Then came the taunting voices.
​Nehemiah 4:1-3: "'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...said,'What they are building--if even a fox climbed up on it, he would break down their wall of stones.'" 

At first, the enemy's words fell on deaf ears, because 4:6 says, "We rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart." But then the amount of work they had put into the wall looked so small compared with what still needed to be done. "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.'"
Their Enemy's words had sunk in: "It's too big. You will never accomplish it. Your work doesn't matter."

Then, the Enemy moved in with words of fear--ten times they circulated rumors that wherever the Jews went, they would be attacked. The initial verbal assault, "It isn't possible" turned into, "It isn't safe."
Nehemiah 6:9 sums it up: "They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, 'Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.'" 

"​But I prayed, 'Now strengthen my hands.'“
The people had grown weary of carrying away enormous loads of rubble while picking up bricks, hauling them to the building site and laying them into place, all the while being on guard every minute against possible physical attack by their enemies. Their physical hands needed strength to continue, but their hearts needed strength to keep on with the work God had put before them. 

For those who are discouraged and hearing the Enemy's lie that their labor in the Lord "doesn't matter" the book of Hebrews reminds us: 
God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. Hebrews 6:10-11. 

​How can a person tell when a thought is God’s Voice or when it is Satan’s lies?

One key indicator is that Satan’s lies are bent on attacking my value and destroying my desire to come to God.
Phrases like, “You’ve messed up again, God won’t want to see you!” and “You are such a failure as a Christian!” may sound like rational thoughts when considering the evidence, but they are in direct opposition to the truth that God’s voice always invites me to come to Him, regardless of where I am.
“Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18) 

If attacking my value does not keep me away from God, Satan will use the more subtle tactic of deceiving me about my true condition and need for God's changing grace.
Thoughts like, “I’m doing so well, praying and reading God’s Word.” “Everything is going well, I must be doing something right!” can mask pride and give a false security that equally destroys a desire to come to God. A person without an inner thirst will not come to God. A longing, a desire for the inner empty to be filled, a dissatisfaction with plastic facades and empty motions--that place of neediness and thirst for righteousness is exactly what delights the Father:
"Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost." (Isaiah 55:1)

Jesus made it very specific that the thirsty one, the needy one, the distressed one crying out, is crying out to Him--and the one who comes to Him will be satisfied, not just one time, but continually. The invitation is open.
“Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’”
​(John 7:37-38)

You know what the scary part was? The people who studied the Scriptures were the ones who wouldn’t come to Jesus. The reason? Although the motions made it look like they were seeking God, they weren’t thirsty. They didn’t feel a driving need that made them want to be changed. Their knowledge of Scripture kept them insulated from seeing or feeling their true condition—that they were not filled with compassion and love for others, they were concerned only for their own wellbeing.
“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”
(John 5:39)

Whether we hear the lies that we have messed up too much and God doesn't want us to come, or we are subtly deceived with feeling no need to come, the invitation remains the same to the end:
“Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.” (Revelation 22:17)

​Rewind the story, and we find that Jesus had just shown His disciples the hands-on lesson of giving the Bread of Life (Himself) to the crowds of 5,000+ women and children. Jesus recognized the groundswell movement to "come and make him king by force" before it happened, and "immediately made the disciples go on ahead of him to the other side." The danger for the disciples was that they would be swept up in the moment of excitement of a false view of Messiah; that they would be dazzled by His provision and not anchored in His person. What needed to happen?
1. Disciples needed to be removed from temptation to join the movement to "make Jesus king by force."
2. The crowds needed to be dismissed.
3. Jesus needed to spend time alone with the Father in prayer.
4. Jesus needed to re-join His disciples before the crowds got to them the next morning.

​Voila--enter a wind that keeps the disciples safely in the middle of the Sea of Galilee for six hours.  
Can you imagine the disciples' frustration going against that wind?!  They were trying to follow Jesus' instructions--and it was hour after hour with very little to show for their work.  Were they wondering why the God of Creation wasn't lifting or shifting the wind? Were they thinking that if Jesus were there, it would be different?   Were they frustrated that Jesus had sent them "on ahead" into that storm?  The truth of the situation was that they were exactly where they were supposed to be...and Jesus was there with them. 

The timing of Jesus walking to them on the water focused their attention back to His person--the lesson they had missed in the excitement of feeding the 5,000--so that they confessed, "Truly you are the Son of God."  

The timing of a frustrating wind protected them from staying on an 'emotional high' so that when the same crowds found them the next morning, they would be ready for Jesus' difficult words--words that caused many of His disciples to turn back and no longer follow.  

The timing made them ready to answer Jesus' question the next morning, "You do not want to leave too, do you?" so that Peter, who had been rescued from the waves by Jesus just a few hours previously was ready to say, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.  We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

I must confess that when I come to I Chronicles in my Bible reading I find myself debating whether or not to listen to someone read chapters of foreign-sounding names from an audio-Bible, or whether I should tackle the list myself.  This time four little verses stood out from I Chronicles 1:24-27....

Wait a minute! Did I just cover TEN GENERATIONS and hundreds and hundreds of years in those four verses?! I recognized Shem, the son of Noah. I recognized Abraham, from whom the rest of the Old Testament story emerges, but what about the third son of Shem...Arpachshad?! No details. Just a name of a man who had a son, and a grandson, and a great-grandson... They lived. They died. No details. 
For the first time it dawned on me: 

These seemingly uninteresting verses connect the very earliest chapters of Genesis 10-11 (before there is an Abraham!) to God's chosen king, David, who is promised an enduring Kingdom.  
​What's in these names in I Chronicles? The Psalmist penned it:

               The counsel of the LORD stands forever,
         The plans of His heart from generation to generation.       Psalm 33:11

               But You, O LORD, abide forever,
         And Your name to all generations. Psalm 102:12

               Forever, O LORD,
         Your word is settled in heaven.
             Your faithfulness continues throughout all generations; Psalm 119:89–90

​What's in these names in I Chronicles 1:24-27?
Luke 3:34-36 quotes them, and connects the family tree to the NAME ABOVE ALL NAMES--
​Jesus, the Son of David. 

 But then in II Samuel 11, there is the Big Black Splotch--David's adultery with Bathsheba.  And when the news of Bathsheba's pregnancy gets to him, he tries to rub the messy splotch with panicked plotting to cover it up, finally sending an innocent man to his death in battle.  
David has made a mess on the page of his life--and he did it not in youthful ignorance, but when he was in his stride following God.  Somehow, that makes the dark spot look messier and splotchier. 
David's repentance and broken heart are evident.  And when Solomon (the second son by Bathsheba) is born, "the Lord loved him; and because the Lord loved him, he sent word through Nathan the prophet to name him Jedidiah." (12:25)

But wait.  Back up on the page.  II Samuel 7--the passionate heart part of the story, before the splotch: "When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you...I will be His Father and he will be my son.  When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, but my love will never be taken from him as i took it away from Saul."    I have always filled in Solomon's name in my mind as I have read that passage, because I know the end of the story: but DAVID doesn't know the end of the story!  He doesn't know about the dark splotch and his failures, or that Solomon is going to come from the messy part of his life.  
​
God wasn't caught off-guard, scrambling for a way to incorporate Solomon into His plan so that he could make David feel that he was forgiven.  God already had the dark splotch as an integral part of the Big Picture HE was working--before the splotch was ever on the page. 

I've noticed that believers often feel more forgiven for sins they committed before trusting in Jesus.  There is a false perception that Jesus covers the sins up to repentance, but that I am responsible to keep the page clean from then on.  (Note: this isn't meant to imply that we aren't called to holy living!)  
I've also noticed that believers who have many dark splotches on the life-page before coming to Jesus, somehow feel that God's purpose for them starts at the point of repentance, and the past is an unfortunate mess that He has to step over to get to His Real Plan for them.  
 
Our disappointment with ourselves and regrets from the past not only fuel the accusations of the Enemy to discourage us, they also keep us stuck thinking that an irretrievable clean page means it is a wasted part of the story.