Further Reflections on Having Our House Broken Into

So there were two high-water-mark events of our Labor Day weekend. The first was that I got to preach on Sunday at Chapel Hill Bible Church and the second was that our house got broken into while we were away.

Given that the sermon was about "Overcoming Opposition" my wife only half-jokingly says that the latter event was clearly my fault.

And I say that given that the sermon topic was assigned to me out of Nehemiah 4 by one of our pastors, it's clearly Dave Ward's fault. Dave, you'll be getting a bill shortly.

But it has been striking how the fruit of my time in Nehemiah 4 is really applicable to what we've experienced with the break-in.

Quick summary: Nehemiah is a Jew in captivity working for the king as the cupbearer, Jerusalem is in shambles and conquered. Nehemiah gets permission from the king to go and re-build the wall of Jerusalem, he rallies the people to go to work.

Nehemiah 4, a couple of guys aren't excited about the Jews re-building their wall and they set themselves against Nehemiah and his efforts. Hence, "overcoming opposition."

Nehemiah does a number of things that are instructive...and that have shaped how I've thought about our little episode.

First, Nehemiah never talks to the guys who taunt and insult the builders. He only talks to God. Prayer puts a boundary around the power Nehemiah's opposition will have over him and his people's work.

God is always the third party, active, throughout Nehemiah. And part of the intensity of an oppositional situation is how much it locks us in emotionally. We're having conversations in our head. We're internally embroiled in a toxic environment. And so we cede power over our lives to our opposition.

But prayer diffuses this Cold-War retro experience. It puts a boundary around the power the situation will have over us and it puts victory squarely in God's court. Final victory is his, not ours.

This is the victory I celebrated in yesterday's post that the Lord has worked in my heart. Several months of prayer has really freed me to not freak out that some of our stuff got stolen. It's not mine, anyway. It's God's. I gave it to him just that morning. He can do whatever he wants to with it. He is Lord over me, my stuff, and the guys who took my stuff.

Secondly, Nehemiah not only prays but he posts a guard. Some of us will pray and not post a guard when facing opposition. Others of us will just post a guard and not pray. But biblical wisdom calls us to do both.

So we're considering an alarm system--even just something that made a ton of noise if someone broke in. I'd love a dog, personally, but given that a dog would have been either boarded or otherwise out of the house (since we were traveling) it's hard for this particular instance to build my case!

And in the final analysis, Nehemiah (and we) trusts in the Lord to do what only he can do. The guard is not Nehemiah's hope. God is. God is the one who works through guards to protect innocent people all the time.

Alarm or no alarm, our hope is not in an alarm. Our hope is in the God over our home and our lives and our kids who works through stuff like alarms to keep people safe.

And finally, I believe that we're allowed biblically to identify our opponents. Scripture does so all the time. But we do so in order that we might do as Jesus did: we love them. And this, my friends, is perhaps the greatest challenge of them all.

And it's why we need Jesus, who dwells in us and who has already done this perfectly, to do it through us.