About the Book

INTRODUCTION

And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”
Nehemiah 4:14, ESV

I finally reached the last exercise of the 30-minute training session. I hadn’t been in the gym in a while, and I was excited to lace my shoes back up and take a step forward. I was also nervous. I hadn’t been pushing myself physically for many months. I was in an overwhelming season and feeling defeated. I was ready to quit the pastorate and sell popcorn—anything, frankly, if I could put this season in the rear-view mirror.

As Brent Gallagher, owner of Avenu Fitness and Lifestyle, pulled the battle-rope off the wall, he demonstrated the movement I was to do then handed me the ends. He hit the button on his stopwatch to initiate this quick hitting interval training. The first movement wasn’t that bad, as I handled the rope well for 20 seconds and then took a 20 second break. During that time, he showed me the next movement and I got after it –20 seconds of movement and 20 seconds of rest.

At the third move, he said, “Okay, let’s take this rope. I want you to slam it up and down as many times as possible, as high as you can, as hard as you can.” He then proceeded to slam the rope to demonstrate. Like the two previous movements, I was game to grab the rope and slam it out. I was eager to perform for him, as he was making an investment in me. He and his wife Cassie knew some of the journey this season had required, as our church went through a tough season together, and this training session was a gift to get me moving in the right direction.

As I grabbed the rope this third time and stood tall with a solid base, Brent put his thumb on the start button of his watch and said, “And Roger, if there is anything inside you that needs to come out, get it out right now and leave it here.” To this, I replied, “Okay, sounds good.”

My reply was from a place of ignorance. Had I known what would come next, I would have said, “Hey, thanks for the workout. Those 29 minutes and 40 seconds were great. Maybe we will do this again.” But those last 20 seconds changed my life. Those last 20 seconds showed me I was in a fight, and I was losing. It was time to rise up from a place of defeat and fight for my future.

Has life knocked you down? Have you gotten hit by a combination of punches? Are you running and ducking because you just don’t know if you can handle another blow? It’s a devastating place to feel so defeated when your Bible, your small group, even your favorite preacher says you are more than a conqueror.

CAN 20 SECONDS CHANGE YOUR LIFE TOO?

I still haven’t gotten over that final rope slam. In that 20 second slam, I began to slam out all that I was carrying inside of me. As I slammed that rope over and over again, the weight of pain, grief, and loss began to well up from the bottom of my heels, through my midsection, up through my throat, and out of my tear ducts. As I continued to slam that rope, I heard the Holy Spirit say to me, “Roger, you’ve got some work to do.” Tears flowed, my chest heaved for breath, and I turned my head in embarrassment. Little did I know that the God of the universe would call to me in a gym in the heart of Houston, Texas.

This was an invitation from bondage of my circumstances to a place of liberty and rejuvenation. This was an opportunity to look at the pain and grief I was dealing with squarely in the face and freely admit the toll it had on me. Weighing in at 306 pounds, knowing that I was on an unsustainable path, I had a choice to make. Would I continue as a victim of my circumstance, or would I put the mess into the hands of my Savior and allow Him to give me a message? I could stay down in defeat, fake it until I made it on my own, and fizz out somewhere along the way, or I could learn how to fight for my future.

LEARNING TO FIGHT

As you look around our world today on the macro-level, things are a mess. Our nation’s healthcare system has been stretched to its limit. Our education system had to reinvent itself. The political landscape is deeply fractured. The country is divided right down the middle on which way we should head. On the micro-level, we have isolated from our neighbors. Our trust in leaders seems to be at an all-time low. We are tired, frazzled, at our limits. We wonder if things will ever return to normal.

Yet all these facts and feelings do not negate the reality that we have great potential as a people. Our story is not too dissimilar to what happened in the divided nations of Israel and Judah beginning in 605 B.C. Many were asking, “Where did we go wrong?” Others asked, “Is there a way forward?” In this context—where the temple of the Lord, the walls of the city of Jerusalem, the hearts of the residents of the land, were lying in ruin—this is where God was up to something.

Before we dig into this story and learn about what God was up to, let me ask you some key questions to consider. In a sentence, can you clearly articulate:

• For what are you fighting?
• For whom are you fighting?
• What do you believe is worthy of your fight?

Before I go another sentence into this work, please let me say what I am not advocating for—a political party or a political candidate. That’s not the fight I am talking about. As a matter of fact, some of what I will be sharing with you is going to be counter-intuitive to the American way of fighting. This may please you or this may frustrate you. But I would ask that you hear me out. For way too long, we have focused on who is in the White House believing that person or party is going to “save” our way of life. We are looking for top-down solutions when our greatest abilities to author change come from the bottom-up. Like you, I certainly prefer what I want in a political leader and what I want in my party’s platform. But that is not the direction I am headed. Instead, I want to tell you what I see in you and in the Scripture. You see, I see so much untapped potential for good for our homes and communities. Regardless of who is in office, we can pursue a peaceful future.

To unlock this potential, I want to begin by sharing two core convictions. The first is that you are a person of influence. You can affect what happens in your home and in your world through the unique abilities that God has given to you. You have talents that are needed in others’ lives. You have treasure that has been entrusted to you. You have a skill set that your children’s school needs. Your influence is the totality of your life experience up to this point, encompassing your various capacities, your financial means and the story you are writing in your relationships in the marketplace, at your university, or in your home.

We can use influence for good or for bad. We can use it to lift others, or we can use it to build up ourselves while we tear others down. We can exalt others, or we can pull them down. That’s the power of influence.

The second conviction is that we are in a fight. It’s a fight, as I said earlier, not for who occupies an office, but whether the one who rules and reigns over every office will have his way in our lives, our homes, our churches, and in our cities. Unless we know what it is we are fighting for, who we are fighting for, and what we believe is worth fighting for, we won’t pay the price necessary to win the fight. Instead, we will stay busy with a sense that we are contributing to “something” but not have a clear view of what a win really looks like. So, again, let me ask, in a sentence, can you clearly articulate:

• For what are you fighting?
• For whom are you fighting?
• What do you believe is worthy of your fight?

Now, before you fully answer these three questions, I want to plant a seed with you. Naturally, we will answer the first two questions with how they relate to ourselves. We would say, “I’m fighting for myself, my home, for my marriage, for my children.” Good! We must fight for ourselves and our homes. But what if we expanded the fight a bit? One of the primary ways we win at home is by growing in our faith. So, if we are going to battle for our futures, shouldn’t we also fight for the long-term success of our church?

In the church, we are standing on the shoulders of generations who have gone before us and yet, like no other time in history, our churches have been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. When every other crisis has hit, people have flocked to the church. Yet in this recent crisis, people have scattered from the church.

Alan Platt, in his book City Changers, conveys that the church in the community is to have a fathering presence, a faithful presenceand a fruitful presence.1His message is that the church has a critical role to play in society helping shepherd people’s lives, demonstrating long-standing faithfulness, and bearing fruit whose benefits are far-reaching. Given the fact that many churches are still trying toreclaim many of their members and attenders from the COVID-19lockdowns, and many churches went an entire year or more without knowing how effective they were in reaching new people, the reality for church leaders is that we know that we are in a fight for our influence in our own congregations’ lives like never before. Will you fight for your church?

Now, before you say, “Okay, I know that I am fighting for myself, my home, and my church family,” let’s broaden our view to the role that followers of Jesus Christ are to play in our communities. Jesus called us salt and light; the city set upon a hill. Clearly, we are seen by Christ as influencers and understanding this helps us better understand why we gather to worship and fight for ourselves and our homes in the first place. The call of Jesus Christ is to penetrate the highways and byways with his Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Gathering for worship and leading our families in the things of God isn’t so we will hide our developing characters and influence under a bowl. Instead, it’s to light up the city and allow our light to shine before others, so they might find the hope that we have. You see, whether we see it or not, we are in a fight for our communities and our cities. In our homes and in our churches, we discover and develop the influence that Jesus puts in us all for the task of deploying that influence for His purpose and glory. What could God do in a city where followers of Jesus rally to fight for themselves, their homes, the church, and the well-being of the city? If you don’t read another word of this book, grasp this—it is through the influence of followers of Jesus that our lives, homes, churches, and cities will rise. But now, I am getting ahead of myself.

Let’s step back in history a bit. Beginning in 605 B.C., the people of the nation of Israel experienced the hostile take-over of their nation by the Babylonian empire. This was the year that the Babylonians began to invade and deport people back to Babylon. You may recall names like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. These were some of the best and brightest who were placed into the king’s service. By 587 B.C., the great capital city of the southern kingdom of Judah fell. Jerusalem’s walls were torn down, Solomon’s grand temple was destroyed, and a small remnant remained in this once glorious, thriving city where David had been king.

This Babylonian captivity, as prophesied by Jeremiah, lasted a period of 70 years. The word of the Lord that came to the people through Jeremiah must have caught them by surprise. He told them, as captives, as an exiled people, to, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on it’s behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare,” (Jeremiah 29:7, NASB).

Now, as Alan Platt, in his book, City Changers declares so well:

“To the people of Israel, Babylon was everything Jerusalem was not. Babylon was dedicated to false gods, while Jerusalem was dedicated to the one true God. Babylon was the center of pagan worship; Jerusalem hosted the only holy worship. Babylon was characterized by sin, while Jerusalem was the home of those worshippers blessed to love God’s holy hill, where the ark of the covenant resided and where Solomon’s temple towered over the city. Jerusalem was God’s preferred address on Earth.”

What was God up to? What was He working out in His people? What was He trying to teach them? Why would He challenge them to seek the peace of...the welfare of...the good of the city of evil captors? Why would God call His people to seek the “Shalom” of her captor’s home base?

The Scripture shows us that God had a much longer view than those stuck in exile. As a matter of fact, during this exile the prophecies of Daniel were recorded. During this exile Queen Esther saved the Jews. During this exile God was ridding Israel and Judah of her idolatry. During this time God was going to prepare a remnant to return to re-build Jerusalem. During this exile God was going to burden a king and raise up leaders to once again, make a city rise. That’s the story of the Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

When you study the story of Ezra and Nehemiah as they are in the Hebrew Bible, one and the same book, you find at least four big fights for which the followers of Jesus are also fighting. These fights of the saints of old challenge us and encourage us in our fight stories. In these, we see what it takes for an individual, a family, a church, or a city to rise off the mat of ruin and rebuild. As we study this story of the men and women who saw a brighter tomorrow, let’s ask ourselves, how can we rebuild what’s been torn down and find a peaceful future?

Before we go any further, I want to ask you to take a minute to reflect on your life, your home, your church, and your city. Take a minute to answer the questions below and think about your unique influence and what God may be stirring in you to rise, rebuild, and fight for your future.