Accomplished

Nehemiah is kind of a cool book of the Bible.  The people had been freed from slavery and they were living in their land again, but the wall of the city was rubble and the gates had been burned down.  The people were deeply sad because of it.  It seems that the wall represented many things like the defining of the property and its service to the people's protection from the outside, among other things.  So Nehemiah started to rebuild the walls and help from the Israelites started pouring in & 'the people of the land' ridiculed them for building and made fun of the structure.  The building of the wall continued even with the threat of attack.
Nehemiah 4:21-23, "So we carried on the work with half of them holding spears from dawn until the stars appeared.  At that time I also said to the people, 'Let each man with his servant spend the night within Jerusalem so that they may be a guard for us by night and a laborer by day.' So neither I , my brother, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us removed our clothes, each took his weapon even to the water" (NASB).

As I was reading this it reminded me of the shield of faith in the armor of God (Ephesians 6).   It is our protection against the attacks of our enemy the devil.  I think my faith wavered so much while I was not receiving the Love of God that it was much like the wall that Nehemiah was rebuilding. So now as the Lord is forging my shield of faith with me again, I really have to be on the look out.  I need to be carrying my sword of truth (the Word of God), I need my belt of truth and breastplate of righteousness on (we talked about those in the last wk or more), and I need the helmet of salvation on too (I'm sure we'll talk about that soon). At any rate the people had to be on the look out all the time ready to defend themselves as they rebuilt the wall and I better be doing the same thing. The enemy of our souls wants to sift us as wheat and is seeking whom he may devour (Luke 22:31, 1 Peter 5:8).

So the wall was completed in 52 days. "And it came about when all our enemies heard of it, and all the nations surrounding us saw it, they lost their confidence; for they recognized that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God."  Receive the Love of God and put on the full armor of God, let God reforge the parts that are incomplete, and the enemy will lose confidence because we are accomplished with the help of our God.