Satan launches an attack against our souls using the areas that have defeated us before:
- He comes against our minds with doubt, confusion, and reasoning.
- He attacks our emotions with fear, lust, temper, anger, bitterness, and unforgiveness.
- He challenges our wills with accusations of past failures or lack of resistance to compromise.
- He cripples our confidence in our ability to make a quality decision.
These past failures and compromises are the ruined walls of life which allow an entrance to Satan’s strategies against us. Our defenses become weak. Our enemy’s attacks seem to rush upon us out of nowhere.
The Holy Spirit has come to lead us into all truth. He does not come to point His finger at our imperfections, but rather to point us to Jesus, to show us the beauty of God’s kingdom and the power He has given us. He has come to restore control to our lives.
Proverbs 25:28 says, “Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls” (NKJV). The Spirit of God comes to stand with us against the weakness we have known. His desire is to bring us to a place of confidence in moving with Him.
In Romans 8:26 Paul said it this way: “Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (NKJV). The word helpeth comes from the Greek word that literally means “to take hold together with us against.” The Spirit of God takes hold together with us against our weaknesses. He comes to strengthen us and stand with us as we allow God to build new strongholds in our lives.
When Nehemiah first came to Jerusalem, he viewed its condition before anyone knew the purpose for his visit. Then he stood before the people of the city and said, “You see the distress that we are in…come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach” (Nehemiah 2:17 NKJV). Notice he did not say, “Look at the mess you’re in.” He called it the distress we are in. He took upon himself the situation of the city, making it a personal problem.
The Holy Spirit also looks at what we face, not as an outsider, but from a standpoint of personal interest and involvement. But it is of extreme importance to note that the Holy Spirit does not build our lives for us!
The people of Jerusalem responded to Nehemiah this way: “Let us rise up and build” (v. 18). In the same way, we must respond to the call of the Spirit of God and say, “Let us rise up together and build the walls of our lives.” As the Master Builder, He can make our lives into a powerful fortress of strength!
The building of Jerusalem’s wall was not without opposition. Sanballat was governor of Samaria, the neighboring nation. His accusations began with these words: “What is this thing that you are doing? Will you rebel against the king?” (v. 19). He was challenging their actions as well as their motive just like Satan will challenge ours. He twists our intentions by projecting his own wicked thoughts into them. He does not want us strengthened. We must resist Satan’s accusations and strengthen the walls of our lives.
