When demands multiply and your energy is running low, Nehemiah’s example offers a powerful lesson in discernment, protecting your purpose and trusting God for the strength to keep going.
By EEW Magazine Online Editors
The demands often multiply just when the work needs you most. (EEW Magazine Online)
You have spent years building something significant. Maybe it’s a business, a ministry, or a life you’ve had to piece back together after a devastating loss. You’re finally seeing progress, but you’re exhausted. And just when you need to focus, the demands on your time and energy multiply. An opportunity sounds promising, but accepting it would cost time you can’t afford to lose.
Someone wants to reopen a conflict you’ve already addressed. Others need your attention, your help, your answers. You don’t want to disappoint anyone, but you also can’t keep giving away the strength you need for what’s already in your hands.
How do you know what deserves your attention and what you need to leave alone? How do you keep moving forward when you’re already weary?
Nehemiah faced those very questions when the wall around Jerusalem was nearly finished. No breach remained, though the doors had not yet been hung in the gates (Nehemiah 6:1). That is when Sanballat and Geshem sent word asking him to meet them on the plain of Ono. Scripture records their motive: “But they thought to do me mischief” (Nehemiah 6:2, KJV).
Nehemiah’s reply was short and to the point. “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3, KJV).
Not every request that sounds promising deserves a yes. (Getty Images)
“Whilst I leave it” translates a form of the Hebrew verb raphah, which means to sink, relax or let drop. Answering their call meant letting go of the work. They sent the same request four times, and he gave the same answer four times (Nehemiah 6:4).
The fifth message came as an open letter accusing him of plotting rebellion to make himself king. That one he answered directly: “There are no such things done as thou sayest, but thou feignest them out of thine own heart” (Nehemiah 6:8, KJV). Then he named their aim: “For they all made us afraid, saying, Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it be not done” (Nehemiah 6:9, KJV). “Weakened” is raphah again. His enemies wanted his hands to drop from the work he had refused to leave.
This time, he answered with a prayer: “Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands” (Nehemiah 6:9, KJV). The Hebrew verb chazaq means to make strong or firm, and it appears earlier in Nehemiah’s story. When he first urged the people to build, he told them how God had helped him. Encouraged by his testimony, they “strengthened their hands for this good work” (Nehemiah 2:18, KJV).
Now, with enemies trying to weaken their hands and stop the work, Nehemiah turned to the same God who had given them strength to begin. When your own strength runs low, pray as Nehemiah prayed: Lord, strengthen my hands.
He also knew which demands deserved his attention. He repeatedly declined the meeting at Ono, answered the false accusation in a single sentence, and returned to his assignment. He called it a great work while the gates still had no doors. Its value did not depend on its completion, and neither does the value of what God has placed in your hands today.
Fifty-two days after the building began, the wall was finished (Nehemiah 6:15). Even the enemies who tried to weaken the builders’ hands “perceived that this work was wrought of our God” (Nehemiah 6:16, KJV).
So be discerning about what deserves your yes, and don’t let unnecessary demands pull you away from what God has entrusted to you. He who helped you begin is able to strengthen you to finish.
