Satan will try to make our steps toward God look self-serving. He might say, “Who do you think you are? You just want to do your own thing!” Or, “What
right do you have to expect God to do that?” The undermining of confidence begins with such abusive thoughts contaminating our minds.
Sanballat again hurled his accusations toward Nehemiah:
“What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones
from the heaps of rubbish — stones that are burned?” (Nehemiah 4:2 NKJV).
Satan mocks us as we allow the Holy Spirit to build our lives. He reminds us of our human weakness. He magnifies our problems. He tries to convince us
of the hopeless act of reclaiming the broken stones of the wall.
If we yield to the accusations and distortions of our enemy, the work of the Holy Spirit will cease. We are to answer our enemy as Nehemiah did Sanballat:
“I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3 NKJV).
The work of the Spirit went on as the people continued to work. Jerusalem was strengthened and her walls rebuilt. Strong and impenetrable, she would no
longer be vulnerable to her enemies or embarrassed by her weakness.
The first words Nehemiah declared to Sanballat set the stage for what was to come. His words were prophetic. “The God of heaven Himself will prosper us;
therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:20 NKJV). When these
words came to pass, all would see that God was alive and ruler over His city.
These should also be our words to our enemy, Satan: “God is prospering me. I will rise up in the Holy Spirit and build! Satan, you have no portion of me.
You have no right to me. There will be no memorial left of your work in my life!”
The Holy Spirit will then take those areas of instability and build His words into our minds, wills, and emotions. Those words become the substance that
resists the attempts of our enemy to keep us weak and ineffective.
He has no portion, no legal share, or allotment to us. His is portionless.
He has no right – no legal right – to our minds, thoughts, or emotions. We belong to God.
God gets pleasure from taking what was once rubbish and broken-down areas of life and creating a life strong in the Spirit unto His glory.
Ecclesiastes 3:3 says there is a time to break down and a time to build up. The time to break down and remove the memories of failure and compromises of
the past is now! The Spirit of God is at work in us. He has come to empower us and enable us to recover, restore, and reclaim every dimension of life
that was stolen from us.
So rise up and build!
