Learning to Pray Like Nehemiah: Praying For Your Enemies
This may sound like an odd question but, Do you have any enemies? Perhaps I should ask that a different way: Are there people in your life who persistently oppose your attempts to fulfill the will of God in and for your life?
Our concern in posing this question, as we look again at prayer in the life of Nehemiah, is not primarily with those who for whatever reason are opposed to us personally, but more to the point, those who are first and foremost opposed to God, and for that reason find themselves at odds with us.
Like friendly political commentators who nevertheless take a seat on opposite sides of the ideological aisle, if we are standing for the truth of God and seeking to live it out in our lives, Scripture promises and experience confirms that we sometimes will find ourselves on “opposite sides of the aisle” with those who want nothing to do with God and might even like to see our Christian influence neutralized. Personal relationships notwithstanding, when it comes to matters related to the kingdom of God, what fellowship does light have with darkness? The apostle Paul warned that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” (2 Tim. 3:12) There’s no way around the fact that those who do the persecuting do so because they are enemies of the truth of God. They don’t have to be personal enemies – they may in fact be family, even as Jesus forewarned! – but they are nevertheless aligned against us because they are aligned against Christ Himself.
We might consider as an example the vocal minority in America today who wish to expunge our public square of any and all vestiges of the biblical tradition which has for four hundred years helped to shape our nation’s heritage and history (Note: I originally wrote this about 10 years ago; things have degenerated significantly in that time). To be sure, good and reasonable people can have honest disagreements about such hot-button issues as the posting of the Ten Commandments in public settings, prayer at commencement exercises, or whose morality should be legislated by the state. A person who opposes a public symbol of faith like a nativity scene at city hall is not by virtue of that opposition necessarily a sworn “enemy of God.” He may just be a person who has honest reservations about the legal permissibility of the government favoring or endorsing religion. On the other hand, there are those who seem to make it their life’s ambition to rub out whatever remains of Christian symbolism and influence on the public square. Some go so far as to argue that religious persons – Christians in particular – ought to stay out of the political process or, minimally, keep their biblical convictions altogether private.
Unquestionably, there are those among our countrymen today who despise God, wish that He didn’t exist, wish to convince others that He doesn’t exist, and will that our nation be governed free of any religious influence. These desire freedom from religion, not freedom of religion. If we were to borrow an analogy from the Book of Nehemiah, we might say that as followers of Christ with concerns over the growing moral crisis in our nation, many of us want to be involved in the process of helping to “rebuild the cultural walls” that are broken down and burned with fire. At the same time, there are others who seek to lay an altogether different moral and spiritual foundation and therefore resist every effort at repairing the old one. The conflict in the public square is just one type of example where we might encounter enemies of God who oppose us solely on the basis of our identification with God. It could just as easily be one family member who opposes our effort to win another family member to faith in Christ, or a peddler of false doctrine who has infiltrated the leadership of a local church, or a despotic government that openly persecutes its Christian subjects. Whatever the situation, we can learn some valuable lessons about prayer in the midst of opposition by following in the example of Nehemiah, to whom we now turn.
Upon the completion of the divinely-prescribed seventy years of captivity, commencing with the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, many Jews returned to their homeland to begin the painstaking process of rebuilding the temple and the city, with a view towards restoring the proper worship of God. By authority of the decree of Cyrus king of Persia, Ezra the priest returned in the year 458 BC to rebuild the temple and the altar, though even this required that he stare down fierce opposition from adversaries in the land. In a similar fashion, just over a decade later Nehemiah likewise faced unscrupulous foes who used seemingly every trick in the book to resist his efforts at rebuilding the wall of the city.
Nehemiah was a cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, meaning he was more than just a butler but instead like a trusted advisor. Nehemiah’s heart, however, was with his people the Israelites, so much so that news of the city’s disrepair brought him mournfully to his knees. Chapter 1:5-11 records Nehemiah’s prayer, which even today can be a helpful model for us when we pray, regardless of the occasion. Like Nehemiah, we too should boldly acknowledge the character of God in our prayers. It is not enough that we operate on the basis of some vague notion that the God to whom we are praying actually exists. Nor is it enough to address God by various names such as “Lord” or “Father” unless we also infuse those with a confident understanding regarding His unchanging character and nature. It is unlikely that we will have confidence in our prayers if we lack thoughtful understanding of the God to whom we pray. We should also, like Nehemiah, be keenly aware of God’s unchanging standards of holiness which issue forth from His unchanging nature. Only by seeing ourselves in the light of who He is and what He requires of us will we understand the ways in which we have fallen short of His glory, or even the depths from which we have been redeemed.
Moreover, we should pray that God would “remember,” or “act upon” His enduring promises to us in Christ. That means we have to actually know what those promises are, and then ask God to fulfill them in and through us. We should pray, not only in familiarity with God’s character, but also with knowledge of God’s will as revealed in His Word. And finally, we should gratefully acknowledge, as did Nehemiah, that we have been redeemed by God to be His servants. The redeemed of the Lord are those who have been freed from the grip of sin and death, not for the purpose of servicing our own desires, but instead that we would become bondservants of God our Redeemer.
Nehemiah thus prayed, then he approached the king of Persia seeking permission to return to his homeland in order to rebuild the wall of the city. Securing the king’s blessing, Nehemiah returned to Israel, whereupon his first task was to inspect the wall and survey the work to be done. An inspiring account of that work follows in chapter three, where we read of the cooperative effort undertaken by numerous families who, side by side, each repaired a particular section of the wall.
Now, before the first sounds of construction were heard, we were introduced to Sanballat and Tobiah (and later, Geshem), men dedicated to inhibiting the work of God as it was being accomplished through the hand of Nehemiah. When these locals heard that the king had granted Nehemiah permission to commence with the rebuilding effort, “it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.” (2:10) Though they were unable to forestall the rebuilding effort, once the project was underway they set about with their obstructionism. We read this in Nehemiah 4:1–3:
…when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?” Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, “Yes, what they are building—if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!”
Sanballat and Tobiah knew that a rebuilt Jerusalem posed a threat to their powerbase. They were petty lords, and intended the preservation of their petty fiefdom. As a result of their selfish ambition, they stridently opposed Nehemiah’s efforts at every turn. Their first attempt to disrupt the building process was by means of psychological warfare. They mocked Nehemiah and the Jews, thinking ridicule alone would be enough to intimidate them into submission. Instead, it drove them to their knees in prayer – in submission to God! So when their scoffing failed to extinguish Nehemiah’s resoluteness, they ratcheted up their opposition and “plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it.”
It is instructive to see how Nehemiah handled the opposition stirred up by his enemies, or more accurately, those who were enemies of God. Knowing full well that his commission issued from God Himself, Nehemiah offered stiff and unyielding resistance to those who opposed the rebuilding of the wall. But he did not resist in his own strength. He did not take matters into his own hands. He did not rely upon his own power, influence, or might. Rather, he bowed his heart before the God of Israel and offered this supplication:
Hear, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders.
These words closely resemble what one finds in the so-called “imprecatory psalms,” for example psalms 35, 69, and 109, in which one calls upon God to pour out destruction and wrath on His, that is God’s, enemies. There is a harshness of rhetoric in these psalms as well as in Nehemiah’s prayer that at first glance seems disharmonious with Jesus’ injunction to turn the other cheek and to pray for, not against, our enemies. At the same time, it is important to note that such prayers of imprecation are first and foremost cries for divine justice offered by someone who was steadfastly refusing to take personal revenge into his own hands. As Paul exhorted in Romans 12:19: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” An imprecatory prayer is a cry for divine judgment against sin, not merely a colorful request for God to take up the cause against one’s personal enemies.
Indeed, Nehemiah was clearly involved in executing the will of God, and his enemies were clearly doing whatever they could to thwart the execution of that will. So by praying that God would “turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives,” Nehemiah was far from seeking personal revenge. Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem had provoked God to anger, and Nehemiah was asking God to oppose them just as they had opposed His will to see the wall rebuilt. In other words, Nehemiah’s prayer was an expression of zeal for the revealed will of God. He wanted the will of God to succeed.
Likewise, in saying we should pray for our enemies, Jesus is not teaching that we should pray for our enemies’ success in opposing God. That seems obvious enough. Instead, what we should want – and pray – is for our enemy to share in the same things that the Heavenly Father desires for us: that we (and they) would willingly cultivate a loving relationship with God through Christ, joyfully submitting to Him in all things, humbly seeking His glory and not our own. For God to accomplish such a redemption in their lives would be at the very same time to destroy their efforts at obstructing His will. The classic example, of course, is the testimony of the Apostle Paul himself.
As we draw this brief devotion to a close, let us reemphasize a few of our main points.
First of all, if we are actively seeking that the will of God be accomplished in our lives, we will at times be met with opposition. As Peter tells us: be not surprised at the fiery trials that come upon us as though some strange thing were happening.
Second, when we are opposed by the world for pursuing the things of God (we hope, in the love of God!), we must be aware that the One ultimately being resisted is God. Those who oppose us for following God are God’s enemies. As the example of Nehemiah shows, it is not “unbiblical” to pray that the enemies of God would be foiled in their attempts to oppose the kingdom of God. We are never, of course, to take matters into our own hands nor seek personal vengeance. We must leave room for the vengeance of God. That is, in fact, why we pray instead of plot revenge.
Even so, and finally, we must also bear in mind that we all were once enemies of God. Some of us, sadly, might even look into our past and be able to identify with the very kind of heavy-handed obstructionism practiced by Nehemiah’s enemies practiced. But we have since been reconciled to God through Christ, and now we have peace with God through Christ. This, therefore, is key for prayer in the face of opposition in light of the grace of the New Covenant: while rightly calling upon God to thwart any successful opposition to His will, we must also intercede on behalf of those who are behind the opposition, that God would redeem them by the merits of Jesus Christ just as He has also graciously redeemed us.
Let us then not be demoralized by the resolve of God’s enemies. Let us, instead, be driven to our knees before God, petitioning Him to turn back the efforts of those who howl their displeasure when His people arise to do His will. Let us not avenge ourselves, but pray for a spirit of determination, the same as is evident in Nehemiah, with the further condition that we also be moved to call upon God for the salvation of those who today call God their enemy, but who by His abundant grace in Christ could one day call Him Father.