Four common weapons of opposition and four proven steps to victory
The mind is the devil’s favorite avenue of attack.
Billy Graham
To be obsessed by God is to have an effective barricade against all the assaults of the enemy.
Oswald Chambers
Fight the good fight of the faith.
1 Timothy 6:12
Eric Munyemana didn’t know at age nineteen as he was driving to school with his father that he was about to become part of the rare opportunity to rebuild an entire country. Eric and his family were living in Burundi among thousands of Rwandans of the Tutsi tribe who had been in exile for decades. A policy by the government of Rwanda opened the door for the systematic discrimination and killing of those of Tutsi ethnicity.
Eric heard on the car radio a news report that an offensive had begun against those who were attacking and killing those of his tribe who remained in Rwanda. These attacks would tragically grow into the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda. It was a period of a hundred days in which nearly one million Rwandans lost their lives.
Eric lived in relative comfort in Burundi. His family had resources, and he could go to college and look forward to a career. But he could not get this news report out of his mind. He convinced two cousins to join him, and so their parents wouldn’t plead with them not to go, they sold all they had to buy plane tickets to join the fighting as soon as possible.
Eric and his cousins left Burundi to join the Rwandan Patriotic Front in November 1990 in a war that would continue until July 1994, when the genocide stopped.
In the decades since then, Eric has been involved in the rebuilding of Rwanda through his work in business and then the church.
I’ve made numerous trips to Rwanda since 2004—our daughter, Alyssa, lived there for almost three years helping churches—and have seen huge gains in the rebuilding. The changes in the infrastructure of the country are dramatically evident with every visit. The strengthening of churches, businesses, government, and families is even more striking.
Yet opposition occurred all along the way. Even after the military battles were over, the attacks continued in different forms. Whenever you are rebuilding, there will be opposition.
Sometimes, as it was in Rwanda, it is obvious that there will be a battle before victory. More often, we are shocked that not everyone is cheering us on in our striving toward such a good goal as restoring a marriage or a business. Even more shocking is the internal conflict of fighting ourselves against a positive change.
Because it can surprise us, perhaps it would be good to take a moment to look honestly at why there is opposition. We have opposition in doing the good work of rebuilding because we live in an evil world. We don’t need a thousand-word essay on the reality of evil to know this is true. Reading the daily news gives all the evidence we need.
The opposition to the good work of rebuilding grows out of this evil. Sometimes the battle is within us; other times it comes from outside us. Our resistance to starting again may stem from deep wounds that brought insecurity. Our friends’ negativity toward our efforts may come from feelings of guilt about something they didn’t work to restore. In any case, the root of the problem is evil.
Whatever we want to build, there are people who want to tear it down. Why?
One reason is simply because it’s easier. It’s easier to be a critic than to act. It’s easier to tear something down than to build something up.
As we rebuilt our home after a flood, it was a lot easier to tear out the waterlogged wallboard than to put the new wallboard on. We would give people who came to help a sledgehammer and tell them to go into a room and tear out all the wallboard. They had so much fun that we’d hear them whooping it up.
When we walked into the room, they suddenly had to look sad again because it was our house that had been destroyed. But after we left the room, we soon heard the cries of excitement start up again. I understood their enjoyment. It’s fun to tear things down. It’s fun for a moment, but you’re not building anything. People who tear down do it because it’s fun for them, because it makes them feel like they’re doing something.
Action always attracts critics. The famous preacher Harry Ironside used to say, “Wherever there’s light, there’s bugs.”1 People who bug you.
Nehemiah provides some of the best advice you’ll find anywhere on how to handle opposition. We see in Nehemiah’s experience four major weapons of opposition that come against us when we’re working to do something good, and four ways to defuse those weapons. This is the opposition you must be ready for as you rebuild.
RIDICULE
The first weapon of those who want to tear you down is ridicule. Look at Nehemiah 4:1–3:
When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed. He ridiculed the Jews, and in the presence of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, “What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble—burned as they are?”
Tobiah the Ammonite, who was at his side, said, “What they are building—even a fox climbing up on it would break down their wall of stones!”
Sanballat and Tobiah were the opposition. They were leaders in the land before Nehemiah arrived. If Nehemiah were allowed to rebuild the wall, Sanballat and Tobiah would lose their power because the city would have new strength. So they started a campaign of opposition, beginning with words of ridicule.
When you want to rebuild, jokes and laughter are primary weapons in the arsenal of opponents. These effective weapons often form the first wave of attack. You tell people you want to reenergize your career, and they find it an easy target for attack. They would call it humor, but it is ridicule. It’s found in phrases such as, “Like that’ll happen,” or “What career, flipping hamburgers?”
There is a huge difference between genuine laughter and ridicule. Genuine laughter can pull us up; ridicule puts us down. Laughter helps us relax; ridicule makes us want to quit. Laughter is a healer; ridicule is a weapon. Laughter is with us; ridicule is against us.
Ridicule comes from having the wrong perspective. Notice that Sanballat and Tobiah called it the Jews’ wall, not God’s wall. They were looking at things from a merely human perspective. They saw the wall as simply Nehemiah’s bad idea that was going to negatively affect their lives. Human perspective will always ridicule steps of faith. Because faith can’t happen from a human perspective, it’s one of the easiest things to ridicule.
Rebuilders must have thick skin because they’re going to face attack. That attack may come from an individual, but it can also come from within. One of the names for Satan in the Bible is “the accuser” (Revelation 12:10). He loves to ridicule your faith. So he’ll send a thought when you want to renew your faith, a relationship, a ministry, or a dream.
Satan is not creative. With him, it’s almost always the same thought: Who do you think you are? You’ve failed so often, not followed through, been disappointed in relationships. Who do you think you are that you could have the kind of faith that could change anything?
Nehemiah teaches us that to defuse the weapon of ridicule, you must choose to redirect your thoughts. If you focus on the ridicule, you’re going to be drawn into it like falling into a deep well. Instead, you redirect your thoughts. The key to this is prayer—getting your thoughts off the enemy and back on God by talking to God about it.
Don’t think that talking to God must start with some deeply spiritual expression of love and wisdom. Nehemiah begins by telling God what happened and how he feels about it:
Hear us, our God, for we are despised. Turn their insults back on their own heads. Give them over as plunder in a land of captivity. Do not cover up their guilt or blot out their sins from your sight, for they have thrown insults in the face of the builders.
So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached its height, for the people worked with all their heart.
Nehemiah 4:4–6
One of the most refreshing discoveries about prayer is that you don’t have to have it all figured out before you talk to God. The prayer that redirects your thoughts begins by telling God where you are right now—including expressions of anger and disappointment. When we tell God what we’re feeling, he’s able to redirect our thinking. The psalms are absolutely filled with these kinds of prayers.
When we hide our feelings behind a veil of spiritual-sounding phrases, we end the prayer in the same place we began. Of course, God always knows what we’re feeling, yet it is our expression of those feelings to him that leads us to begin to gain his perspective.
Through his prayer, Nehemiah decides to redirect his thoughts and look at the ridicule from God’s perspective. Apart from God’s perspective, even in seeming victories, we are still focused on proving wrong those who have ridiculed us—which is a losing strategy, because our focus has moved from God to people.
In prayer, God often works to redirect your thoughts in two very important ways.
First, you are reminded that God’s will includes opposition. Think of a time when you started to do something good and began to experience opposition. It’s easy to start to feel, Why me, God? You were just trying to do the right thing. Why should you have to face this?
In prayer, we begin to look beyond ourselves and realize we are not the only ones who have faced opposition. In fact, the Bible tells us we will certainly face opposition for our faith: “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).
Jesus faced opposition, so of course we will face opposition. Prayer opens our hearts to these truths. God’s will includes opposition, and God’s will cannot be stopped because a few people are critical of the plan. In prayer, we redirect our thoughts from Why me, Lord? to You are with me, Lord.
Second, prayer helps you recognize the destructiveness of retaliation. The human response to criticism is often retaliation. In prayer, you can decide to let God fight those battles. Satan would love nothing more than to distract you from the rebuilding you need to do by getting you caught up in a battle that is not a part of the victory. Retaliation is a battle that leads to defeat every single time.
The emotional reaction to criticism is anger. We don’t get to choose our emotions. If we are ridiculed, we will usually feel anger. We do get to choose what we do with our emotions. If in that anger we start to focus on proving them wrong rather than on doing what is right, we’ll find ourselves drained of the time and energy we need for rebuilding.
Take your anger and express it to God and let it go. Retaliation will always lead to defeat; letting it go in God’s presence is what leads to victory. You may need to pray right now:
God, I want my thoughts to be firmly focused on you. Instead of running that criticism through my mind again and again, I bring it to you, and I let it go. I don’t want to get caught up in proving somebody else wrong. I want to get caught up in living the life you have for me. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
ATTACK
The second kind of opposition you will face is direct attack. Attack is when someone takes an action to prevent you from rebuilding. When sarcasm and ridicule won’t work, the opposition often moves to direct attack. This attack comes when it becomes obvious that you have a chance at success. The very success that energizes and encourages you is a source of threat and fear to those who don’t want you to succeed.
In Nehemiah 4:7–8, we read, “But when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the people of Ashdod heard that the repairs to Jerusalem’s walls had gone ahead and that the gaps were being closed, they were very angry. They all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and stir up trouble against it.”
The attack against Nehemiah is a reminder of two truths about opposition.
First, people ridicule a vision, but they try to destroy a reality. Once a vision becomes a reality, the only way to defeat it is to destroy it. So when you set out to change the culture of a church to be more focused on the lost in the community, those who don’t want the church to change will snicker at you over Sunday dinner. But when you actually begin to reach enough people to change the church, they’ll try to remove you from leadership. Of course, they won’t say it’s because you’re reaching people for Christ—that would sound foolish. They’ll find something else about you or your family to attack, pretending that that is the real issue.
The second truth is that initial success doesn’t silence opposition; it intensifies it. We all have this hope that those who criticize us will see that we were right when success begins to happen. We dream of them knocking on our office door and saying, “I have to admit it; you were right all along.” This does happen, but all too rarely. More often, the fact that our plan for the company is proving to be the right one will cause those who disagreed to feel more threatened and to intensify their attack.
What do you do when someone is making trouble for you by trying to tear down what you’re building? You can’t just pretend the attack isn’t there. It is an attack, and it has the power to destroy. When you face attack, the strategy for success is to reposition your forces. We learn this from Nehemiah in 4:9: “But we prayed to our God and we posted a guard day and night to meet this threat.”
Nehemiah took some of the wall builders and turned them into guards. He repositioned his forces by taking the resources God had given him and putting some of them to work in defeating the opposition.
He had to make some changes for that to happen. To defeat the opposition, we will often have to make some changes. Many times, we settle for defeat and wonder why God won’t allow us to move ahead, simply because we haven’t considered the possibility of making a change.
I remember many years ago, a family we were close to from a former church called us and said, “We’re having a struggle with our daughter, and we’re wondering if she could live with you for the summer. We need to make a change so she doesn’t keep going down the road she’s on.” She came to live with us, and to her credit, she began to see the truth of where she was headed and made a huge change in the direction of her life. To get a different perspective, she needed to do something different.
If your business is under attack, what changes do you need to make? Maybe you need to reposition some of your staff to positively answer this challenge. If you’re under attack spiritually, what changes do you need to make? You may need to stay away from certain people or circumstances. Or you may need to begin spending more time in God’s Word or get an accountability partner to encourage you along the way.
Notice what happens next in Nehemiah’s account of the opposition to the rebuilding:
From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah who were building the wall. Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked. But the man who sounded the trumpet stayed with me.
Nehemiah 4:16–18
Nehemiah didn’t stop building to fight against the attack. If you do this, you’ll end up spending the rest of your life fighting the attack, and you’ll never get back to building. Nehemiah had learned this all-important lesson: you build while you fight. One of the ways your enemies keep you from building is by making sure you are totally caught up in defending yourself against the attack. When the attack comes, reposition your forces and keep building!
DISCOURAGEMENT
In Nehemiah 4:10–12, we see a third kind of opposition we all face: discouragement.
Meanwhile, the people in Judah said, “The strength of the laborers is giving out, and there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall.”
Also our enemies said, “Before they know it or see us, we will be right there among them and will kill them and put an end to the work.”
Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times over, “Wherever you turn, they will attack us.”
The invitation to become discouraged gets louder and louder. An attitude of discouragement is contagious. If you start listening, you’ll catch it too. Ridicule and attack hit at you from the outside, discouragement from the inside. Because of this, it can be a far more destructive enemy.
Beth Moore writes, “Make no mistake: Satan’s specialty is psychological warfare. If he can turn us on God (‘It’s not fair!’), turn us on others (‘It’s their fault!’), or turn us on ourselves (‘I’m so stupid!’), we won’t turn on him. If we keep fighting within ourselves and losing our own inner battles, we’ll never have the strength to stand up and fight our true enemy.”2
One of the reasons discouragement is so invasive is found in this simple truth: you can always find a reason to be discouraged. As an imperfect person in an imperfect world, of course there are reasons you can tell yourself that any project or dream has no chance of success. In Nehemiah’s case, the reasons were too little strength, too much rubble, and too many enemies.
Nehemiah 4:12 reads, “Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times over, ‘Wherever you turn, they will attack us.’” Ten times over, the people were told to be discouraged. The people who encourage you usually just tell you once; the people who want to discourage you keep saying it again and again. Ten times over—it seems like more than you can bear.
Maybe you’re facing discouragement right now. You feel you are never going to have victory over that sin or begin to restore that relationship or have a great business or ministry. Nehemiah teaches that the answer to discouragement is to restore your confidence. You do this by meeting discouragement head-on with a more powerful weapon. What’s more powerful than discouragement? Encouragement! It’ll beat discouragement every time.
Look at what happens next in Nehemiah’s account:
Therefore I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families, with their swords, spears and bows. After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, “Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.”
Nehemiah 4:13–14
Nehemiah chooses to encourage the people in two specific ways: through service and through worship.
First, he encouraged them through service. He stationed them by families to guard the walls. He got them involved in the answer to their discouragement. One of the greatest ways to attack discouragement is to look for someone to serve.
Restoring your confidence never comes by focusing on yourself. You may need to do some work within yourself with a counselor if you are in a state of depression; that’s an important starting place for many of us. But in the end, the discouragement lifts only when you find yourself able to serve others again.
God made us to serve. In posting the people by families, Nehemiah got them serving together so they could encourage each other as they carried out the work. One of the keys to defeating discouragement is finding a place to serve.
The second thing Nehemiah did was to encourage them to remember and worship the Lord. Restoring your confidence will never come from looking at your circumstances. As we saw earlier, circumstances are not a reliable source of confidence because they’re always changing.
Circumstances can’t be trusted, but God can always be trusted. Continue to rely on him, regardless of the circumstances, as your source of confidence. As Corrie ten Boom pictured it, “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away your ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”3 Remember the Lord and worship him, for he is great and awesome. That’s where your confidence is going to come from.
One of the most discouraging times in my life came as Chaundel and I waited to become parents. We had been married for six years and had been trying for some time. When we went to the doctor for tests, we were told that we would not be able to have children.
We were devastated. Being parents was one of our greatest dreams. Our financial resources were limited, and so adoption seemed out of reach for us. I can still distinctly remember times of allowing my mind to soak in the discouragement of an unfulfilled dream.
Then one day it hit me. God had put that dream into our hearts. He could take it away if he wanted to, but until he did, he could be trusted to somehow fulfill what he had put into our hearts. My mind began to turn from discouragement to worship by recognizing that I could trust God’s love in every circumstance.
As we’ve walked with families through infertility over the years, we have seen God work powerfully through new life directions, infertility treatments, and adoptions. In our case, his answer was to miraculously give us one and then two and then three children. Ryan, Alyssa, and Luke give us powerful evidence that even in our discouragement, God is at work and can be trusted.
Take a moment to talk to God about your discouragement.
Lord, I don’t want to live discouraged; I want to live encouraged. So I ask for your encouragement right now. I pray that you’d show me a place to serve. And even though I may not feel like it, give me the strength to serve. Lord, give me the heart to look to you, to remember you, and to worship you. You are a great and awesome God. You are a God who loves me and a God who will encourage me in anything and everything. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
DISTRACTION
When the opposition of ridicule, attack, or discouragement doesn’t defeat us, there is a fourth strategy that quietly works against us: distraction. We often find ourselves fighting hard for a victory, only to allow something to distract us away from the achievement of that victory. Once we begin to experience success, Satan would love nothing better than to distract us from that success. We could talk about a hundred kinds of distraction—from the obviously bad to the seemingly good.
Nehemiah teaches us how to face the enemy of distraction: remember your priorities. The opposite of distraction is focus, and when you focus on what’s important, the distractions tend to melt away. Nehemiah battled three major distractions we will all face.
First is the distraction of false opportunities. In Nehemiah 6:1–2, we read these words:
When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it—though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates—Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.”
But they were scheming to harm me.
Nehemiah was tempted to be distracted by this opportunity to make everything right with his enemies. It looked like a wonderful opportunity, but it was a false promise. They were using the promise as bait to get him to a place where they could harm him. The significant lesson here is that not every promise of something good is good. Sometimes it’s the distraction of a false opportunity. Nehemiah’s opposition invited him to the plains of Ono, and as many preachers have noted, he wisely said no to Ono!
In 6:3, Nehemiah writes, “So I sent messengers to them with this reply: ‘I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?’” Nehemiah saw immediately that a meeting would be a waste of time. His project was rebuilding the wall, not engaging in political talks with these enemies. He wasn’t tempted by the false promise, because he knew his priorities. He said no, and he kept saying no.
When you start to rebuild a relationship, there may well be someone who comes in with a false promise of a better relationship. Say no! When your business starts to be successful again, someone may well distract you with the promise of a quicker payday. Say no! When you see the place of ministry where God wants you to work next, there will almost always be an offer of some place where the grass seems like it would be greener. Say no!
One of the keys to saying no to the false opportunities put in front of us is unselfishness. If we’re always chasing after what would be selfishly best for our bank accounts or our egos, we’ll find ourselves falling for false promises for the rest of our lives. The best protection against being distracted by false opportunities is a heart for serving God and others.
Second, Nehemiah’s opponents try to distract him through gossip:
Then, the fifth time, Sanballat sent his aide to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter in which was written:
“It is reported among the nations—and Geshem says it is true—that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports you are about to become their king and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: ‘There is a king in Judah!’ Now this report will get back to the king; so come, let us meet together.”
Nehemiah 6:5–7
We see here some of the favorite phrases of those who gossip: “it is reported,” and “this person says it’s true.” Gossip is a horrific sin that tears apart friendships, families, businesses, and churches. It seems like such an innocent sin, but there is a reason it is listed alongside greed, depravity, and murder in Romans 1:29. Nehemiah’s enemies are trying to use gossip to distract him and to destroy what he is building. Gossipers love to destroy what others are building. It gives them a twisted sense of power.
Nehemiah avoided distraction when he faced gossip by simply telling the truth and moving on. I don’t know of a better answer to a gossiper anywhere in all of literature than the answer that Nehemiah gives in 6:8: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.”
You have to love this answer! It’s the most refreshing comment you could ever make about gossip. You just tell the truth and then forget the rumor. That’s how you deal with gossip. You don’t try to answer the gossiper or defend against everything they are saying. They’ll just make up more gossip. They’re just trying to distract you. Satan is trying to distract you from what God is doing.
The third way the opponents try to distract Nehemiah is through fear: “One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, ‘Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you—by night they are coming to kill you’” (Nehemiah 6:10). It almost sounds ridiculous when we read it now, but for Nehemiah, it was designed to create fear at the moment of victory.
We often face the inner fear that we’re going to fail right before we cross the finish line. This distraction can come into your mind without anyone else having to say a word. You wonder who you think you are to be able to achieve this. You tell yourself you’ve failed before, and so you’re going to fail this time too. You think, What if something goes wrong now that we’re almost there? We can become our own worst enemy in this distraction of fear.
When you face the distraction of fear, you remember your priorities by recognizing God has priority over any fear, because he is greater than every fear. We learn from Nehemiah’s example in 6:11–13:
But I said, “Should a man like me run away? Or should someone like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!” I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.
The opponents wanted to be able to say that Nehemiah was hiding in fear while asking everyone else to take the risks. They were trying to discredit him as a leader. Nehemiah kept his focus by not hiding from his fear.
If the thing you fear is real, then deal with it. If it is a sense of fear that you can’t identify with any real cause, then reject it. The last thing you should do is hide from your fears. Whenever we hide from a fear, it grows stronger. When you face a fear, deal with a fear, and share a fear, it loses its power.
Nehemiah decided that his trust in God would determine his actions, not his fear. He knew he was not the kind of person who was going to run into the temple to save his life while everyone else risked their lives. He was the kind of person who was going to trust God in every circumstance. He started by trusting God and deciding to keep trusting God. By God’s grace, every one of us is meant to be that kind of person.
Nehemiah trusted God through all oppositions against him, and the outcome is recorded in 6:15–16: “So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.”
Instead of losing his confidence, Nehemiah restored his confidence. When he restored his confidence, all his enemies lost their confidence. God wants you to experience this kind of victory in your rebuilding.
As I talked with Eric Munyemana about the opposition his people faced in the rebuilding of Rwanda, I was amazed at how closely it paralleled the battles Nehemiah faced.
Their battle also began with ridicule. In Rwanda, the ridicule came through the media over what were known as “hate radio and TV stations.” Nehemiah’s enemies demeaned his people as a bunch of poor, feeble Jews. The Rwandans who were under attack were called cockroaches. Ridicule was used to make their lives seem as nothing. The battle would have been lost from the beginning if they hadn’t found the courage to reject this hate speech.
That ridicule grew into attack as some in the majority Hutus began to take the lives of the minority Tutsis. The taking of life was rationalized by thinking of enemies as “less than human.” Once the attacks began, the forces in the surrounding countries had to be repositioned to fight in Rwanda if a victory was to be won.
As the battle wore on, those under attack had to deal with the possibility of discouragement. The army was no longer fighting each day, and there were long hikes for soldiers carrying heavy burdens on their heads to get to places where they could protect the people from further attack.
Eric shared that as a young man who had grown up in comfortable surroundings, he became familiar with the challenges of lack of food, water, shower facilities, and bathrooms on a daily basis. He saw in those days the power of good leaders to encourage, even in the midst of discouraging circumstances, as they reminded the soldiers of the purpose of their fight.
Finally, in the years since the genocide, there have been many battles with distraction. Eric observed that in the heat of the fighting, all worked together in selfless unity. After the fighting ended, egos began to rise again—as well as an intense temptation to get trapped in anger over those whose lives had been lost.
Knowing that anger would only bring about the same cycle of hate that had caused the genocide, Rwanda made the choice as a nation to forgive. As a church leader, Eric could see how hungry people were for the message of God’s forgiveness toward them and then their own forgiveness toward others. Forgiveness was their only way out, their only way forward.
One of the places this forgiveness was offered was in the local Gacaca court system of community justice. Gacaca means a “patch of grass” where people had historically met to settle village disputes. With more than one hundred thousand people accused of participating in the killings, it would have taken decades for the traditional court system to handle the trials.
The Gacaca courts were used to conduct the trials, primarily of those willing to confess their crimes. In these courts, regular members of the community served as lawyers and witnesses. The Gacaca judges were laypeople elected from all communities in Rwanda because of their integrity.
Perpetrators were called before the courts to explain their actions, admit their crimes, and ask for forgiveness. This process informed survivors about what happened to family members and was important for preventing a prolonged period of retribution. The aim of the courts was for both justice and, more important, reconciliation.
The tradition surrounding this court had been to drink together at the close of the discussions as a sign of reconciliation. Out of that tradition came the community offering of forgiveness to the perpetrators of genocide, even as they were being sentenced.
As I heard from Eric and personally observed over the years, this process of asking and giving forgiveness is the most important key to the rebuilding of Rwanda. Apart from forgiveness, we always get stuck in our past. Only through forgiveness are we able to look to God’s purposes for our future.
Unforgiveness will always pull you away from your priorities and purposes into past shame or bitterness. You may need a personal kind of Gacaca court meeting with God right now in which you settle, or resettle, two things in your heart:
You are forgiven. If you’re not certain you are forgiven, you can be certain right now. This is because forgiveness is based not on what you have done or can do, but on what Jesus did for you on the cross. Forgiveness is a gift, so it is impossible to earn it.
Pray right now:
Jesus, thank you for paying the price for the wrong things I’ve done by dying on the cross. I am sorry for my sins and want to live the kind of life you created me to live. I accept the gift of forgiveness that you offer me. I personalize what you say in 1 John 1:9. As I confess my sins, I can know you will forgive my sins, because I can trust you to do what is right. You will cleanse me from all the wrongs I have done.
You can forgive. Out of the grace of God’s forgiveness toward you, you can find the strength to forgive others. Remember that forgiveness does not mean you won’t remember what happened. It does not mean there are no consequences for the hurt that was done to you. The forgiven murderers in Rwanda were still imprisoned for their crimes. Forgiveness simply means you let it go into the hands of almighty God instead of holding on to the bitterness.
I realize I’m dealing very briefly here with the huge subject of forgiving others. You may need to read some books to work through this process of forgiveness. Lewis B. Smedes’s Forgive and Forget is one great resource among many.4 You forgive not for the offender’s sake, but for your sake so hidden bitterness does not erode your ability to experience God’s love.
There is a final truth about opposition we must not miss. Human determination is not enough to defeat these opponents. Victory comes from your relationship with God. Nehemiah exemplifies dependence on God at every point in the battle: he talks to God in prayer, follows God in the changes, listens to God in his encouragement, and lives by means of God’s priorities through God’s Word.
If you’re trying to do this alone, of course you’re feeling defeated. You’ll be amazed at the difference you see when you begin to lean on God’s strength instead of trying to do good things for God based on your own strength. As you rely on God’s strength, when the renewal is completed, you can tell a story that will point people to the God who gave you strength.
EXPECT AND REJECT OPPOSITION: My First Steps
ARE YOU FACING RIDICULE?
How will you redirect your thoughts?
Begin by honestly telling God all that you feel about the opposition you are facing.
ARE YOU FACING ATTACK?
How will you reposition your forces?
Start by asking yourself what changes you need to make to prepare you to face this opposition.
ARE YOU FACING DISCOURAGEMENT?
How will you restore your confidence?
Who in your circles can you serve, even as you are facing discouragement? Possibly someone who is also facing discouragement?
Make the choice to continue to worship with others at church as you face this discouragement.
ARE YOU FACING DISTRACTION?
How will you remember your priorities?
Ask yourself whether there are things distracting you from the priority of what God is putting together again. If you’re especially courageous, ask some friends to share with you the distractions they see in your life.
How might false promises, gossip, or fear be distracting you?