Fight for your family

Nehemiah 4:14 (NLT)

Then as I looked over the situation, I called together the nobles and the rest of the people and said to them, “Don’t be afraid of the enemy! Remember the Lord, who is great and glorious, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes!”

Nehemiah was a cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, King of Persia (modern day Iran).  Artaxerxes granted permission to Nehemiah and Ezra to return to Jerusalem in 445 BC and rebuilt the city walls, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC.  The Babylonians were conquered by the Persians (King Cyrus) in 539 BC with the Persian kings being more benevolent toward the Jews than the Babylonians had been.

However, as Nehemiah was making progress in this rebuilding project, he and his people faced opposition by other Jewish enemies---- Sanballat of Samaria, Tobiah the Ammonite, Geshem the Arab, and the men of Ashdod (Neh 4:7).  These were the enemies of whom Nehemiah referred in this passage and that the Jewish people must not be afraid of them.

Nehemiah implores his leaders and all the Jewish people not to be afraid.  Think about how you would feel if you knew that there were people within miles of your home who were planning to kill you and your family.  That’s a situation that thankfully we never have to face living in this great nation, but imagine how you would feel if you and your loved ones’ lives were being threatened?  Would you not be afraid? 

Yet, Nehemiah writes “don’t be afraid of the enemy!”  Why not?  Because you are to remember the Lord who is great and glorious (glorious is also translated as awesome).  It is a major biblical principle---and please try to remember this (!)—that you are never to be afraid of anyone or anything except the Lord and fear of the Lord means to revere and honor Him. 

While this passage refers to people’s lives being threatened, it can also be used to help fight discouragement.  Discouragement is a great enemy of success and victory.  By definition discouragement is the opposite of courage.  Raphael Oye Taiwo writes that “discouragement is the devil’s tool which has caused many great efforts to be abandoned just when they are about to achieve their superb goals”.  How do you fight and overcome discouragement?  By remembering the Lord.  Remembering His promises.  Remembering His power and victory over all the “D” words---discouragement, despondency, despair, depression, and death. 

Nehemiah correlates remembering the Lord’s greatness and awesomeness with fighting for your family.  An interesting correlation!  The Hebrew word for “fight” indeed means to “engage in battle”.  Fight is a key word in Scripture, used 177 times in the Old Testament and a few times in the New Testament, most notably in II Tim 4:7 “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”  The Lord wants you to fight for your family.  In Nehemiah’s time, this fight was for the survival of the Jewish nation.  Today, you are to fight against worldly and satanic attacks on your family.  Satan will do anything he can to destroy your family’s mutual love and unity.  You are not to fight with your family; you are to fight for your family.  How?  To do this justice I would need a book to write about all the possibilities, but to summarize, you fight for your family against both physical and spiritual attacks in the following ways:

·  Praying for each family member every day.

·  Asking God to use His greatness and awesomeness to protect and guide each member of your family

  and your family unit as a whole.

·  Claim God’s promises for your family.

·  Encouraging, not putting down, each member of your family.  Often encouragement comes in the

  form of forgiveness.

·  Never give up on any member of your family, no matter how much trouble they have caused and how

  rebellious he/she might be.

There are many other ways that you fight for your family, but simply remembering the Lord and praying for your family (better yet, praying with your family) will go a long way toward keeping your family together and successfully resisting all the various attacks that come from the world and the devil.  Fight for your family because if you don’t, no one else will.