HOW TO DEAL WITH HECKLERS!

HOW TO DEAL WITH HECKLERS!

Neh 4:3

3 Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall.

Judg 6:15

15 And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.

1 Cor 15:9-10

9 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

10 But by the grace of God I am what I am…

          In these three verses we see hecklers. One is external and the other is internal. Nehemiah and his people were rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. This included rebuilding the homes that were attached to the wall. These were not professional builders but patriots so their work was made more of passion than perfection. Yet the work progressed and the wall began to take shape. It both impressed and frustrated the enemy who tried to shout them down by saying that the weight of a fox would cause the wall to crumble.

          Gideon’s internal heckler responded to the angel by saying that his tribe had been so thinned that it could no longer stand before its foes and he was the smallest in that weakened tribe. The angel said he was a “mighty man of valor” but Gideon just couldn’t see himself in that way. He was already defeated in his own mind.

          Paul actually used a Greek word that meant that he was short of stature. Perhaps he was. He did not feel worthy to be an apostle because of his past. He had persecuted the church that now he was trying to build. Finally he said: “But by the grace of God I am what I am.” 

The world is full of critics, self-proclaimed experts and hecklers. Usually they are spectators and not participants. Every baseball team could use a man who plays every position perfectly, never strikes out and never makes an error. The trouble is, there's no way to make him lay down his hot dog and come down out of the stands!

The best way to treat a heckler is to just go ahead and succeed. With the external heckler you might actually have to work with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other. The internal heckler just needs to be quietly ignored while you work steadily on. In Walt Kelly’s comic strip, Pogo is quoted as saying: “Yep, son, we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Dear Lord, all day long the heckler inside keeps telling me that I can’t succeed while the angel of the Lord refers to me as a mighty man of valor. Help me to trust your opinion of me and not that of myself. AMEN