Build With a Sword Nearby: For the Week You Did Not Choose

Build With a Sword Nearby: For the Week You Did Not Choose Preview · Opening of the manuscript The hallway already knows this week did not ask this church for permission. A vote went the other way. A household left before the elders finished their prayer. A rumor found the parking lot while the office was still printing a verse about peace. Somebody said we should pray about it, which was true, and then nobody set a watch, which was also a decision.

I have sat in rooms like that after a week nobody voted for. The temptation is to treat opposition as a branding problem or a scheduling problem. If we can get the prayer language right, maybe the rubble will recede. If we can get the security plan right, maybe we will not have to pray. Nehemiah 4 will not bless either stall.

This is a sermon for a church under a week it did not choose. If you preach Nehemiah 4 as a map of anyone's private anxiety, you will lie. If you preach it as Judah repairing Jerusalem's wall under Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabians, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites, with real rubble, real families on the wall, real swords at the side, and a God who hears prayer and still lets a people set a watch, you give this church a God who will not let prayer without a watch, or a watch without prayer, write the week.

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