Issue 463
Have you noticed that life and work constantly throw you a choice between accepting and challenging that which you encounter? “To change the things you cannot accept, or to accept the things you cannot change” is the way the old prayer goes. But what about “to accept the things you cannot accept, or to change the things you cannot change?”
Naturally you will have a style which prefers acceptance or challenge. It gets labelled type B (accepting) or type A (challenging). Such choices accompany you from cradle to grave.
It is quite clear that Nehemiah, in common with most leaders, was a type A personality. He would not accept events as unchangeable. He hears a report of a broken city and will not accept that brokenness. He knows of a broken covenant with God and will not accept it. He knows that cupbearers don’t move kings to act, but he does not accept that either. Nehemiah sees destroyed walls but will not allow that to continue. He realises others have failed but will not accept that he will. He knows that the people are discouraged and the enemies are numerous and will change both. Nehemiah knows the rich oppress the poor but challenges that. He is aware that it is difficult to build a wall in 50 days but will not give up.
Everything you can see in Nehemiah’s mind indicates he is an agent of change, a refuser to believe the status quo, and a strong rejecter of hopelessness.
On further inspection you can see his mindset as entrepreneurial, adventurous, daring, risk taking and revolutionary. That is the measure of the man.
Except his mind is not just type A. It is not simply that he is an agent of change or a born leader. It includes that, but that is not what sets him apart.
I would like to propose to you that there is such a thing as a resurrection mindset. This mindset, for sure, that will find its easy home in a type A personality but is not confined to that. In fact there are aspects of the type A personality which lend themselves to this resurrection mindset.
The resurrection mindset is about accepting what you cannot accept and changing what you cannot change. The resurrection mindset is only possible with the tombstone-rolling hand of God stirring your thoughts. The resurrection mindset says “that’s impossible!-but with God it can be done”.
So that mindset prays like crazy, knowing that positive thinking is not enough. This mindset will know that the only way you can get out of the king’s presence alive, as a cupbearer, is with God’s favour. When faced with a broken wall, a broken past, a discouraged team and a thousand enemies the resurrection mindset turns to God for wisdom, power and skill.
This mindset may look like that of an astute leader but it has the fear of the Lord as its neural engine. It is fuelled by prayer and powered by faith. The Spirit fills its wheels or clears its path. The resurrection mindset is about the impossible, the unbelievable, the unrealistic being made possible, believable and real through the power of God.
Like Daniel, Joseph, Rachel, Ruth, Naomi and Joshua, Nehemiah heard an embryonic echo of a Tarsan Rabbi say “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. That’s the resurrection mindset.
Review of Nehemiah 1-7
Phillipians 4:13
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
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Geoff Shattock
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