I'm Not Coming Down

They say that somewhere around mile 20, every marathon runner hits what they call “the wall.” It is a barrier you feel in your body when every fiber of your being is screaming to stop. Those who finish the race are not the ones who never hit the wall; they are the ones who hit the wall and keep their feet moving anyway. Resilience is not the absence of the urge to quit. It is what you do with that urge when it happens. Many of us know what it feels like to hit a wall in our marriage, career, health, or faith. When you hit that wall, everything in you tells you to give up.

Figuring out how to navigate the walls of life is what our text today is all about. In the book of Nehemiah, we find a man in the process of rebuilding what was broken. He returned from exile to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and restore safety and dignity to his people. By the time we get to chapter six, the work is almost done. But just as he is on the verge of victory, the opposition intensifies. The attacks he faces are designed with one goal: to get him to come down off that wall. Nehemiah’s story is a masterclass for us on how to stand firm when the world tries to make us give up on our Kingdom assignment.