When the Enemy Mocks Your Vision: Lessons from Nehemiah on Staying the Course
When the enemy mocks your vision, Nehemiah shows you how to stay the course — with prayer, focus, courage, and an unshakeable grip on what God has called you to build. They laughed at him first. That is how it always starts — not with swords or sieges, but with contempt. Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite stood outside the rubble of Jerusalem's walls and laughed. They mocked the work. They mocked the workers. They mocked the idea that a handful of exiles with a dream and a few broken tools could rebuild what Babylon had spent years tearing down. "What are these feeble Jews doing?" Sanballat sneered. "Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?" And Tobiah added his own contribution to the chorus of contempt: "Yes, what they are building — if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!" (Nehemiah 4:2–3). ...