You're Making God A Name!
The story of Nehemiah in the Bible is a tale of heroic faith and courageous leadership in the face of great fear and strong opposition.
Nehemiah made a commitment to rebuild the walls of a broken city and, by doing this, to revive the spirits of a shattered nation and a demoralised people.
But note: his motive went even further than that. In beginning to build, his greater goal was to restore the reputation of a forsaken God (Neh. 1:4-11).
God calls a people to himself to make himself "a great name" (cf. 1 Chron. 17:21).
Throughout the Old Testament, God revealed his nature through his names. Names were God's first incarnations. Before we had the Bible to reveal God's nature to us, we had his names -- before we had Jesus, we had the names.
God introduced himself to Abraham as El Shaddai, the All Sufficient One. Then he proved this aspect of his nature by fulfilling a promise that was so incredible only an "Almighty" God could achieve it!
God introduced himself to Moses as the "I am". For everyone else, "I am" would be an unfinished sentence, a preposition lacking a noun or adjective. For God it is the finished sentence -- it is a complete description of who he is! Whatever we are, we are only because he is.
To Peter, God revealed himself in the form of "the Christ, the son of the living God". That revelation was the rock upon which Jesus said he would construct his entire church. The church is not built on its worship, its preaching or its programs -- it is built on the nature, character and authority of its Lord!
Christian, God has not called you to build him a great business, career, ministry or family. God has called you to make him a great name. That must be our primary motivation in life: to restore God's reputation among the peoples of the earth.
When you discover this, it changes many things in your life:
1. The way you handle the favour of God.
Nehemiah was cup-bearer to a king. As such, he was much more than a waiter working for tips. He was a respected court adviser who was entrusted with the king's life (poisoning was a favourite method for disposing of monarchs!).
Nehemiah knew he had success with the king because of the favour of God, and he knew that this favour was his for a higher purpose than just to give him a cosy career.
The favour of God is a visible manifestation of God's presence in our lives. This favour is a currency with which we are meant to purchase influence -- and through influence to promote God's name in the earth!
Problems set in whenever Christians see the favour of God as an end in itself, because it is not long afterwards that they start using it to promote their own name, cause or ambition.
2. The way you pray.
In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus gave us the two great foundations of all prayer in just one line: "Our Father who are in heaven, hallowed be your name".
The first foundation is this: Prayer begins and ends with God. Prayer is God moving us to move him to move us.
Consider Isaiah 43:19: "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." The word translated as "perceive" here means to discern and to answer.
Prayer is not just about God answering me -- it's also about me answering God! God wants people who will answer when he says he is going to do something. He wants people who will recognise what he is getting to and will jump into the game shouting, "Yes, God! C'mon God! I want some of that action God!"
The other great foundation is that prayer is about honouring God's name. When two people "fall in love", each one suddenly becomes "hallowed" in the eyes of the other. They are no longer commonplace, just like everyone else. They are raised above the norm.
Prayer is about raising God's name or reputation above the commonplace, above the norm. How does prayer achieve that? By proving what he can do.
One of the things God hates most is predictability. He wants to surprise people -- to knock them off balance, doing things they never thought he could or would do for them.
God is looking for people who will stand on promises that only he could make! He wants people who will believe for things that couldn't possibly come to pass unless God was in them.
That kind of prayer builds God a great name.
3. The way you deal with opposition.
In Nehemiah 6, this man of God faced three kinds of opposition:
Compromise (6:2): Whenever you try to make a name for God, you'll find there are plenty of people who will agree with you -- provided you water down some of the less politically correct aspects of your strategy.
Accusation (6:6-7): There will also be people who want to challenge your motives or question your character.
Infiltration (6:10): You will come across people who want to become your friend, so long as they can bring along their own agenda.
If you don't understand that you are called to make God a name, as Nehemiah did, you will constantly be shocked and frustrated by the opposition you receive.
You'll find yourself forever asking, "why is this happening to me when I am building God a business, a career, a house?" When you see that you're making God a name, however, you'll begin to understand that the process is as important as the result -- because the process itself honours God's name.
That's what the people of Israel discovered during their exodus from Egypt. Before God sent his people out of Egypt, he displayed his awesome greatness at Pharaoh's expense -- so that he could display the power of his name.
Every plague God sent on Egypt was also a direct challenge to a particular Egyptian deity.
Why frogs? Because frogs were part of the Egyptian religion. Why locusts? Because they also featured in Egyptian rites.
God was not only displaying his authority over Pharaoh, but over every false god the Egyptians had conceived.
At the time, the people of Israel could not see the point in all the opposition they were facing. Later though, throughout all the challenging days of their exodus and conquest, they could look back and be assured of the greatness of their God.
They could gain confidence from the knowledge that their God was the one whose right to receive worship and honour was non-negotiable. Theirs was a God who would not share his glory with another. Theirs was a God who could bring them victoriously through anything!
We're not called to build God a house, a business, career or family. We're called to make God a name! That changes our attitude to every problem we face.
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