrates Nehemiah is a praying man. Whenever he needs guidance, he prays; when he is grieving, he prays; when he is facing hindrances, he prays and keeps on praying.
Nehemiah 6:9 Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands.
In v. 14 he prays God would deal with the hindrances of his enemies, and frustrate their plans. Nehemiah realizes that he cannot handle hindrances by his own power- he needs God’s help to handle hindrances.
You and I need God’s help to handle hindrances in our lives, too. We need to maintain our supplication—we need to keep praying. That means setting aside times to pray, but it also means shooting up those prayers when we are busy doing something else. Without prayer, you cannot hope to overcome hindrances in your work for the Lord. The Bible says we should
Ephesians 6:18 praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints—
Prayer—whether it’s long hours or a desperate SOS—is how you and I access God’s power to deal with hindrances to our serving the Lord. Prayer should not only be our first resort, but a holy habit of life if you want to handle hindrances.
Finally, Nehemiah shows us that we handle hindrances by
5. Maintain your determination. (v. 15-19)
Nehemiah was not a quitter, especially when it came to serving the Lord. In spite of the hindrances, which these verses tell us included spies for the enemy, the wall is finished in an incredible 52 days, encouraging the Jews, but discouraging their enemies. But Nehemiah doesn’t take the credit for the work.
Nehemiah 6:16 …this work was done by our God.
Which is true, but let’s also remember that God used a man who refused to give up, a man who was determined to do God’s work no matter what it cost him, a man who prayed and persevered until he accomplished God’s mission for him- Nehemiah.
One of my superstitions has always been when I started to go anywhere, or to do anything, never to turn back or to stop until the thing intended was accomplished.- Ulysses S. Grant,
Determination is important in almost anything you do, isn’t it? Any job worth doing requires somebody who will work hard to get it complete. You’ve got to have a holy determination if you want to handle hindrances and accomplish anything for the Lord. You’ve got to have a faith that believes God can help you overcome any obstacle, and keep you going no matter how much you may want to throw in the towel. If you want to overcome hindrances, you have to be determined that with God as your strength, you will do His will and His work.
Bible teacher A. T. Pierson tells about a new convert to Christ who had a strange dream in which he was trapped down in a very deep well in the night. He looked up and saw a single star shining far above him, and it seemed to let down lines of silver light that took hold upon him and lifted him up. Then he looked down, and he began to go down. He looked up, and he began to go up; he looked down, and he began to go down again. He found that by simply keeping his eye on that star, he rose out of the well until his foot stood on the firm ground. The dream was a parable, said Dr. Pierson. “Get your eyes off yourself and on your Savior, get them off your disease and on your physician.… Now and here, turn your eyes to the Lord Jesus.”*
I don’t know what hindrances the devil is throwing your way tonight, but I do know this: if you take your eyes off the hindrance, and put them on Christ, He will remove them so you can serve the Lord without fear or worry. How will you handle your hindrances?
