Pray the word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.

Nehemiah chapter 6 verse 13

for this reason he was hired to frighten me so that I would act and sin so that they would have a bad report so they could taunt me.

Basically the picture here is

Nehemiah saying that

someone was hired brought into his life

to interact with him, to frighten him,

and lead him to sin.

And then the result of him sinning would be a bad report that others could

spread about him that could affect all the work that he was doing on the wall.

When I read that, I just think about my life, I think about any one of our lives.

There are all kinds of temptations around us to sin that if we sin in these ways that that could lead

to yes a bad report about us we would not be blameless before others, which is not good.

Not that we're concerned ultimately about us, because the picture is even greater than just

what other people think about us. The whole picture in Nehemiah 613 is if

Nehemiah falls into sin in this way then that would jeopardize all the work

that he is leading the people to do in rebuilding the walls.

And there are temptations to sin that would affect not just us,

that would affect the reputation of God in our lives.

As we work in places where we're surrounded maybe by non-Christians,

there are temptations to sin in such a way that people would say,

oh yeah, I just, I knew his God is not real, his faith was not real.

...