We are in the book of Nehemiah chapter six. We have been in this study since the first of January and I want to remind you that Nehemiah is all about leadership. It is named after a leader who was focused on one thing and accomplished one thing. He built a wall in 52 days. As we are looking at this book, we are asking ourselves what makes a great leader. Everyone here leads somebody and has influence over someone. Is that influence going to be positive or is it going to be negative because all of our influence has eternal consequences.

I was eating lunch this afternoon with a young pastor who is about 25 years my junior. He said, "Mike, the only difference I see between you and me is this thing called courage." I looked at this young pastor and said, "You are going to blink twice and you are going to be my age." You have one life. It is almost over. If you are 30, you are almost gone, so it is critical that you faithfully execute God's purpose in your life. Before we begin, I want us to go to prayer because God always wants to do more in you and through you than you are aware of. Open yourself to the Spirit. Father God, I thank you for each precious life represented in this room and the diversity of ministry to which you have called us. I pray for each person here for the resolve to finish the great life purpose for which they have been created. I pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.

Nehemiah 6:1-3, "When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it, though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates, Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: 'Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.' But they were scheming to harm me, so I sent messengers to them with this reply: 'I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?'"

Here is the first characteristic I see in a great leader. Verse three says a great leader has this compelling life focus, life picture, life vision. Sometimes we say this is a calling. Nehemiah said I have this great life work going on and I can't quit. The power of having this compelling life vision gives you a lot of freedom. And one of the greatest freedoms for someone with a compelling life picture is that you have this clarity so it gives you the freedom to say no. No is one of the most powerful words I know. We are taught to be positive and always say yes. When I went into ministry there were all kinds of expectations of what pastors are supposed to do. They are supposed to call on the sick. They are supposed to be a part of a whole bunch of meetings. They are supposed to do weddings. They are supposed to do funerals. They are supposed to visit hospitals and all that. That is not what I was called to do. I had this compelling life vision to create a community of ministers who would do all of those things because of their giftness. I can't remember what year it was the last time I visited someone in the hospital. I don't like hospitals. I don't do weddings. It is this one thing I do, not 50 things I dabble in. I preach three times on Saturday and three times on Sunday morning, so when am I going to do weddings? The difference between a great leader and everyone else is that everyone else dabbles in 50 things, but a great leader has this compelling life picture and this gives a great leader momentum or drive to the finish line.

I am a student of Jesus - I hope that everybody is a student or disciple of Jesus - and for the last 30-some years of being on this Jesus journey, I was always captivated when Jesus talked about this driving life vision that he had where he said, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me." It is about my life sustenance and to finish the work that God sent me to do. That word finish is big. Through my years in the ministry, I have seen thousands of people come through this church who have had a great start, but it is very few of those thousands of people who will have a strong finish. Jesus lived on this earth for only 33 years and was able to say at the end of those years: "I have finished the work you have sent me to do." That is my prayer! That this incredible compelling life picture will give me the resolve to finish the work that God has sent me to do.

About a month ago, we were in Nehemiah 4; and Nehemiah had built the wall to half its height. We said halfway finished is one of the hardest places to be. Now, Nehemiah is at the point that he has built the wall to its full height and the only thing left to do is hang the gates. Halfway finished is one of the hardest places to be, but almost finished is when you are the most vulnerable.

You all know that Carolyn and I are baseball parents and for 18 years we followed our son and worked with our son all the way through Division One college baseball and seven professional tryouts. On one trip about four years ago, we flew out to meet his team playing Fresno State in California. Both teams were Division One teams, but Fresno State was one of the top 25 teams in the country, so it was one of the we-are-supposed-to-get-killed predictions. For nine innings, we held the lead. In the ninth inning, we had a four-run lead, with two outs, we needed one more out. I could smell the victory. We were almost finished. One out away - how could you blow it? The short stop had just made the second out in the ninth inning, went over and slapped hands with the second baseman. I don't know how it happened, but two walks and an error later . . . uh-huh, we almost won. No, you lost!! Almost winning is losing. I don't know how many times I will meet someone and I'll ask, "Did you go to college?" "Yeah, I almost finished. I only needed a couple more credits." No, you didn't almost finish, you quit. Almost finished is one of the most vulnerable places to be.

Because great leaders have this compelling life focus, it gives them a resolve to persevere through resistant forces. Look at verse four with me; it is talking about the enemy of Israel. "Four times they sent me the same message and each time I gave the same answer." Look at the forces of resistance. Not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. Distractions and opposition will always come against healthy commitments of faith. One of the greatest callings that we have in all of life is marriage and family. Some people are called to singles and I want to affirm the call to singleness. Not everyone is supposed to be married and that is a valid call. But it is in marriage and family that we see one of the greatest demonstrations of the selfless, unconditional, sacrificial love of God. How can you experience the sacrificial, unconditional love of a God you can't see if there is not a place in the world where you are accepted unconditionally and that you experience the demonstration of sacrificial love? In marriage right now, we are being distracted from building on the foundation of God's purpose. The divorce rate in the church now equals that in our society. About one in 2.5 marriages in the church end in divorce and it is almost the same rate among clergy right now. We have a problem. We are not exempt from distractions. Marriage is so important because we are commanded to be faithful to one God. That is monotheism, one God. And that is the hardest thing in the world for me to do because I want to worship many gods. I want to worship the god of BMW. I want to worship the god of lust. I want to worship a variety of gods, yet God demands that I worship one God. I demonstrate my fidelity to a monotheistic God that I don't see, through a monogamous relationship with my wife. It is a whole lot easier to tell a God I don't see that I am committed in him to live with this lady for the last 35 years. It has nothing to do with feeling. God's love and acceptance of me has nothing to do with whether I am good or bad. The way that I demonstrate my love to God is not like a thermometer that changes with the temperature. Regardless of what I feel, it is through this selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love to this woman called Carolyn and this 35-year commitment of monogamy to one person.

Christmas 1971 was the night Carolyn and I became engaged and Kristen is the first byproduct. She is 28 years old right now. Do you see why this is one of the most critical places of God's building process - building on the foundation of God's purpose in the world and how we can experience distraction and opposition. Here is one of the distractions. I am going to say it right here and I am not ashamed and I know this I not politically correct, here is what's wrong with premarital sex: when God tells you he does not want you to "do the wild thing" until after you have made the commitment is because all relationships need the building of friendship before you ever come to that place of intimate, physical connection with one another. It takes a lot of time to build a relationship and when you jump to the physical in premarital sex, what you do is confuse relationship with self-gratification and feeling. So when you are married two or three weeks and you have that first time where you are not so sure that you feel anything, then you learn to seek self-gratification and open yourself to temptation and compromise. Not only do you open yourself to temptation and compromise, you create generations of children who follow your pattern. Almost finished is one of the hardest places to be.

As parents, sometimes we think, "I've got these kids raised. They are off to college now. My job is done." No, if you think your job is done and you are not following up with them through those college years, that's when they become most vulnerable to the temptations of sexual culture. Every week, I was on the phone with my children and both of them were 7 to 10 hours away in college. "How are you doing? Did you go to church today? Are you in a Christian fellowship?" I am the leader of my tribe and it doesn't stop now. My son-in-law is 30 and I talk to him all the time, "Brendan, did you go to church tonight?" They always go on Sunday evening in Boston. "Are you part of a small group, Brendan?" My daughter is 28, my son is 25. We are going to have this conversation tomorrow night. I am still the leader of my tribe. I have to lead them faithfully all the way to the grave and then they will lead their children faithfully all the way to the grave. Parenting almost finished is one of the most vulnerable places to be.

I want to tell you about the resistant force of fatigue. Nehemiah had been at this project for some time and stood against compromise and temptation. You know how it is when you have been at this a long time - how fatigue can set in. And now here comes the enemy, "Come on; let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono." They were offering that dude a week in Vegas. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, you know what I mean. We might not have had this story in the Bible if Nehemiah had allowed his fatigue to be a distraction. There would have been a funeral in Ono. There wouldn't have been a wall in Jerusalem. I am discovering in my life the importance of margins. Relationships are formed in the margins. Margins are those blank spaces. Acts of kindness are done in the margins. When you don't have any margins in your life, people are going to leave you alone because you are always on the edge. This winter/spring has been one of the busiest times in my life. I have been burning the candle at both ends and I haven't done this for years. I have been going from here, flying to one place, then to another place, and then coming back here.

A few weeks ago, I flew to Harrisonburg, Virginia, to speak at a conference at James Madison University. The next day I flew to Asheville, North Carolina. My margins are getting thin and I am thinking about things I don't usually think about. All I am thinking about is, let's get honest, I am thinking about things longer than I usually do. One toke over the line would be kind of nice right now. We have some of those temptations sometimes - yes, children, we do. I had not been meeting with my accountability group because I had been gone most Thursdays. I have five men that I meet with on Thursday mornings. So I called my assistant and told her to get my accountability group together. Last weekend was the first weekend off I've had in this calendar year. Carolyn and I had five days together in the mountains and there is a big difference in my life this week because of margins.

Next week, we are going to read that Nehemiah completed the wall in 52 days, but that doesn't count Sabbath days. They didn't violate the seventh-day principle, so Nehemiah completed it in 52 days but he made sure there was a day of rest every week during those days. It is guarding those margins that will help us persevere through resistant forces.

The third characteristic I see of a great leader is that they are unswayed by gossip and negative accusations. Nehemiah 6:5-8: "Then the fifth time Sambalat sent his aide to me with the same message, in his hand was an unsealed letter in which was written: it is reported among the nations, and Geshem says it is true, that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports you about to become their king and had even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: 'There is a king in Judah.' Now this report will get back to the King; so come and let us meet together."

Notice that part: it came in an unsealed letter. The custom of that time was that if I sent you a letter, it would be on a piece of parchment or sheepskin and I would write it out and then I would roll it up. And because this was a personal correspondence, I would seal it with candle wax and then press the wax with a signet ring which would have my initial on it. Then everyone would know when that letter was received that no one else had read it. But that is not what the enemy of Nehemiah did in this case. He sent that letter unsealed. That meant gossip and that a lot of folks along the way had read all of this stuff that was demeaning the character and the intentions of Nehemiah. Any time you attempt to be a part of God's great purpose, people are going to gossip. The Bible talks about the destructive power of the tongue and what happens when you make this commitment to step out and begin building. That gossip, that destructive power of the tongue, is going to come from some of the people that you least expect it. You are not going to believe this, but it is going to come from the church.

When I came to Ginghamsburg Church, I knew that the church was broke. I don't mean broke like money broke, I mean that the way we do church in America was broken broke. And it would be insane to continue to try to do church like church was being done. So I came as this 27-year-old young Jesus freak, in blue jeans and sandals, doing church in a different way to accomplish the rebuilding purpose of God in the world. And it was my sisters and brothers in the church who had laid their hands on me and blessed me, that began to criticize me and gossip about me, "Psst, psst, psst, he is not a Methodist. Pssst, pssst, pssst, he is a charismatic. He is leading a cult." It can even come from your own family. I remember when I had this change and Jesus had come into my life and I said I was going to be a minister, because I had been in a rock band that had been busted, my mom and dad said, "This is just another fad that you are going through; you'll get over it." It has been a long fad. The place you are most vulnerable won't always be in that external gossip and criticism, it will be those accusations that come from within.

Let's get honest, no one is more aware of your own crap and internal struggles and contradictions than you are. You know it. That inner voice is telling you all the time, "If all those people knew . . ." The whole purpose of that voice within you is to get you to go beyond guilt to shame. There is a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is when I feel bad about what I have done and can be a positive force in our life because it can lead us to repentance and corrective action. Guilt is when I don't like what I have done; shame is when I don't like who I am. If this inner voice can get you to not like who you are, then you have distrusted God's promise and God's unconditional love.

Always remind yourself that there is nothing you can do to make God quit loving you. There is nothing that you have done to make God's promise invalid in your life. Listen to Romans 8:31-33, "What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can possibly be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will ever bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?" God has chosen every person here. So, if God has chosen you, who can stand against you? It is God who justifies - you do not have to justify yourself. It is God and Jesus Christ who has justified you. No one can condemn. "Not one" means including you. You can't condemn yourself. Christ Jesus who died, and was raised to life, not only has he died for you, he lives for you and is at the right hand of God and is also defending you and interceding for you. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? I don't have time to read more but it goes on and on, nothing, height, death, life or death, angels, principalities, nothing; no created thing can separate you from the love of God or the promise of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Great leaders are unswayed by gossip and negative accusations. 

Here is the fourth characteristic I see in these scriptures about great leaders: they act on this thing that I call intuitive faith. It is different than cognitive belief. Most people in the church have cognative belief, but great leaders have this intuitive faith, it is from the gut, almost like a sixth sense. Nehemiah 6:9 is really the pivotal verse of this first section of chapter 6 that we are studying. "They were all trying to frighten us thinking, 'Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.' But I prayed, 'Now strengthen my hands.'"

Think about this scenario. There was an alliance of kings surrounding Jerusalem and all of their armies, Nehemiah had this ragtag group of ex-slaves that he had brought with him from Babylona and now these kings are marshalling their army, chariots and horses, and F-16s - and Nehemiah prayed? This is what separates great leaders from everyone else. This is when people with cognitive belief begin to negotiate with the enemy. They begin to compromise or quit. But great leaders act on this intuitive trust. There is a difference between trust and belief.

Have you ever wondered why of all of the disciples, when Jesus left the planet, he entrusted the leadership of the church to Peter? How many times in scripture can you count that Peter failed or denied Jesus Christ? When you look at Peter, he seems like this impulsive twit. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is when the disciples were in a storm and it is descriptive of what it means to live life in the church. All of the disciples were in this boat, in a storm. They all were worried about the storm and what was going to happen. Many people live in this place of fear. Then Jesus came toward them walking on the water. It was not apparent who he was at that point. Have you ever tried to see through a storm? Somehow Peter, out of this intuitive trust, sensed that it was not a ghost, but it might be the Master. "Peter said, 'Lord, if it is you, call me to come and walk to you on water.' So Jesus said, 'Come.'" Peter couldn't clearly see who it was and he jumped out of the boat and what is so amazing is he began to walk on water. But, what did he do next? All of those disciples sitting in the boat were saying, "Peter, you crazy idiot, look at the storm?" That is what most everyone is doing in cognitive belief - they are pointing out all the ways it can't be done. So Peter was distracted for a moment and looked to his left, a tidal wave, looked to his right, jaws!!!! And he began to sink. Then everyone could say, "Look. Peter was a failure. He tried it, and it didn't work." No, the real failure was the eleven people who stayed in the boat waiting to see if it was possible to be done. They were the real failures. Jesus will never entrust anything to people who are sitting in the boat waiting to see if it could be done. Great leaders, even in their failure, have this intuitive trust that they can yell, "Jesus, save me." - and he does. That is why great leaders keep stepping out, risking beyond their comfort zone and keep acting on this compelling life purpose.

God did not create anybody for failure. "Jesus said, 'You didn't choose me, I chose you and called you that you could go out and bear fruit, fruit that would remain.'" I don't know what you are going through or where you are - you might have lacked resolve to finish in some area in your life. It might be in your marriage; it might be that you're struggling with your children. It might be that you're a pastor of a church and you need resolve to finish. Let's go to the Lord right now in prayer. Will you pray with me.

I want you to relax. Relax your shoulders, relax your arms. What I do so often is open my hands in my lap to receive from God - that nothing can separate me from the promise or the love of God in Christ Jesus. Jesus gives us the commission to go and build his great life purpose in our homes, our families, our marriages, our children, and our communities. Jesus said, "I have chosen you, you did not choose me. I have touched you and anointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last." He said to his disciples, "Have courage, do not be afraid, it is I. Go out therefore and make disciples. And remember this, I am with you always."

Right now, I feel impressed by the Lord that there is a pastor in this room right now who is in great pain and is in a relationship outside of his marriage. He feels guilt and shame and feels there is no way back. The Lord right now is saying to you repent, come back, trust me for I did not choose you for failure, but for great purpose. Renew your commitment to your wife; renew your commitment to me. Finish the great relationship for which I created you.

There is another person in this room that feels failure as a parent and that there is nothing you can do because your children are in their 30s and the seed has already been sown. God is a God of redemption who never lets go. Trust the God who has given those children to you and God will show you a way to share with those children, to pray for those children and God is going to do a great new thing.

We pray this together and we agree on this together. In Jesus' name, Amen