Read Nehemiah 4
Focus on verses 7-8
Any project that is worth completing will invariably encounter some opposition. The opposition may come in the form of obstacles or complications that require complex solutions, or the opposition may come from people who are opposed to the project altogether. Either way if the project is to be completed the obstacle must be overcome somehow.
Nehemiah strikes me as the kind of person whose vocabulary did not include the word “can’t”. I can imagine him replying to the phrase “we can’t do that” with “You might be right, but, if we could do it, how would we do it?” Successful leaders are not successful because they give up easily. Successful leaders tend to be successful because they help those who they are leading to overcome obstacles.
Nehemiah also gives us a very simple and effective pattern to follow when facing obstacles. It involves two steps that are listed in verse nine. The first is; they prayed to God, however, they did not stop there. They prayed and then they acted. In this case that action involved setting a guard for protection against the people who were plotting to harm them. There is a third step, without which the project would not have been completed. That step is that they continued to build the wall.
What we have here is three simple steps to overcoming obstacles or opposition when attempting to complete what we have been called to do:
- Pray
- Act
- Work
The order of these is critical to the success of the project. To act before praying would be to begin moving before we know what direction to go. To work before acting upon the direction received in prayer may put those who work at risk.
Overcoming obstacles is rarely easy, but it is possible if we choose to follow God’s methods to accomplish the goal. An obstacle my look impossible to us from our human perspective, but nothing is impossible with God.
