Codes for Christian Living
Keep Doing What is Right
And it happened, when our enemies heard that it was known to us, and that God had brought their plot to nothing, that all of us returned to the wall, everyone to his work. So it was, from that time on, that half of my servants worked at construction, while the other half held the spears, the shields, the bows, and wore armor; and the leaders were behind all the house of Judah. Those who built on the wall, and those who carried burdens, loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at construction, and with the other held a weapon. . . . So we labored in the work, and half of the men held the spears from daybreak until the stars appeared. At the same time I also said to the people, “Let each man and his servant stay at night in Jerusalem, that they may be our guard by night and a working party by day.” So neither I, my brethren, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me took off our clothes, except that everyone took them off for washing.
—NEHEMIAH 4:15–17, 21–23
There is an important principle we see at play in these verses of chapter 4: Nehemiah never left the building for the battle! That bears repeating—Nehemiah never left the focus of building his wall for the fight of the battle. When opposition arises, the temptation all too often is to leave the rebuilding process and plunge headlong into the battle. And it would have been easy for Nehemiah to answer the scorn that came his way with scorn of his own—but he refused.
Wisely, he and his team “returned to the wall” and kept doing what was right. Maintaining the focus to keep doing what is right in the face of opposition is a powerful principle. Note that half of Nehemiah’s people watched while the other half worked. Half of them held spears for their defense and half of them held trowels for their mortar. To keep doing what is right is one of the greatest secrets to successful rebuilding, no matter what we need to rebuild around us.
Content drawn from The Nehemiah Code: It's Never Too Late for a New Beginning.