We are moving into the part of Nehemiah 6 on how leaders face fear. To give you a brief summary where we've been in these 15 weeks, Nehemiah 1 is about characteristics of great leaders and how leaders form a compelling life vision, or a life focus. Chapter 2 is how leaders commit to a great restoring or rebuilding program with their life. Chapter 3 is how great leaders connect to the right kind of recovery communities. I don't have time to mess around with a church that wants to play games. That's why Carolyn and I have spent our lives here, because we want to be part of a great, compelling purpose. Chapters 4 and 5 talk about how leaders persevere through resistance. Chapter 6 is how leaders resolve to finish a great work.

This week we're going to look at how leaders face and respond to fear. Nehemiah 6:10-14, "One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, 'Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because some people are coming to kill you - by night they are coming to kill you.' But I said, 'Should someone like me run away? Or should one like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!' I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me. Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophet Noadiah and how she and the rest of the prophets have been trying to intimidate me."

Let's go to God in prayer before we allow God's word to work in our hearts.  "Father, there are areas in our life that we might not even be aware of where we have retreated or been paralyzed from acting on Your call. We pray that You will free us in those areas that we may live for and complete the great work to which You have called us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

This past week all of the periodicals were dealing with the tragedy at Virginia Tech and one of the men who was murdered caught my attention. His name was Liviu Librescu. He was a 77-year-old engineering professor and a Holocaust survivor. How people react in a moment of chaotic terror tells a lot about a person, because great leaders always stand out in a crowd. They heard shooting and screaming in the hall and in the midst of chaos, immediately Professor Librescu ran to the door and braced his body against the door and yelled for his students to jump from the windows. The students ran to the windows, kicked out screens and dropped to the bushes below. As shots were coming through the door, Professor Librescu continued to yell to his students as he barricaded his body against the door. Only one student, besides Professor Librescu, was killed in that room. That's a leader. That's the kind of man that I would want to be the professor to my children. My question is, in that moment of chaos, in that moment of terror, what is in a person that makes that person decide to either flight or fight? A majority of people in those moments of threatening terror are tempted to run and hide.

In this scripture, we see that the temptation from one of Nehemiah's supposed friends, "Come on, Nehemiah, you're going to die in this situation. Let's run into the church and lock the door, where we will be safe." Many times people who you think are your friends are really your foe. One of the greatest tragedies of all, this is when the enemy wins, is when you begin to use faith for personal security and comfort.

I saw a doctor at the gym, he's not from our church, and he came to me and said, "We were in surgery, and a Jewish doctor who was working with me said, 'Have you heard what Ginghamsburg Church is doing in the Sudan?' I told her, 'Yes. My daughter attends Ginghamsburg Church, I know about the Sudan. I'm really paying attention to what they're doing.' The Jewish doctor said, 'This is so amazing because we, as Jewish people, when we think of Christians, we think of people who don't care about anybody but themselves.'" That's what happens - a majority of folks in the world look at the people of God and the church, and they see the church as basically irrelevant. From their perspective, all we do is hang around in these little buildings where we have shut the door. We might not have actually locked the door, but, because of our irrelevance and inaccessibility, the door seems locked. We get together in our little religious clubs and have reduced the radical mission of Jesus to this little personalized salvation, safety and security thing. What do we mean when we say, "I'm saved"? The rest of the world is going to hell, but I'm saved. We sing our songs and have our dinners and our bazaars, and at best, we pray for the world, but no one ever gets dirty. We insulate ourselves from the plight and pain of the world for whom Jesus died. Sometimes people say, "Well, pastor, that message didn't really inspire me this week." I'm not here to inspire you. I'm not here to make you feel good. We're at war for the soul of the world. Our fear of really committing ourselves to the radical purpose of Jesus, and not just play church, prohibits people from entering God's saving purpose and presence.

I remember one term from biology, it's amazing, but I do remember something: homeostasis. Homeostasis is the tendency of a system or organism to remain the same. Fear is like the thermostat in my house. Throughout twelve months of the year, it is always set somewhere between 68-72 degrees. It doesn't go under that or over that. Sometimes we'll be lying in bed at night and I'll say to Carolyn, "Did you turn the heat up?" Because, I don't like to be outside of my comfort zone. To really commit yourself to the radical mission of Jesus Christ, and not just play church, has the same factor in our lives - it keeps us in our comfort zone. When you allow this fear to control, it has lifelong repercussions. This is the difference between leaders and everyone else. Look at verse 13 with me, "He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this." That's when you fail to act on all that Christ is calling you to be and do, the repercussion is sin. Sin diminishes your capacity to achieve God's purpose through indecision, procrastination and disobedience.

Last week, I shared about how God hates divorce and how we sometimes allow distractions to keep us from building on that healthy foundation of God's purpose for our marriages. I want to tell you something else God hates, and that's abusive marriages. Some people stay in dead marriages all their life because they fear what would happen if they stepped out of that destructive situation. When two people aren't equally committed to work hard to fulfill the trust and promise they made to God when they said I do, then Jesus said that's hardness of heart. It's why Jesus said Moses allowed divorce, it wasn't God's intention from the beginning, but if there is hardness of heart, where both parties aren't willing to work equally, then sometimes divorce is the better of two not-great options. I was that homeostasis. Carolyn and I had been married 20 years and I was comfortable living in this "no man's land" of our relationship. So she came one day and tried to move me out of that state of homeostasis. It's uncomfortable and sometimes it's fear in a proactive way. God can use it to get you rebuilding again. She said, "You've got six months to decide. You're either going to make this marriage a priority, it's going to be more important than church, or me and the kids are out of here." She wasn't working at the time, so I said, "Well, how are you going to support the kids? You wouldn't do something stupid like that." I was trying to feed her fear. She said, "Watch." If she had allowed fear to control her, neither of us would be here right now. Maybe many of you who have met Jesus Christ since then would not be here right now. Do you see what happens when we allow ourselves to react to fear, the consequence is sin.

In other areas, because of our fear, we fail to act against injustice, such as failing to speak against things like the genocide that's going on in the world right now. We fail to act against destructive causes. I don't know how many of you read about it, or if we'll hear much about it, but this coming week, the first week in May, is the 400th anniversary of when the first slave ship reached Jamestown. Except for the Quakers, the church was silent for over 250 years, until the 1860s. You can't tell me there wasn't a boatload of people in the church who thought there was something wrong with that. But, what did we do? We ran into our churches, closed the doors and were irrelevant to God's rebuilding purpose in the world. We made it about heaven instead of bringing God's purpose of heaven to earth.

I'm going to say it right now, and I know this is going to be one of the most unpopular things I say in this church, and people will leave, but . . . And I don't say this to slap anyone in the face, but come let us reason together in the Spirit of the word of the Lord. Abortion is a politically correct cousin of Hitler. It is no different that we have elevated personal choice, personal reproductive choice above personal reproductive responsibility. When we no longer worship the Lord of life, we have lost respect for the gift of life. I don't want anybody to say, "Oh, yes, there's that conservative point of view," because then I'll turn around and slap the other half of you with what I think about this darn war that's going on. Or what I think about children who are born and then many pro-life advocates don't emphasize the kind of funding those kids need in urban school settings so that life can go on. I'm not speaking a political view here, I'm speaking out against something that I think is genocide, and it's called abortion. And it's out of fear that we don't speak. I'm also against capital punishment. In many things I think God gives life and only God has a right to take life away. Again, I hope I'm kicking you in the behind. If you're for one thing, then I hope you're against something else that I'm saying.

We know that Jesus calls us to sacrificial giving. Yet, I just read in a magazine this week that in America, 53% of Christians who are active in their church give nothing to their church - and most people just make "donations." Lord means absolute authority, there is no higher authority. Why is it when the Lord commands us to sacrificial giving and sacrificial service that most of us never go to that place? It's called fear; and, the lifelong repercussion of fear is sin. Notice the second consequence of this repercussion of fear, still in verse 13, "He'd been hired to intimidate me, so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me." There is a loss when you sin, when you allow yourself to be controlled by fear. Not only is it sin, there is a loss of credibility and reputation. You damage your name, and not only do you damage your name when people look at you, but you damage the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Chinese have this saying, "A reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the choice of one hour." When you allow yourself to be controlled by fear, you lose respect for yourself. Great leaders are few and far between. I think about that - would I have been the dude that threw myself up against the door or would I have run for the window? Great leadership is about the commitment not to flight, but to the fight. Look at verse 11, "But I said, 'Should someone like me run away? Or should one like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!'''

I was thinking about how Paul described this commitment to follow Jesus Christ, this Jesus lifestyle and he never said, come into this church and find how Jesus can make your life better. Nowhere does it say in the Bible that Christians have better sex, that Christians make more money, or that Christians won't get sick or that Christians won't get murdered. What Paul said was, "Come and join the fight." He describes this lifestyle as a commitment to fight the good fight of faith.

We all feel fear. Before church, the worship design team was sitting upstairs and Carolyn was with me. One of the staff asked me, "What are you afraid of?" Carolyn has lived with me for 35 years. "He's not afraid of anything." I said, "Yeah, I'm afraid of failure." This week, I spoke to the brightest and best of Montgomery County high school students this week, about 5-10 from each school, and I blew it. For about three days, every time I looked in the mirror, I said a cuss word that I shouldn't have said. I fear failure.

What great leaders do when they feel the fear, they recognize the source. Look at verse 12 with me, "I realized that God had not sent him." He was saying he realized that fear doesn't come from God. Everyone ought to identify and name their fears. It's often that fear thing that causes procrastination or indecision. Here's what the word of God says, "God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and sound mind." Fear overrides your mind and you react instead of proact. Fear is really faith in the devil. Faith is the proactive resolve to feel the fear and do it anyway. Faith is living from the perspective of Easter. It's living with a resurrection worldview. Last week, we talked about Peter when they were in the boat and Jesus came walking toward the disciples on the water and the first thing he said was, "Don't be afraid." Regardless of what storm you might find yourself in.

On Easter morning, the women were the first ones to see Jesus. Why wasn't there a man to be found? The Bible says they were afraid and hiding behind locked doors. Five hundred years after Nehemiah, the temptation still hits to run into the temple or the church, and lock doors. You've got to admit, when you buried someone three days before and in that kind of desert climate, they did it quickly, but you smelled smells - he had been hanging on a cross all day. Then you see Jesus standing in the garden and the first words out of his mouth after the resurrection are, "Do not be afraid."  The definition for faith is don't run. That's exactly what he was saying.

Rosa Parks is one of my great heroes in my life; all of us ought to have a list of the people who inspire us. Rosa Parks' job was a youth worker in her church. What a great youth worker. It was the 1950s in Montgomery, Alabama, and at age 43, after her day job, she got on a bus and broke the law by refusing to give up her seat for a white person. As a serious follower of Jesus, she really was the one that pulled the trigger. Martin Luther King, Jr. couldn't have done what he did without that trigger. Rosa Parks didn't react, she was proactive. She said, "I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, when you know what you have to do and you commit yourself to do it, this diminishes fear." Knowing what must be done does away with fear. It's feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

The third principle I noticed this week that it would be easy to overlook is that great leaders show a willingness to forgive their enemy. In verse 14, Nehemiah said, "Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophet Noadiah and how she and the rest of the prophets have been trying to intimidate me." This is one I have to work on. When somebody has been a source of frustration or an outright threat to my progress, it can create resentment in me. Not only resentment, it can cause some unresolved anger and sometimes even a desire for payback. The enemy is shrewd because the enemy knows that if it can't get you to stop your work, or to compromise spiritually or morally, then the enemy is going to wear you down physically.

Just last week, as I left this place, someone said something to me and accused me of not preaching the word. I was thinking, "Where did that come from?" So, I went to bed that night and I was thinking, "Where did that come from?" It was 12:30 in the morning - what am I doing? I've got a great rebuilding work to do the next morning - to speak three times in this church, and I was thinking about that son-of-a-gun. I'm going to go downstairs and e-mail . . .! It began to keep me up and wear me down. It drains you of your energy. Do you see the strategy? Forgiveness is to release that person to God. Judgment belongs to the Lord. A staff person told me he's heard that unforgiveness is like the man who burns down his house to kill the rat. Forgiveness doesn't mean that I'm going to bring the rat to my table. Forgiveness means I'm going to leave the rat to the experts and stay on the work of God. It doesn't mean I have to trust the rat or hang with the rat, but the rat is God's problem while I continue to do the work of God. Great leaders show this incredible willingness of forgiveness, not only forgiveness of rats, but self-forgiveness.

There are two people who failed in Jesus' last days of Easter week. Equal failures: Judas and Peter. Peter's failure wasn't any worse than Judas', it's just that Peter did it three times, Judas did it once. Judas could not forgive himself and committed suicide by hanging himself. Peter had the ability to forgive himself. It's the only difference. I noticed this in our Transformation Journal study yesterday. II Timothy 2:1, "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." That hit me because, as I shared with you earlier, what I fear is failure. I can't forgive myself if I go into a situation to minister to people that God has entrusted me with and I don't connect with them. Every time I look in the mirror and say, "You idiot, how did you blow that? You know better. You weren't as prepared as you could have been" and I don't let it go. Then I hear, "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." It doesn't say in the power that is in Jesus or the righteousness that is in Jesus but the grace. Grace is undeserved favor.

I want you to bow your head in prayer with me because God wants to do some good things - God wants to do some great things. I want you to identify a place of fear that is impeding God's progress and purpose in your life. Name to yourself; identify that fear list, a place of fear that's impeding your progress.

God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind. Right now, through the grace that is in Jesus, recommit yourself to fight the good fight of faith and that you will not be diminished in your capacity through indecision, procrastination or disobedience in any area such as your marriage, your giving, your service. Identify an unresolved anger that's tied to unforgiveness in your life. A resentment that you have against another person or even yourself, that you haven't released to God. Judgment belongs to the Lord. Release that person. You don't have to trust the rat or hang out with the rat, just release that person to the judgment, the mercy, the love of God, while you get on with God's work. "Father, we are so thankful that in these days of confusion in the world - of mental illness, of disease, of poverty and the murder of innocents, that we get to be a part of Your redeeming work in the world. Let us not hide behind the traditions of church. Let us fully engage the world everywhere we work and live and play so that when we come to that day where we meet You, Lord Jesus, face-to-face, we can hear the words "Well done,my good and faithful servant. Well done." We love You, Lord Jesus, use us this week. It's in Your name we pray. Amen."