No one can do anything meaningful in life without learning how to overcome sabotage. Our previous meditation showed how Isaac weathered through all that the Philistines threw at him. Nehemiah, the reformer, had his own fair share of the activities of the saboteurs. No sooner had he arrived Jerusalem than the company of Sanballat and Tobiah began to wage war against his restoration program. They used mockery; but it failed. They later employed threat; which also failed. In our text for meditation today, they employed a different tactic altogether. The new ploy here was to hire a false prophet who told Nehemiah that they would come to kill him in the night. The advice was that he should go and hide in the inner court of the Temple, which Nehemiah refused on two grounds. First, he saw such step as cowardice; and that would be unbecoming of a leader. Secondly, he realized that it would be sin on his part, being not a member of the family of the priests.

“No one can do anything meaningful in life without learning how to overcome sabotage. A combination of the word and prayer will subdue all saboteurs.”

As it turned out, it was a ruse. The enemy only raised a false alarm to make Nehemiah panicky. What saved him was biblical discernment. “Therefore you and your sons with you shall attend to your priesthood for everything at the altar and behind the veil; and you shall serve. I give your priesthood to you as a gift for service, but the outsider who comes near shall be put to death” (Numbers 18:7). Nehemiah’s grasp of the Scripture saved him from colliding with God. In these days and time, we all need to have our theology in place in order not to run into troublous water. In addition to his grasp of God’s word, the reformer also drew strength from constant prayer. A combination of the word and prayer will subdue all saboteurs.