Keep Pressing Ahead - Facing Personal Attack, Part 1

Ever had a situation that totally caught you off guard?

I mean, it was so troubling, so painful, so devastating. You said to yourself or cried out loud, God, why? Why this? Why me? Why now? Why? Why? Why?

God, this isn't fair. If that's where you're at or someone you know, stay with me. God has some help for you today. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. For the past several broadcasts, we've been studying the book of Nehemiah, learning how to overcome adversity, betrayal, and discouragement. But in this program, Chip reveals that when those tactics fail, Satan gets really personal. So today, as we continue our series, Keep Pressing Ahead, Chip will help us build up our defenses against these attacks. And be sure to stick around after this teaching as Chip shares deeper insights to guide us in this area.

You won't want to miss it. If you have a Bible now, go to Nehemiah chapter 6 for Chip's talk, Facing Personal Attack. I was having breakfast with some very old friends, known them for 20 years, been very close. And, you know, the kind of friends that are, you know, come to your kids' weddings and become, you know, aunt and uncle.

And we've gone way back. And I could tell that the man was really wrestling with something. And, you know, normally what's great about our friendship is I'm just Chip, I'm not pastor this or that, and we're just tight. And he said, you know, I got a question I need to ask you. And had those tones like, put your pastor hat on, put your theological hat on because I'm wrestling with something, I kind of know the right answer, but I like your thoughts on it.

I begin to tell a story about one of his older sons, godly man, godly husband, has been greatly used in his church, high integrity. But he's been working on a business for, you know, 10, 15 years. And just at the point he gets to the breakthrough, literally something bizarre happens. I mean, bizarre. So it's a very unique business where he grows tropical fish and then that market changed and he grew tilapia. And I mean, things that were just so bizarre as he gets to this point that just crushes and decimates the business. And my friend looked me in the eye and just said, why?

You ever been there? You know, like why? I'm not disobeying, I'm not doing anything wrong. You know, in his words where I know God is good, right?

I know God has a purpose, okay, but why? I said, I'll get you some information, but here's what I can tell you that I know for sure. What I know for sure is that adversity is an uninvited and unwanted friend in the hands of an all-knowing God whose purpose in adversity is to wean us from our pride and self-dependency, to usher us into deeper intimacy with Jesus, and to redirect our lives to make sure we get the very best and God gets the greatest glory. Now sometimes, you can look on the front of your notes, sometimes adversity comes when you obey, sometimes it comes when you disobey and there's consequences, and sometimes it's personal attack. I don't know the reason behind this situation, but I can tell you there's one that I don't think we give much mental thought to is personal attack. And you'll notice on those notes, personal attack, there's an enemy behind it. There's an enemy of your soul. There is an angelic being who is the most intelligent, most beautiful cherub in all the world who wanted to usurp God God's role, and when he did, he took a third of the host of heaven, and his name is Lucifer or Satan or Beelzebub, multiple names in scripture, and he has a third of angels that were good angels that turned bad angels are now called demons.

And this isn't like weird stuff. This is the reality of a biblical worldview. His goal is to destroy your life, destroy your faith, ruin your marriage, make you discouraged. Anything that you're doing is positive, encouraging, or helpful in your life or in the name of Christ.

He wants to discourage you and take you out of it. So some adversity, please do not hear all adversity, some adversity, some pain, some difficulty, some unexplained things are not just because in general you're making progress or not just because there's consequences of something you did wrong or just it's a fallen world. Sometimes you're under spiritual attack, and how you respond to spiritual attack is different than how you respond to those other things. Now I want to give you five quick ways that are times when spiritual attack is often very, very common, but here's the five times when these things are occurring you might say to yourself, maybe, you know, when you need discernment, you ask God, He'll show you, but when you're growing spiritually. Sometimes you decide, I'm going to memorize this passage, I'm going to get up and meet with God, I'm going to, you take steps spiritually, often attack comes.

Second, when we invade enemy territory. In other words, when you begin to share your faith or you are doing things that is bringing light, you help some orphans, you go on a missions trip, spiritual attack occurs. When we expose Satan for who he is, I remember writing this book a number of years ago called The Invisible War, what every believer needs to know about Satan demons and spiritual warfare.

I could not wait to get this done. When I was writing this and then when I taught on it, oh my, you talk about, we had the most bizarre things, difficult things, overwhelming things, because when he's being revealed, he doesn't like it. The fourth is when we repent and make a clean break with worldly or sinful patterns. I mean over the years I've had dozens of couples living together and realize, we know this isn't right, we're going to separate, then we're going to do it right, we'll get some counseling et cetera, and I just warn them, now you understand, probably it's going to get worse before it gets better. Or in my celebrate recovery days as I've had times with heroin addicts and coke addicts and people on pornography or whatever the addiction, you know, when they make a clean break, they hit bottom, this is what I'm going to do and they get accountability, I just say, now you understand, the next 90 days, all hell will break loose. Satan doesn't let go of people easily.

It's going to be really, really hard and you'll get this look like, but I'm doing what's right. No kidding. That's a normal, normal time. And the fifth is when God is preparing us for a great work for His glory. There are times when you can't figure out, you pray, you search, and you just don't know what's going on, but there's an invisible world that knows a little bit more what's going on than you do. And when God is preparing you for something very significant, one of the signs is, there's sort of this spiritual opposition, and often it's a dot here and a dot here and a dot here, and it takes a little while and you realize, oh, I think something's happening here.

It's happened multiple times. I could trace my journal or trace church history. I remember reading something of Spurgeon, who talked about every great wind of God. Just before there was this great breakthrough, he had these discouraging, depressing, clinical times of just, I mean, really felt like his whole ministry was a failure and then there'd be this breakthrough. Well, there's a lot of spiritual opposition to take him out before the good thing was going to happen. Now, in Nehemiah 6, here's what we're going to see. We're going to see what it looks like to put on the full armor of God, to do what God calls us to do. And what we're going to see is, you're going to see what it looks like with clothes on with a human being who responds, and the parallels with Ephesians 6 are astounding. Beginning in verse 10 of Ephesians 6, here's what we learn.

Who is behind spiritual warfare, personal attacks? Finally, brethren, be strong in the Lord and His mighty power. Command, put on the armor of God so that you can take a stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Now, this is a guy who's getting beat up, stoned, thrown overboard, personally attacked at every level, and the apostle Paul, in chains, is saying, it's not that guard, it's not that problem, it's not Rome, it's not those Judaizers.

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. There is a power behind this that is seeking to take me out, because I'm doing what God wants me to do. And then he says, therefore, verse 13, put on the full armor of God so that when the evil day comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you've done everything to stand, stand firm then. Well, how? With the belt of truth buckled around your waist.

Well, how else? With the breastplate of righteousness in its place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Now, in addition to this, take up also the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

And then in the sense of, in the process of all of this, and pray in the spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests, and with this in mind, be alert and always praying for all the saints. What I want you to see is there are four specific ways that the enemy attacks us. The very first one, the most common, is deception.

Just circle that. I want to give you an overview of the whole, what we're going to go through. The first is deception. Notice in John 8 44, Jesus calls Satan, who? He's the father of lies. The second is condemnation.

This sense that you're worthless, you don't measure up. Notice Revelation 12 10 calls Satan who? The accuser of the brethren. As you look at the other page, you notice plan C of his tactics are doubt. In Genesis, the very first words that come out of Satan's mouth in scripture in the form of a servant is tempting mankind by saying, did God really say? Placing doubt.

And then finally, he's a roaring lion from 1 Peter 5 8. And a big part of what the enemy tries to do is scare you and paralyze you with fear so you bail out of God's program for your life. So with that said, are you ready?

Let's dig in. Nehemiah chapter 6, plan A, deception. Now it came about when it was reported to Sanballat to buy the Geshem and the Arab and the rest of their enemies that I'd rebuilt the wall and that no breach remained in it, although at that time I'd not set up the gates or the doors, that Sanballat and Geshem sent a message to me saying, come, let us meet together in Tchafirim, in the plain of Ono. But they were planning to harm me. So I sent message to them saying, I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?

And they sent messages to me four times in this manner and I answered them in the same way. Okay, let's get Nehemiah right over here. The walls are completely done. I did a little research and I found out they did excavation during this time. The walls were roughly at this time period. It changed. It was about almost 10 feet wide.

There's somewhere between, whether it was built into a hillside, they figure it was somewhere between 2,600 to 4,600 meters around. Everything's done except the gates. Now, the enemies realize when that gets completely secure, life's going to change, worship's going to start, the political powers are going to change, God's agenda goes forward, and so there was a general attack on all the people. And it was fairly intense. Now it goes from general and the people to the leader.

It goes from fairly intense to highly intense. And you're going to see there's four tactics that they use on Nehemiah that are four of the very specific things the apostle Paul will say you will face and I will face and even tells us how to face them. Tactic number one is deception. So they've tried scaring them. They've tried rumors. They're going to attack.

Here's the tactic. You know, you're a reasonable man, Nehemiah. We've had our differences.

But, I mean, you don't seem like a narrow, foolish person and let's have a meeting. And so this city actually is 27 miles north of Judah, right on the border. It's a territory that wasn't in control by the Jews. And so they're asking to get out of where he doesn't have protection. It's got to be about a day and a half, 27 miles. You don't drive your car back then, right? So if you've walked 27 miles, figure it out.

Donkeys not that much faster. So, you know, he's looking at a couple day trip both ways. And what they're coming on to say, look, let's be reasonable. We've had our differences. And then they kind of appeal a little bit to what other people might think. I mean, you don't want to be known as narrow minded, do you? I mean, you don't want to be known as someone who's not willing to come to the table and talk about how we could resolve our differences together.

Now here's what you need to get because this happens over and over and over and over all four times. He discerns deception. He discerns this is not a legitimate attempt for peace or reconciliation. This is an attempt to get him off the job, distracted, and may even want to kill him. So you see the line where he says, but they were planning to harm me. So what's the temptation?

What's the application for us? The temptation is to get distracted. God's got a plan for your life. God's got a calling on your life. For some, the will of God is real clear. Address this marriage issue.

For some, it's, you know what, address this parenting issue. For others, address this ministry or this small group or something he wants you to do, but it's real clear this is what you're supposed to do. When that gets really clear and that's the will of God for you, the enemy will try to get you distracted. He'll try to deceive you.

He'll bring pressing, urgent, important. You got to do this. You got to do that. Oh, we need you. And he wants to take you off of what you are called to do.

You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and he'll be back to continue our series Keep Pressing Ahead in just a minute. But let me quickly tell you that we are more than a broadcast ministry. Every day, all around the world, we're supporting pastors who are discouraged and desperate for help. Let me encourage you to stick around after the teaching to learn more about this work and how you can be a part of it.

Well, with that here again is Chip. And so you need to be someone that's astute, that can hear God's voice, that's prayerful, that's in his word so you're taking what's coming in and filtering it through truth. And so the New Testament command is to put on the belt of truth. And so Paul is picturing in the metaphor as a Roman soldier of his day, because he's writing to a group in Ephesus and he wants them to get it. And he says, you know, you see those Roman soldiers, right?

And you know how they are. And there's this belt and every piece of armor connects to the belt. You put the belt on and then the breastplate that goes from right under your chin down to your thighs, it connects and the sword connects.

So everything is about the belt. Everything starts with truth. Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth and the life. You'll know the truth and the truth will set you free. 90% of all that demonic forces want to do in your life are not weird. They are not the exorcist. They are not physical or audio manifestations. It's deception.

Very subtle. They just want you to believe lies about God. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't keep his promises. You don't matter or lies about you. You're worthless. You're stupid.

He wouldn't use you. You're not smart enough. You're too old.

You're too young. You've blown it before. You've had an abortion.

You've been through two marriages. This isn't going to work. Lies, lies, lies.

There's no hope for you. And once he gets you to believe a lie about God, the future, your past, yourself, you're done. You don't have to worry about things moving in your house. You don't have to worry about manifestations that are weird. 90% of all he wants to do, but the average believer doesn't understand how demonic spiritual warfare occurs and you're being deceived and deceived and blaming yourself or blaming someone else.

Nehemiah doesn't. And he doesn't get distracted. He picks up on what it is. The belt of truth is being honest with God and honest with yourself. It's living in this reality of I'm not going to con God. I'm not going to act or say or pretend that things aren't. I'm going to be absolutely ruthlessly honest because the Lord is near to those who call upon him, to those who call upon him in truth. Psalm 145 18. Nehemiah's response here is discernment and perseverance.

He discerns what's going on and he perseveres. Now I don't know what distracts you. It can be different. And sometimes it's so appealing.

This last week from about Monday afternoon to Thursday evening I had at least three different things come into my life or across my desk or my computer that basically did this. Chip, chip, chip, chip, chip, chip. You got to help. You got to help. You got to help. You got to do this. You got to do this.

If you don't do this, everything's going to fall apart and you're the only one. You ever have those? And I looked at him and everything in me, I mean, it was like a lure. It was like, oh yeah, yeah, boy, I got to do that. And everything in me wanted to, and I realized, no, we're like that's that person's role. And every one of those would have blown my entire week. But I felt this pull. And just thank God I was studying what I was studying. And what I realized is these are important issues. These are issues that need to be addressed.

They don't have my name on them. Because if I would have tackled them, I will assure you that what you're getting right now would not be what you'd be getting. Because I would have been distracted from the main thing. These are the call of God, the big things. Everything else is a distraction. It's hard to say no to that, isn't it? To get pulled into a relationship or solving something that may not have your name on it.

Now if it does, take it. Deception. Second is condemnation. He's the accuser of the brethren. Notice how their tactic shifts.

This doesn't work. He doesn't take the bait. Then Sanballat sent his servant to me in the same manner a fifth time.

Oh wow, he's getting old. With an open letter this time in his hands. In it was written, it's reported among the nations and Gashmu says that you and the Jews are planning to rebel. Therefore you're rebuilding the wall. And you are to be their king according to these reports. And you have also appointed prophets to proclaim a Jerusalem concerning you.

A king is in Judah. And now it'll be reported to the king, speaking now of king Artaxerxes, king of Persia. And now it will be reported to the king according to these reports.

So, come now, let us take counsel together. Do you see what they're doing? You know, they went from trying to deceive him, get him out of town, stop the work. This is basically, it's not even thinly veiled. This is a threat. This is, hey we have this letter, this is a rumor, this is slander.

This is a, Nehemiah, we just are telling everybody and we're having this letter and we're going to put it, you know, like overnight UPS to the king in Persia. And it's, this isn't about rebuilding the wall. It's not about God. It's about you and your ego. And you want to be the king and you actually have hired some people to be your own prophets.

And so they've made up this story. But the story is filled with emotion and it condemns what? It condemns his motives. It condemns his actions. It says you're nothing that you purport to be.

And this is getting spread all over Judea and we're going to send it all the way back to Persia. How do you respond when you have those feelings of condemnation? He knows it's not true. Notice what he does. They say, come on, now, are you going to talk now? If you don't talk to us, we're going to send the letter.

Then I sent a message to him saying, such things as you are saying have not been done, but you're inventing them in your own mind. And then notice discernment again. For all of them were trying to frighten us, thinking they'll become discouraged, you're demoralized with the work and it will not be done. And then notice this prayer. But now, oh God, strengthen my hands.

He doesn't pray, oh God, take away everything. Give me the strength to make it through. And so the temptation here is to defend yourself. The temptation is to go from this is what I'm supposed to do, this is, now there's lots of things in your life, but this is what God's called me to do. This is the top priority right now. Distraction didn't work.

So now there's all this condemnation. You're not doing this for the right reason. Look at your motives.

Who are you trying to impress? What about this? What about that? And anywhere your energy can go, it can get off of doing the very thing you're doing. No, no, no, you need to understand. I do have the right motives and see this email. Look, I've been four hours digging up all the emails that defend my position.

Then I got them all together and I'll send them to you. And by the way, we have to have a meeting. We have to have a meeting because I heard in that meeting these people were saying this stuff about me and no, no, I've got to defend myself and everyone needs to know that I didn't do that. Right? Did Nehemiah defend himself?

He had a quick, clear, factual reply. He realized people, there's some people that question your motives, that slander you, that condemn you, that are used by the enemy. And it happens at work. Times it happens in your family. It happens with friends. It happens in some small groups.

And there's certain times you just need to say, you know what? I'm not going to defend myself. The command here is to put on the breastplate of righteousness. That's what protects you from condemnation. And in essence, what that is is that when God shows you what to do, you're in the process of obeying Him. It doesn't mean you're perfect, but what keeps you is, you know, as far as I know before God, my motives are right.

As far as I know before God, I'm doing what I know God wants me to do. And that's the breastplate of righteousness. That protects you. That lets you know that these innuendos and these slanderous reports, you know they're not true.

But you can spend a lot of horizontal energy trying to defend yourself. Instead, Nehemiah, it's discernment, declares the truth, and then he prays for strength. This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and you've been listening to Part 1 of Chip's message, Facing Personal Attack, from our series, Keep Pressing Ahead. Well, Chip will be back shortly to share some helpful application for us to think about. You know, we all experience painful and challenging circumstances in life, the loss of a loved one, crippling depression, or a constant struggle with sin.

And in those seasons, we want to throw our hands up and scream, I'm done. Well, through this study in the book of Nehemiah, Chip's going to teach us how to biblically respond to and overcome adversity. Learn the steps to have unexplainable hope and strength, even when your world is falling apart.

For more info about this series, visit livingontheedge.org or the Chip Ingram app. Well, Chip's with me in studio now, and Chip, you know, many of our listeners know how passionate you are about the 21st century pastor. You've led churches and shepherded congregations for decades, so you know the challenges these leaders are facing. Take a minute, if you would, and talk about how we're supporting pastors, because so many of them are discouraged right now.

Well, that's right, Dave. And I just have to tell you that coming out of the pandemic, it was a crisis with pastors all around the world. And we reached out and ended up in 60 countries, first online. And then we realized we needed to go to them on the ground. And so we started out with our Anglo teams, and now we have nationals in places like India where churches are burned, throughout Africa, 30 cities in Mexico, and we took what we called the art of survival.

It started out as just a little three-part message, and then it became a booklet and videos that were translated in 27 languages. And we went to villages in Kenya, in Malawi, throughout India, Mexico, South America. And then we had these pastors in groups, and what we saw was tears and weeping and encouragement and pastors who said, we won't give up. We will not give up.

We will consider it all joy. We'll ask for God's wisdom. We're going to lead our churches forward. And so what I would ask our listeners to do, you listening to me right now, would you prayerfully consider giving $50 a month so we can train these global pastors? Your monthly gift of $50 will help 60 pastors be equipped and encouraged with the art of survival, and then they go back, as we've watched in tens of thousands of churches, and they will teach their churches.

You really can't grasp the impact that this has had. This month alone, our goal is to resource 60,000 additional pastors. Would you prayerfully consider $50 a month joining the team and helping some of the most hurting people and some of the most devastated churches all around the world?

Thank you so much for whatever God leads you to do. Thanks, Chip. If you're feeling called to partner with us in this meaningful work, go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or the Chip Ingram app. Your monthly gift of $50 will help us support 60 pastors for an entire year, as we aim to reach 60,000 more pastors in 2024.

To join us, go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or the Chip Ingram app today, and thanks in advance for your generosity. With that, here again is Chip with his application. What we're really talking about in Nehemiah's life is Satan's strategy to destroy a difference maker when he's in the midst or when she's in the midst of doing something significant for God. And what you see in the story is first it's deception.

I mean, Satan is the father of lies, and it's all about deceiving. And then second, you know, we learn from Scripture that he's the accuser of the brethren. It's condemnation. And this condemnation one I think can be a little bit tricky and often even has one theological issue that we need to be clear on, and a secondary, it has sort of a personality-driven issue. For example, you need to understand as you're listening to this, what's the difference between conviction of the Holy Spirit and condemnation from the enemy? A conviction of the Holy Spirit will be very specific. In fact, when I need to put on the breastplate of righteousness, that is, I need to have this consistent life.

I'm acting or responding by faith and obedience to what God has shown me. When the Holy Spirit convicts me and says, Chip, yesterday you were posing when you made those two comments to those people in the gym, which actually happened, unfortunately. And he convicted me. It was very specific.

You had to add where you went to grad school, and you had to add, you know, that this little thing that you did, and then you sort of tried to be humble by saying, oh, but I was never very good at it. And as soon as you walked out, the Holy Spirit said, Chip, you were posing. And I had to confess that as sin. So conviction.

On other times, though, however, condemnation comes from the enemy. And it's this vague sense. Three days earlier, I remember I was pretty tired, and I had this sense that, you know, you're really a lousy dad. You're a lousy pastor.

Your whole life doesn't amount to anything. And I was getting discouraged. And I'd traveled, and I hadn't slept a whole lot. And I was getting this feeling of just bad, bad, bad.

But it was real vague. That's the enemy. And I had to stand up and say, you know what?

That's not true. This is who I am in Christ. And I did some spiritual warfare. And it was like, you know, God, search my heart.

If I'm a bad dad, show me specifically where. If I'm a bad pastor, show me specifically where. And there was silence from the Lord. And so you need to understand the difference between conviction, where God is saying, you need to address this. That's putting on the breastplate of righteousness. Or where it's condemnation, and you need to take your stand in Christ. The second issue is, I think sometimes with regard to our personality, is I sort of have a justice bent, a this is right bent. And the enemy brings condemnation on me that you're never doing enough.

You're never doing enough. And so I just, it throws me into my old workaholism. Today what I want to ask you is, would you come before God and say like David, search me, O God, into my heart. If there is conviction of the Holy Spirit that needs to be specific, so I can put on the breastplate of righteousness, great. You show me, I'll confess it, I'll turn, I'll do whatever you show me. But if this is just condemnation, then I'm going to stand up, stand strong, declare it's not true, my righteousness is in Christ, and then I'm going to press ahead. Pray that prayer like David prayed. Search me, O God, and know me. See if there'd be any wicked way in me.

And then ask God, is it condemnation or conviction? Thanks, Chip. And as we close, I want you to know that as a staff, we ask the Lord to help you take whatever your next faith step is. Now, if there's a way we can help, we'd love to do that. Give us a call at 888-333-6003, or connect with us at LivingOnTheEdge.org. And while you're there, take a moment and look through our resources on various topics, many of them absolutely free. We'll listen to next time as Chip picks up in his series, Keep Pressing Ahead. Until then, this is Dave Drewy saying thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge.