How Nehemiah led past opposition and criticism

Tom Harper April 9, 2020

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Nehemiah is one of the starkest examples of powerful leadership in the Bible.

Nehemiah chapter four describes how he faced down strong opposition. Let’s walk through a synopsis of this amazing story.

The initial threat emanated from a leader named Sanballat, a lifelong enemy of the Jews. He lashed out with bitter criticism as Nehemiah began rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem.

In response, Nehemiah asked God to humiliate his enemies, and then immediately commanded his people to get to work on the wall. They reached the halfway point before Sanballat and his allies could do anything about it.

When they saw the progress, they planned to attack as a single, unified force. When Nehemiah heard of this, he responded with another prayer and more action:

⁹ But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat.

Though his resistance was fierce, hope was quickly dissipating among Nehemiah’s people. They were afraid.

He fought against their fear by pointing to the power of the Lord, and commanded them to stand up and fight for their families and homes! They confidently went back to work. Nehemiah knew their confidence would falter again, so he stationed a visible defense force and made sure the people were always ready for battle.

After further intimidation, political pressure, assassination attempts, and lies, the climax to the story comes in chapter six.

¹⁵ So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days.

¹⁶ When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.

Do you see the interplay of prayer, faith and action in this great leader? Nehemiah served his people by obeying God’s direction to build the wall. But he was no pushover servant. He resisted his enemies with shows of strength and crafty strategy.

I believe Christianity is an active faith. It is intensely practical in the “real” world. When we lead like the shrewd Nehemiah, we will understand servant leadership in a new light.

Pray and fight on!

For more on how to apply biblical principles in your everyday leadership, see Tom’s book Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019).

Photo source: istock 

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Tom Harper is publisher of BiblicalLeadership.com and executive chairman of Networld Media Group, a business-to-business publisher and event producer. He has written five books, including Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019) as well as the Christian business fable Through Colored Glasses and its sequel Inner Threat (DeepWater, 2022). Learn More »

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