The Enemy Sent a Meeting Invite

Last week you named the talent you have been burying.

Now let's say you dig it up. You stop playing safe. You start building the thing God actually put in you.

Here is what nobody warns you about.

The opposition does not stop. It changes clothes.

The Attack You Can See Is The Easy One

When Nehemiah started rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem, his enemies came at him the way you would expect.

They mocked him. They threatened him. They tried to scare the workers off the wall with the promise of force.

He handled all of it. Open opposition is almost easy, because you can see it. You know it is against you. You post a guard, you keep building, you push through.

The dangerous attack is the one that does not look like an attack.

So when force failed, his enemies got smarter. They sent him an invitation.

Come Down And Let's Talk

Read it. Nehemiah 6. Sanballat and Geshem send word. Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.

Notice what that is.

It is not a threat. It is a meeting. It sounds reasonable. It sounds relational. Let's get together. Let's talk this out. Let's have a conversation on the plain.

Nehemiah saw straight through it. He knew they meant to harm him. But look at the mechanism, because this is the part that gets us.

They did not ask him to stop building. They just asked him to come down.

Come off the wall. Step away from the work. Just for a meeting. Just for a conversation. Just for a little while.

They knew if they could get him off the wall, the wall would stop. You cannot build and come down at the same time.

The Enemy Uses Good Things To Pull You Off The Wall

This is the trap, and it is more subtle than anything we have talked about so far.

The thing pulling you off the wall is rarely obvious sin. It is usually something good.

A good opportunity. A good relationship that needs more of you than it should. A good cause. A good meeting. A good conversation that could have waited. A dozen good things, each one reasonable on its own, all of them quietly asking you to come down.

You will not be tempted off your calling by something ugly. You will be invited off it by something that looks fine.

And you will call coming down the humble thing. The kind thing. The responsible thing. That is the deception from week one again. It never stops finding new clothes.

The wall does not fall because you quit. The wall falls because you kept saying yes to good invitations until you were never on the wall long enough to finish it.

Seven Words

Here is how Nehemiah answered. It is seven words, and it might be the most important thing you read this month.

Nehemiah 6:3. I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.

He did not argue. He did not explain himself four times. He did not schedule the meeting to be polite. He did not soften it into a maybe.

He named the work. He called it great. And he refused to come down.

They sent the same invitation four more times. He gave the same answer four more times.

That is not rudeness. That is clarity. He knew what he was building, so he knew what to say no to.

Most people cannot say no to good things because they were never clear on the great thing. When the main thing is fuzzy, everything looks equally worth your time. When the main thing is clear, most invitations answer themselves.

Guard The Wall

You do not need more discipline. You need to know what your wall is.

Name the great work God gave you to build. Write it down if you have to. Then hold it up next to every invitation that pulls you off it.

Some of those invitations are good. That is exactly why they are dangerous. Good is the most effective disguise the enemy has.

You can be honest, kind, and completely immovable at the same time. I am doing a great work and I cannot come down is not a wall against people. It is a wall around the work.

Build the wall. Guard the wall. Do not come down for a meeting that was designed to stop it.

One More Thing

Guarding the work God gave you is exactly what Ravens and Algorithms is about on the other side. Recognizing what He sends, then protecting what He put in your hands long enough to finish it.

If this one landed, the book goes deeper.

Click → RAVENS AND ALGORITHMS 

You cannot build and come down at the same time.

Stay on the wall.

Onward,

Chris Behnke

P.S. Next week is the last email in the series, and it is the one I most want you to read. Some of you are going to finish this series and realize you buried a talent for years, or stepped off your wall a long time ago. The instinct will be shame. I want to show you what Jesus did with a man who did the exact same thing, and why He did not ask for a single apology. Do not miss it.