Keep Pressing Ahead - Facing Difficult Circumstances, Part 1

Are you facing some really difficult circumstances right now?

I mean, maybe you have no control over them. It's what's happened to the economy, or someone's made a decision that is impacting your life in really negative ways, and you feel powerless to control it. How do you respond?

How do you get through it? What's the plan? Stay with me. 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. And those tough times he just described are universal. Whether they're emotional struggles, spiritual opposition, or physical problems, we all have our troubles. So today Chip's going to help us hold on when all hope seems lost. There's a lot to get to, so here now is Chip with his talk facing difficult circumstances. We're in a series called Keep Pressing Ahead.

And if you would go ahead and open to Nehemiah chapter 7 and pull out the teaching notes, I want to ask you a question just as you sort of do that part. If I gave you 30 seconds to be with a friend that you're really comfortable with, and you could tell them the most challenging circumstance in your life right now, what would you tell them? I mean, they wouldn't tell anybody.

It's someone you can really confide in. And they just said, you know, how are things going? And you got beyond. We'll find.

Okay. And the most challenging circumstance in your life right now, and maybe one that you don't have any control of, what would it be? The clearer you can get that in your mind as we begin, the more helpful the Spirit of God is going to use His word to speak to you. We're going to talk about difficult or sometimes even what seems like impossible circumstances. And you can see from Nehemiah chapter 7, the response, the New Testament parallel, this isn't new, is that it's James chapter 1.

And someone says things are going wrong. If there's one passage that comes to my mind, it's James 1. Very first book of the New Testament written.

It was written by Jesus' half-brother. These Jewish Christians had come to Christ, and they're persecuted, and they're fleeing. And so they're leaving jobs. They're leaving their homes.

Often their families have disowned them. And James would write, by the Spirit of God, consider it all joy when you encounter various trials. And that phrase, various trials, has the idea of external circumstances. And then he gives the reason, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And that's our word, hupomeno. Keep pressing ahead. And then let endurance have its perfecting or maturing result that you might be perfect or mature, lacking in nothing. God's gonna use it, is what he's saying. And we usually quote it to there, but the very next verse says, But if any of you lack wisdom, in other words, you don't know how to keep pressing ahead. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach. In fact, the idea is that even if our circumstances are difficult because we messed up, we can come to God and say, Father, please help me. I don't know how to get out of this.

This is what I ought to do. He says, I long to teach you and give you insight and wisdom about what to do. And what we're gonna see is Nehemiah is gonna model for us, how do you respond to negative circumstances? The kind especially that you have zero control over. I made a list of some that happen in our lives that, I mean, there's no one to blame. I mean, a flood happens. The weather changes and you're a farmer and your crops don't grow.

There's a tsunami in one part of the country and therefore, as someone told me, a bunch of the plants shut down, so there's no parts, so you can't sell the parts. So this is what happens to your car sales and this is what happens to your service department. Or the laws change, the interest rates change, political parties can't make a decision. I mean, right?

There's just certain stuff. You go to the doctor and you've been praying and hoping and thinking and the doctor just says, I'm sorry, you can't have kids. I mean, what do you do when things that have just, they come into your life? Your company goes bankrupt and all your money was in the retirement in the company and they go under.

I mean, you planned on retiring and the interest rates they projected, you know, 12 years ago you put your money here, here and here and next year you were supposed to retire and now you realize next year you got another seven or eight or ten years if things go well. So how do you respond to that? How does a follower of Christ deal with that? Well, that's what Nehemiah is going to teach us. To do that, let's understand Nehemiah's difficult circumstance.

Let's get an idea of what he's going through. To do that, you have to go back a little bit. Jewish history, if you would open your Old Testament and as I'm doing, I'm reading through the whole Bible this year and if you get to 1st and 2nd Chronicles and 1st and 2nd Kings, you get the story of all these kings and as you know, it was separated, Judah is following God for a season and the tribes of Israel, they begin to fade away and the problem with all of them is they disobey God, they start worshiping idols and they start detestable practices beyond even what the pagans were doing. I mean, followers of Yahweh are actually offering their kids in the fire to false gods. And so God in his judgment promised and he sends them into exile.

They've been in Babylon for 70 years. Well, Isaiah made a prophecy 150 years before it happened, named names and he said, there'll be a king that I'm going to raise up named Cyrus and he will declare an edict that all my people should go back and rebuild Jerusalem. And as we read the annals of history, we find that that's exactly what happens. God raises this man up, that's exactly his name.

He pays for it. He even takes all the things that were in the treasury and the things that were taken out of the temple of God and he sends it back with him. And there's a prince of Judah named Zerubbabel. And so he heads back and you can see, I think it's 538 B.C. And so he heads back with a group of people and they rebuild the temple and it's not nearly like the great big one that Solomon had, but they get going and it stops and it starts and it stops and it starts. And then there was a priest and a teacher of the law named Ezra and about 70 years, you know, 75 years or so later, he goes back with another group of people. And a different king says, well, you can go and I just read it this morning and they paid his way. So God is orchestrating this to get his program back on.

Exactly what he once done. And then you have 12 years later, you have Nehemiah and he's a businessman, some might even call him a politician. And he knows that we've got to rebuild the walls and we've heard his story. And so first six chapters are all about rebuilding these walls, let us arise and build, all kind of problems. You get these walls done and we come into chapter seven, the walls are done, the gates are dropped, they look at this great big open area that hasn't been used for plus or minus a hundred years as a real city and it's empty. And there's not any houses and they're supposed to repair the temple and they don't have any resources.

So I mean it was like a hundred year deal, it's just circumstances. Nehemiah did exactly what God wanted him to do, the walls are rebuilt, the people are now going, okay now what? Let's discover how Nehemiah faces his very interesting and difficult circumstance. Now open if you will to chapter seven. Again if you're like me, I never grew up reading the Bible, so go to Psalms, open about the middle and go left and hit Job and keep going left and you'll find Nehemiah. Now this is one of those chapters if you happen to be reading through the Bible, you read the first few verses, it's kind of interesting and then you turn the page and you say this is going to be a very quick read because I'm not reading all those lists, right?

Pick it up with me in chapter seven. After the wall had been rebuilt and I set the doors in place, the gatekeepers and the singers and the Levites, remember Levites they work at the temple, singers they work at the temple, they were appointed. Verse two, I put in charge of Jerusalem Hanani, that's his brother, along with Hananiah, the commander of the citadel. The citadel is a corner, it's a fortress, so it's a military installation.

Because he was a man of integrity and feared God more than most. I said to them, the gates of Jerusalem are not to be opened until the sun is hot, so it's later in the day. Normally it would be open at dawn. While the gatekeepers are still on duty, have the door shut and bar them.

So in other words, we're going to open the gates late and we're going to shut them early. Also appoint the residents of Jerusalem as guards, some in their posts and then some at their own houses. Now, we get in verse four here, the circumstances. Now the city was large and spacious, but there were few people in it, and the houses had not been yet rebuilt. So God put into my heart to assemble the nobles, the officials, the common people for registration by families.

So here's this big open city, the walls are finally done, everyone's looking at one another, there's no houses in here, what are we going to do? I mean the goal is that the temple begins to function, we have houses, we have a city. Now after 100 years you have Jews and non-Jews and kind of half Jews and it's like this whole thing needs to get aligned to fulfill God's purposes. God's purposes, he was going to take this nation like a piece of coal and shape it and by their laws and how they live and he would exalt them in such a way that even Gentile nations would see, there's only one true God. And so they're supposed to get this thing back on track and there's no houses, there's not very many people. In fact, if you count them up, it's a pretty good sized city, there's only 49,000 people. They live in all these different towns and so Nehemiah has this idea and he calls a meeting.

He gets all the leaders together and all the people. These are the people of the province who came from the captivity of the exiles with Nebuchadnezzar. Ezra too has the same story and he has the genealogies and he finds this scroll of all the people who came back from Babylon to resettle. Now I don't know about you, but this is the part where I get pretty bored.

In fact, let's meditate. The descendants of Parash, 2,172, of Shephateo, wherever you say his name, 370. Can you imagine just going through all those? To us this is kind of meaningless, but look at the structure of it. Notice the genealogies, he starts with the men of Israel. Skip down, verse 26, the men of Bethlehem. Skip down, now he talks about the priests in verse 39. Verse 43, now he says there's Levites. Verse 44, there's singers. Verse 45, there's gatekeepers. Verse 46, the temple servants.

There's servants of Solomon. And then notice he shifts. He actually gave us 18 different family clans or units, and we'll talk about why he's doing this. And then he shifts and begins to talk about where people came from. And he's gonna identify about 20 different villages. He says the following came from the towns of Tel Malah, and then he lists all these towns.

And then skip down to verse 64. And as people are going through the records, and he's trying to figure out who's gonna live here, how do we get this started, how do we fund getting this temple going, how do we get the Jewish state aligned, what are we gonna do? And so he finds this genealogical record, and he says, well, who actually came back?

And then he evaluates all the roles, all the people from what towns, and then notice they hit a little snag. They searched for their family records, verse 64, but they couldn't find them. And so they were excluded from the priesthood as unclean.

The governor, therefore, ordered them not to eat any of the meat sacrificed. So he's beginning to find out who's there, what's the role, what are we gonna do, and then skip down to verse 66. The whole company numbered 42,360. And then besides that, there's another 7,000 or so men servants and maid servants. And then there's 245 men and women who were singers. And then he literally is getting very specific.

Notice there's 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels, and close to 7,000 donkeys. Then notice he goes on in verse 70, and I'm giving you sort of the overview. He says, some of the heads of the families contributed to the work, and the governor gave to the treasury, he talks about 1,000 drachmas of gold, and he's the governor. And then it talks about then the heads of the families give, and then the rest of the people give, and a number of things occur.

Now, here's what I want you to get. What is his difficult circumstance? If we were just taking what happened, number one, he has security issues.

Tobiah, Samballat, the enemies, they're on the outside. And so he's got security issues, and the people aren't safe, and people don't function well when they feel very threatened. And we'll find out what he does. Not only does he have security issues that's not safe, but he's got people issues. He doesn't have enough people.

Anybody ever been in a place where you don't have enough staff, don't have enough resources, not enough people? Not only that, he's got housing issues. He's got major housing issues. His is not interest rates. His is they don't have houses at all. He's got financial issues.

So he's got an assignment but doesn't have the funds. Anybody here have any of those issues? Or finally, he's got momentum issues. I mean, after 100 years, stop, start, stop, start, stop, start. It's really hard to get a group going.

Now, all I want to ask you is which one of those do you most identify with in your world right now? Lack of resources, people issues, financial issues, housing issues, momentum. Have you ever tried to break an addiction or tried to get your family moving in a positive direction and like for three days you do pretty well and then you stop, start, stop, start, fail. And then there's times where you just feel like, why try this one more time?

It quote never works. You know that's not true, but that's the way it feels. All I wanted to do is paint a picture for you in this very unusual chapter that it is very difficult and he has circumstances that he didn't ask for. He just took a step of faith. He's just doing what God wants him to do.

But he has people, finances, momentum, housing and multiple issues that he's got to solve. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. And before we continue today, I want to quickly pause and say God is doing incredible work through this ministry. Right now we have team members in some of the most hostile places on the planet encouraging church leaders.

We'd love to tell you more. So keep listening after this message to learn how we're supporting pastors and what you can do to help us. Well, with that here again is Chip. So let's see what he does. How did Nehemiah respond to his circumstances? Number one, he improvised.

You say, well, where do you get that? Well, did you notice in verse one that there were these singers and Levites and priests and guards and what their job was was to either do ministry at the temple or guard the temple. Where does he put them? He puts them to guard outside the wall.

He improvises. See, when you get a circumstance in your life and it feels overwhelming and this happened with our house or this happened with my job or I was supposed to get in this school and then what do you mean that school went under? I was supposed to relocate. Now they don't have the money to do it. You get something. You get a report from a doctor and your whole world changes because of circumstances you can't control.

The first thing you need to do is realize you may not keep doing life the same way you used to do it. So he improvises. Look, there were guards over here. We're gonna take them from the temple and what we need to do is we need safety more than anything else. And so he puts them on the outside.

He improvised what their role was and then notice he improvised on the timing. Normally, well, we have to open at dawn and we have to close at dusk because that's how cities work. He said, not this city, not right now. We open all day, we can't guard that long.

We're gonna wait till the sun gets hot and we're gonna close it down before the guards go off. In your life, you gotta start thinking outside the box. God will actually use difficult circumstances to have you do things, start things and think in ways that you would never do on your own. You know that old phrase that necessity is the mother of invention, it's true. Most of us don't think outside the box. Think about a different alternative, a different role, improvise, unless what?

Unless you have to. The second thing he does is he delegates. Look at verses two and three. He realizes that his role was to come rally the people. He's a business guy, he's got leadership gift. He gets the people together. The walls are built, the gates are done and he realizes my role needs to change and I need to give my focus to something else now. And so he says to his brother Hananiah, I tell you what, you be in charge of administration of Jerusalem and then Hananiah, you know what, you fear God more than most. I've been watching you as we've rebuilt this wall and you fear God and you're a man of integrity, you take the citadel.

So you take the administrative task, you take the military task and by the way, tell the people, stand guards, here's their roles in front of their house or these places. You need to ask this question in difficult circumstances. Who might God have all around me that he's prepared them to help me in what I'm going through?

When life gets hard, what do you and I tend to do? How am I gonna do this? All the weight's on me, everything changed. I can't do this, it's too much, it's too overwhelming.

I don't have enough time, I don't have enough resources. What would Nehemiah do? He stopped and said, there's Hananiah, there's Hananiah, there's the people, these people had this role and we had this time and he stepped back and said, it's a new game plan. Some of you, God brought you today and I believe and I prayed earlier that even as I talk and the spirit of God works, he's gonna take your specific negative, difficult, painful circumstance and bring an idea to your mind that you didn't have before you walked in here. Just say, you know what, I've been thinking, I gotta do it this way, gotta do it this way, gotta do it this way. I've been thinking, my role has to be this. I've been thinking, the timing always has to be like this and what Nehemiah wants you to learn and what God wants you to learn is, mm-mm.

When circumstances happen like this, you just have to say, wait a second, we gotta improvise, I have to delegate and third notice, he listened. I love that line in verse four at the end and then in five, he says, what? He says, then God put in my heart. Now the premise is you're walking with God. The premise is you're saying, this is difficult, this is painful, I don't know what to do, God, will you show me? This is sort of the, if any man lacks wisdom, if any woman lacks wisdom, if you don't know what to do, here's a great prayer. Oh God, I don't know what to do, will you show me? And so he listens and he's just, I mean, think what it was like. I mean, he goes to his little room and sometimes we make these biblical stories like so out there, he's just a regular guy and there's times he's sitting there and he's going, I don't know what to do and I can't act like I don't know what I'm doing. Everyone's looking to me and I don't know what to do, we don't have any people, don't have any money, don't have any houses and all the bad guys are on the outside, they want to kill us. Other than that, things going great. Why did I ever leave my good job in Persia, right?

Any of you feel like that today? And then all of a sudden he said, God put this thing in my heart. The genealogical records, what's happened is, you know what, the people don't get it.

They're afraid and all they're thinking about is their security and their stuff. If I could get the records out, then I'll show all the people where we came from, where we've been and so God gives them this idea. And this idea becomes the platform God uses to change how people think and later how they behave. Notice then he asks the right questions.

I mean, you got this big open space and he basically says to the people, he has a big meeting, right? He pulls them together, he says, who are we? We're not a rag tag group of people that are in this empty city without a purpose, we are what? We're the people of God. Where do we come from?

Well, we came from a lineage from all the way back to Adam. We're in David's line, we're in Solomon's line. God has a purpose. He made all these promises to this nation. God always keeps his promises. He made these promises to David. He made these promises about the land of Abraham. And by the way, look at the miracles.

I mean, the miracles when Zerubbabel went, the miracles when Ezra went, the miracles when I went. I mean, we got these foreign kings paying our way. And then by the way, he says, well, who do we have? Notice his focus. He doesn't focus on what he doesn't have.

He focuses on what he does have. And so he said, wow, I wonder what we ought to do. We got men of Israel, we got men of Bethlehem. Let's see, we got priests, what do they do? Oh, that's right, they do stuff in the temple. Levites, what do they do? They help with the temple.

Singers, what do they do? They sing in the temple. Temple servants, that's pretty obvious.

Servants of Solomon. And all of a sudden, he helps the people understand your lineage, your heritage, the promises of God, the miracle working God. There have been all these dots, not for hundreds, but thousands of years that have led you to this point and your circumstances may be this empty city. But the God of the universe has a plan for you, his people, and his program, and you are the next dot. And he's gonna provide what you need. Was the goal of God that you would be comfortable and financially secure and everything would go great? Or does God have a purpose for his people in this time in history and that's where you're at? Why are you here?

What do you have, not what do you lack? See how those questions, he asks those right questions and he begins to answer those questions and then he asks the big one. So what are we called to do?

I mean, what's the game plan? This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and you've been listening to part one of Chip's message, Facing Difficult Circumstances, 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 wanna throw our hands up and scream, I'm done. Well, through this study in the book of Nehemiah, Chip's gonna 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 map. Well, before we go on, Chip's joined me here in studio to talk about something that's really close to his heart.

Chip? Thanks, Dave. I'll share some practical application from today's message in just a minute.

But first, I want you to do something with me. I want you to imagine that you were a pastor in China or Kenya or India, and especially in a rural village. And the pandemic is sort of easing, but mentally and spiritually and emotionally, your church was shut down.

People literally are starving. People have had to move away. And as you imagine being discouraged, ready to give up, looking at the devastation, some people show up, and they gather you together with other pastors. And there's hope, and there's teaching, and there's resources. And pretty soon, you realize that God wants you to stay in the ministry, and Living on the Edge got to be that conduit of grace. Together, we have seen tens of thousands of pastors in these countries rise up and begin to reach and to care for their flocks again. And you see people's lives turn around as these pastors get hope and then take it to their churches.

And now we look in the rearview mirror and see God at work in miraculous ways like I have never seen in my life. And what I'm asking you to do is to partner with Living on the Edge this month. Become a monthly partner. Give $50 a month. And this month alone, our goal is to resource 60,000 additional pastors.

We have nationals on the ground. God has opened the doors. The Lord is working in ways like never before, but we need the resources to help the least of these, people that are really hurting, people that love that ordinary man or woman or child in these rural areas all across the world.

Would you pray, would you do exactly what God chose you to give? 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.

Here again is Chip. As we close today's program, I gave you the circumstances that a very ordinary man living in a very hostile environment woke up one morning and realized, I've stepped out to do God's will. You know, I was living in the lap of luxury. You know, he was the right-hand man to the king. And once he steps out and is doing exactly what God wants him to do, his circumstances are, well, unsafe environment, no security. He doesn't have enough people to fill the city, so he's got personnel issues. Third, he's got housing issues.

There aren't any available. And fourth, we talked about financial issues. And in our next broadcast, we're going to talk about momentum issues.

Those were the circumstances, none of which he personally created and none of which he could personally control. But in our next broadcast, what we're going to learn is how in the power and the strength of God, he makes a difference. We're going to learn how he improvised and how he delegated and how he listened and how he began to ask the right questions.

Instead of looking at the circumstances and the size of his problems, he started looking at the possibilities and the size of his God. There's a few times where, when I teach through something, as I'm teaching, I think to myself, you know those people that listen? They don't have the notes in front of them, and I sure wish they did. So let me encourage you, because I put a chart on here and all the things I've taught here in this broadcast and the next broadcast will be on the teaching notes.

And then ask God, Lord, how can I follow Nehemiah's example in the midst of my very difficult circumstances? And I think you'll get some real help. Thanks, Chip. And if you want to go back and study those points Chip just reviewed, go to livingontheedge.org and download his message notes.

They're a great tool available for every program. It has Chip's outline, all of the scripture he references, and a few key fill-ins to help you remember what you're learning. Find them by visiting livingontheedge.org. Under the broadcasts tab, app listeners tap fill-in notes. Well, join us next time as Chip continues his series, Keep Pressing Ahead. Until then, I'm Dave Drouie, thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge. .