Tom Shrader introduces an 8-week study of Nehemiah, focusing on chapter 1 where Nehemiah learns of Jerusalem's broken walls. He emphasizes that Nehemiah was an ordinary man in a strategic position (cupbearer to the king) who responded with a tender heart, weeping and mourning for days. Shrader challenges believers to find meaning in ordinary days, understand their strategic positions in culture, and respond to brokenness around them with compassion rather than just solutions.
“So much of our life is those ordinary days, or begin that way, and we need to find our meaning and purpose in the midst of those ordinary days.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Just Do It (2010)
Recorded: 2010
Duration: 43 min
Themes: compassion, brokenness, ordinary, strategic, tenderness, weeping, mourning, purpose, feeling ordinary, workplace witness, seeing societal breakdown, career crossroads, burden for community, middle management, professional calling, cultural engagement
Scripture: Nehemiah 1, 1 Kings 11:11, Acts 13:36, Acts 17, Revelation 3:14-16, Ephesians 1:4-5
Theological Themes: divine calling, gods sovereignty, biblical leadership, covenant promises, prayer, intercession, stewardship, spiritual burden
Full Transcript
If you have Bibles, you can open them. We're going Old Testament now. Old Testament for 8 weeks. And you can open them to the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah chapter 1. We're going to spend 8 weeks in this book.
When you came in, I had a podium in the back. On the podium were handouts. I'm not about to guarantee that I'm disciplined enough to get a handout to you every week, but you got one for this week. So I want to do a couple of things. Even before I do the introduction, I want to get the handout filled out. There's 7 points there. So if you're somebody who fills this stuff out, here you go.
Point number 1: Speaking of Nehemiah, Nehemiah lived at a pivotal moment. We're going to see about Nehemiah's time that there wasn't anything in and of itself that would indicate that it was going to be something wild. But it was.
Number 2: He served a strategic position. He served in a strategic position versus a powerful position.
Number 3: He operated with a tender heart. That's going to really stand out, I think, because when you talk about Nehemiah, you almost inevitably talk about leadership. And when you think of leadership, you don't necessarily think tender heart.
Number 4: He related to a powerful God.
Number 5: He acted on a critical principle.
Number 6: He appealed to reliable promises. Nehemiah understood the promises of God. He responded to God within the context of those promises that God had made.
And then number 7 on your outline, last point: He counted on a divine intervention.
Living in Ordinary Moments
When we look at Nehemiah, the first thing that I would bring out to you is that he is in a very ordinary situation. When you read Nehemiah chapter 1, verse 1, there's nothing in there that in any way says that this was a special time.
Now, you'll need a little history to maybe get what we're striving for here. If we were to do just a 60-second history of the nation of Israel here, we start with Abraham, plus or minus 2,000 years B.C. The nation's moving along. Along comes Moses, and Moses begins to put in place commands and statutes. He's used by God to bring together instruction. He receives those, passes them along.
Again, time passes, but you end up with a time of kings, and you get Saul, and then when literally God removes Saul, establishes David. There's an interesting verse, and I'm not sure if we've talked about it in here, and if so, not recently, but you ought to take a look at Acts chapter 13, verse 36. It's a really significant verse, and in it, as Paul's teaching, he makes this point that God raises up David, and when David had served His purpose for his generation, he died. Now, that's really all of us at that point.
Along comes David, he dies, Solomon, and Solomon has some issues, and God says this to Solomon. I'm reading from 1 Kings chapter 11, verse 11. God says this to Solomon: "Because you've done this, and you've not kept my covenant and my statutes which I commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and I will give it to your servants." So He predicts that there's going to be this demise of the nation of Israel.
The Historical Backdrop
That's what happens a bit later. The tribes split, 10 to the north, 2 to the south, Israel to the north, Judah to the south, and then God brings this judgment in 722 BC. The Assyrians come in, and they take over the north. We've seen how Nebuchadnezzar and the guys come along and invade Judah in the south, that's 586 BC, and in the middle of this, the wall at Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed. The wall becomes the picture of their security.
As they begin the process of rebuilding the temples, the rubble starts this, Ezra starts this, but at Nehemiah's time, the wall is not built. So that becomes the backdrop.
Nehemiah, as I said, as you read verse 1, there's nothing spectacular about verse 1. So it's a day, I was going to say like today, but today's not really like every other day, because according to everything I read, this is going to be an extraordinary day weather-wise. So you're going to have rain all over, people are going to be driving crazy. Somebody was telling me coming in that they had listened to the radio this morning, and they were talking about the amount of rain we'll get today will fill up Tempe Town Lake 500 times. I don't even have a box for that. So here's my point: it's going to rain.
But Nehemiah, it's an ordinary day. Birds are singing, paper comes, got the coffee, got all the stuff going, and it's an ordinary day. My point to you is, so much of our life is those ordinary days, or begin that way.
If you go back and you read and look, and I've been through a couple of videos recently on Pearl Harbor, and they were talking about the ordinariness of the day. Just an ordinary day. 9-11, just an ordinary day. Susan and I were back there around that time. We actually had just left D.C. and were down in Virginia. It was just an ordinary day. Now here's what Jesus tells His disciples: It will be on one of those ordinary days when you least expect it that I'll come back again.
So it's an ordinary day. There is a point for us to understand that we need to find our meaning and purpose in the midst of those ordinary days.
Nehemiah's Strategic Position
The second thing about Nehemiah is that he was in a strategic position. If you look at verse 11, we're told Nehemiah was a cup bearer. Now it's really important for us to get our arms around what a cup bearer is. And if you've been with us, we've talked about it in Joseph's position, we've talked about it a couple of times. But let me explain it to you real quickly.
If you had a king and you didn't like the king in that day and age, it's not like voting him out. What you'd do is get an army together, kill everybody, and then you'd run the king out, put up a new king. Well, somebody
came along and said, "This is really costly, people, everything else. Let's do this. Just put something in his food or his drink and he'll die, and then we'll get a new king. Be a vacuum, we'll get a new king." Well, they did this a couple of times, and out of this came the idea of this thing called a cup bearer.
So a cup bearer would be a guy who would be a food taster for the king. They bring out the evening meal, breakfast, whatever it was, the cup bearer would taste it. They'd wait at the appropriate time. If he didn't fall over dead, then they'd say, "All right, go ahead and eat it."
Nehemiah's the cup bearer. He's not in a powerful position per se, but he's in a strategic position. The cup bearer became very close friends with the king. He traveled with the king. He obviously was in proximity to the king on a frequent basis and on a regular basis. He understood what was going on in the world around him.
Finding Our Strategic Position
So I want to put these things together. Maybe just take a minute or two and apply them to you and me. We need to find and understand the ordinariness of life. Nehemiah, an ordinary guy frankly. The ordinariness of life in ordinary people is how God works so often. I need to understand and may even oversee and overlook it because the uniqueness and the strategic position God has me.
To get there, you need to understand the culture. You need to understand the world you live in. It's changing so quickly. It's so difficult. It's so hard.
But Acts 17 is the perfect model. Paul comes into Athens. He's there a little bit early. He walks around, spends some time hanging in Athens. He now gets the opportunity to come and to share with the elite power structure, the intelligentsia, the decision makers in Athens. They said, "Alright Paul, go ahead and talk." Paul said, "I noticed that you're a very religious people." They said in Athens at the time they worshipped as many as 35,000 gods. So he said, "I saw you're very religious people. I saw a statue to an unknown god, and I'm here to talk to you about that unknown God."
That's a great way of seeing how somebody takes the culture and then speaks into people's lives through what they already know, believe, accept in the culture around them. If you don't get the culture around you and get the connection and be able to understand, there's some uniquenesses to all of this.
Understanding Our Generation
I've had a great experience trying, but a great experience for me in the last couple of weeks. I've been working with different ministries within our church. We have decided that it's really important for you to be in a situation where you're in a small group. We're working on, okay, there's truth, we're good at that. There's tension, that's bring some tension into your life and have an outlet, be confrontational, we're pretty good at that. Then there takes time and there needs touch. That doesn't happen in a big group.
So we're trying to create now these smaller venues, four or five people, six people, whatever that is. I've now heard from the women in the church, the men in the church, the young families in the church, and the 20-somethings in the church, and they all say this. Every one of them saying the same thing. "Our generation doesn't really open up well in small group settings."
Here's the tip. Nobody does. Nobody's going to go into a group of six or seven people and start pouring your guts out. That's not an instinctive thing. But you culturally begin to understand that each generation has some unique variations of the same problem.
The Gospel Is the Answer
We had the discussion yesterday. If somebody comes to us and they have a specific issue, maybe there's a whole group of people that had this specific issue. Do we need a ministry designed around this specific issue? We came to the conclusion, no, we really don't. Because now you're known as the group that has that specific issue, or that specific stage of life. The answer for all of us is the same. It's the gospel.
What we need to get adept at is taking people and help them see your problem is not that you're an alcoholic, or your problem is not that you're post-abortion, or your problem is not that you're promiscuous. There's nuances to that. Those are symptoms of a heart problem. Let's attack the heart. The gospel's the answer.
All we want to do is understand a person enough, or a culture enough, to be able to relate to them. So that's what Nehemiah does. He understands the world he's living in. He understands he's in this absolutely strategic position, and you'll see there our third point, and he has a very tender heart.
A Leader's Tender Heart
If you go to a lot of Christian conferences, business conferences, and you see something that says Nehemiah, it's always on leadership. Nehemiah is associated with, I mean, he is just knit at the hip with leadership. So when you think leadership, you're thinking fired. You're thinking hard, determined. There's almost a cutthroat aspect to it.
Listen to the leader, Nehemiah. Listen to Nehemiah as he begins to do a little bit of investigation about the people in the wall. In verse two, he says, "Here come some people from Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped and had survived captivity about Jerusalem, and they said to me, the remnant there in the providence who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are burned with fire. And I heard these words, and I sat down, and I wept, and I mourned for days."
There's the compassion of a leader. Let me ask you this, what's the last thing that made you cry? When's the last time you cried? My guess is going to be, in some sense, it's going to be, well, a lost one, a sickness. What's the last thing that moved you to tears?
Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. If Jesus was in our church today, weeping over the condition of this country, we would say you're soft, you need to
When we face the brokenness around us, there's a temptation to become culture warriors who simply attack. It's one thing to tell somebody the truth, but it's another thing to tell them the truth in grace and love. My fear is that we're spreading truth all over, but we're missing the heart component.
There's an old joke about a guy from a Baptist church who meets a friend who had left the church. He asks, "How's the new pastor?" The friend says, "He's really good." "What makes him so good?" "Well, he tells us we're sinners and going to hell." "Yeah, but the old guy did that too." "Yeah, but this guy seems happy about it."
The Problem with Truth Without Love
I'm afraid that's where we are sometimes. I hang around with a lot of guys who have truth, but I don't think they care about people. Somebody on the receiving end can sense that real fast. When you race in with a solution and spend no time understanding or caring about the person, they get it immediately. You run out to the culture and tell them they're screwed up - they know they're screwed up - but you seem happy about it.
Nehemiah's heart is broken when he hears this information. He weeps. Do you? We have knowledge all around us. If you go out today and pick a leaf and look at it, we know more about that leaf than all the knowledge on the planet at the time of Plato. Our knowledge is doubling - they used to say every five years, now they say every three years.
We know so much, and I can get swept away in this. Although we don't like being treated as a number, we can begin to treat people as numbers, put people in boxes. Nehemiah hears about the condition of the people around him, and it breaks his heart.
What Should Break Our Hearts
When is the last time you cried for and prayed for rather than cursed the culture you live in? There are some things that ought to break your heart. They ought to move you.
Let me give you a couple of statistics. This one gets me every time: every school day in this country, 1,500 kids drop out of high school. There's no way you can absorb that as a culture. They're not dropping out to become the CEO of Intel. You can't absorb 1,500 kids a day.
You have a tipping point right now. This looks like it will be the first year in the history of the country where more people will not pay an income tax than pay an income tax. So you have fewer people than ever, percentage-wise, paying taxes than the group that aren't paying taxes. What does that do to a mentality when people think, "I get all this for free?"
You still have 1,500 babies killed every day through abortion. These are conditions that should move us.
The Crisis in the Church
Let me give you my personal concern - the condition of the church. Years ago, they had something called the Jesus Seminar. Scholars gathered together and said, "Listen, we want to figure out what in those gospels really came from Jesus. We need to understand that the guys who wrote them were removed from the events." Like when John writes his gospel, it's fifty years after Jesus died, so he's pretty removed from it. How would he really know?
Now let's stop the tape and remember: he was an eyewitness, and you're sitting 2,000 years away trying to figure it out. Having said that, they decided to create four categories: things they were sure Jesus said, things they thought He likely said, things they were pretty sure He didn't say, and things they were absolutely certain He didn't say. Then they would vote on these using colored marbles.
When they had lost all their marbles, they stepped back and declared their findings. This represents a crisis in the church on two levels.
The Crisis of Minimizing Truth
The first crisis is in the pulpit - minimizing truth. I'm a big advocate for holding up truth. We don't do expository preaching in this format, but in church we do. We just started the book of Ephesians. Last week I taught chapter one, verse one, word one: Paul. The whole message was about Paul.
We need pulpits that hold up truth, even when it has challenging content right at the beginning. God has blessed you with every spiritual blessing, and then in verse four He says He chose you, and in verse five He predestined you. You're right into some heavy theological material. Paul's intention wasn't to launch a debate but to tell you this ought to be the source of your confidence.
We need pulpits that proclaim truth, but then we need people who encounter the world with that truth. Do the people around you today see a difference in you and me?
Jesus Speaks to the Churches
Paul wrote thirteen letters to churches, but maybe the most powerful letters to churches are in the back of the book. Go to the very back of your Bible, to the last book - Revelation. If you have a red-letter Bible where Jesus' words are in red, you'll be surprised to see that essentially all of chapters two and three are red-lettered. This is Jesus speaking to the churches.
Just as Paul spoke to the churches, now Jesus speaks to the churches. In Revelation 3, verse 14...
He's speaking to the church at Laodicea, and in verse 15, so it's Revelation 3, verse 15, He says, "I know your deeds, you're not hot or cold, I wish you were hot or cold, so because you're lukewarm, you're not hot, you're not cold, I'll spit you out of my mouth." So you get what He's saying? You're not in, you're not out, you make me puke. That's what He's saying.
And here's the problem. "Because you say, I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing, you do not know that you're wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked." Now it's really important to understand, these were a wealthy church with wealthy people. He's not talking materially. He said, here's your problem, you don't get that spiritually, you're poor and wretched, that's who you are. When Paul begins that letter to the church at Ephesus, he says, you guys are by nature children of wrath. That's who we are, we're sinners. We're just little sinners who want what we want.
The Heart of Wanting
Yale has not been feeling very well. He's had the flu, and so I told him, and Yale's a little more rambunctious, and so I told him, boy, when he's feeling well, duck. Well, in their house, and to their credit, way more than me, they're really conscious about what they eat. So even if I put out a tray, if you had some chips and maybe a cookie and some others, they'll take the carrot, they'll take the grape, they like the cookies, but they'll kind of, they're that way, they eat a lot of cucumber and hummus and a lot of stuff.
So when they're with Susan, the menu is a tad bit different. So she's introduced him to the concept of a donut. Yale leaves voice messages, and he loves to leave, whatever voice message he leaves, always ends with "as soon as possible." So he left this message the other day, and he'll get rambling, maybe like me, and you don't know what he's saying, but you hear him say, "Nana, I need a donut, I need a donut really bad as soon as possible. This is Yale," and then he hangs up.
We got those needs. Remember what we've been doing with Yale and Braden? When they say, "I need a donut," we say, "No, you need Jesus, you want a donut." If you can get him saying, "I want," here's what you'll hear all day long: "I want, I want, I want, I want, I want," and it just reveals their heart, and their heart's like yours. That's what Jesus is saying to this church at Laodicea. Because you've missed the whole point. You think you got it all, you don't see who you really are. But I'm going to expose you.
He said, "I advise you to buy gold from me that's been refined by fire, that you might become rich in white garments and clothe yourself, and that your shame may be not revealed, and an eye salve to anoint your eyes." Now, He picks those three illustrations because that was the center of commerce. They were very wealthy. They made these spectacular garments, and they had developed this medicine, this eye salve that was used all around the world. He said, here's the deal. You don't see yourself as you really are. You need this, you need this from me. "Therefore, whom I love, I reprove and I discipline. They'll be zealous and they repent."
Nehemiah's Broken Heart
So when we're back, when we're talking again about Nehemiah, we're talking about the things that break his heart and the passion, we talk about them all the time. It's going to be unique, it's going to be different. I would just say to you, for me again, it's the church. It's the world that you live in.
Very quickly, we've got 17 minutes. So we got four points to make. Look at verse four, back to Nehemiah. Nehemiah chapter one. Nehemiah, in verse four, sees the condition of the world around him. His heart is broken, he begins to fast and pray. So let's read the whole verse. "When I heard these words, I sat down, wept and mourned for days." So that was that tender heart that he had. He didn't just run out with a solution. His heart's broken over this problem. He lets that get into him, and then here's what he does. He's fast and he's praying before the God of heaven. He's fasting and praying.
Why is he doing that? When all of a sudden, I begin to pray, in my mind, here's what I'm doing. Every time I pray, I had a chance some time ago, they come a lot to us, and everybody gets them. There's nothing special about this, but to come and open up one of the city council meetings with prayer. Happens all the time. And what happens is either, it seems to me, is either one of two things. Either it becomes something that's rote and not very compelling, or the guy thinks it's his opportunity through prayer to lecture to everybody in the city council. So neither one of those are necessary.
The Foundation of Prayer
So I simply said, "I'm here to pray. Mayor, thank you. And let me tell you why we pray. It's really, really simple. Number one, because we think God cares, and number two, because we think He can do something about it. So let's pray."
I assume that most of you know and understood, talked about it in the churches last week, that on Sunday, last Sunday, the governor declared a day of prayer for the Arizona economy and the budget. I mean, there's a side of you that says, oh my gosh, we are in bad shape now. If we're at this point, we're going to pray about this? But the reality is, we are in really bad shape. And so what we did is to say, God, we know you care. We know you can do something about it. Let's use it for your glory. Maybe you'll do something supernaturally.
Nehemiah begins to operate on the basis of a powerful God. Nehemiah doesn't look at the situation around him and say, "I know I can fix this," but he says, "I know a God who can." I may be part of that solution, don't know. I know God cares. Here's what I know, and this is why I pray. God, I know you care. He cares about everything.
Praying Through Pain
I had three or four of you ask, "How soon is it?" There's not a day goes by that I don't get that question in this space. She's doing fine. It's whatever—it's where we've been. We pray all the time for this. I pray almost every day: "God, I know you really care, and I know you can heal her. I wish that you would, but more than that, I want you to do whatever will bring the most glory to you and give us the ability to understand it in the middle of it. God, I know that you care about the city. I know you care about this country. I know you care about this world."
See how these begin to come together for the leader, Nehemiah? See how he begins to look at the world around him, and he gets that information, and his heart is moved? Now he's moved to go before God and to say, "God, will you do—we beseech you, we implore you."
What Prayer Does in Us
When I begin this process of praying, one of the things that happens is it begins to work in my life. I'll give you four things real quickly from my life when I pray.
Number one, it makes me wait. When I'm praying, I'm in this process of waiting on God. Not passively, though. Number two, it tends to quiet my heart. There's the old phrase—it's almost a bumper sticker, so I'm embarrassed by it, but "your knees don't knock when you're on them." Number three, it tends to clarify my vision. And number four, it activates my faith. If necessary, I have enough faith—this almost sounds like a paradox—if necessary, I have enough faith to do nothing, to wait.
So I'm praying, waiting for God, asking God, beseeching Him. Nehemiah has operated here under an interesting principle there in verse five.
Acknowledging Our Sin
He says this: "I beseech you, O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who preserves the covenant and lovingkindness of those who love Him and keep His commandments. Let your ear now be attentive and your eyes be open to hear the prayer of your servant, which I'm praying before you, night and day, on behalf of the sons of Israel, your servants, confessing the sins of the son of Israel, which we've sinned against you. I and my father's house, we have acted very corruptly against you. We have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinance, which you commanded your Lord Moses."
He says, "I understand and see the crisis." Behind the principle, it's my sin. That's where I go always and always, over and over again.
I was just in a situation yesterday in a meeting, and as I broke it down, I thought I said a bunch of things that—I don't know that they were harsh, but as I said them, I'm asking myself, "Why am I saying that?" I don't even try to debrief it and go "stop," because "stop" isn't any good. Just telling somebody to stop—that's no good. I need to stop, but there's something, and it's always my heart. There's something in my heart that's compelling me to do that.
So I need to stop it and replace it with something. What's missing? What am I saying there? Well, here's what I'm doing: I'm speaking out because I know if this happens, it's going to take time, it's going to be difficult, I'm not sure how it'll turn out. So all of a sudden, I'm moving out of what's inconvenient for me, what's fearful. The problem wasn't the meeting. The problem was my heart. That's always my problem. My problem is my sin.
The Heart of the Problem
Nehemiah said, "God, I get it. I understand the problem we've got. This wall's broken down, but I want to make sure, God, that you know that I see the consequences of my behavior."
Contrary to our behavior corporately as a culture, we tend to live always a victim, never a villain. So my life with Christ begins with the acknowledgement, and I think the vitality of it continues with the reality that I'm a sinner, that I'm like Yale—I need a donut really bad, and I want it now.
Nehemiah doesn't skip these spots along the way. He gets it. He understands it. He communicates this to God.
Remembering God's Promises
Here are the two final points. In verse eight, he said: "Remember the word which you commanded your servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the people. But if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though those of you have been scattered where we're in the most remote parts of the kingdom, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place that I've chosen for them.' They, your servants and your people, you will dwell there."
Nehemiah goes back and says, "Wait a minute, there's a promise that you've made. God, do you understand the promise you made?" Do you understand the promises that God's made to you, that He'll never leave you or forsake you? These are extraordinary promises.
Faith in Hardship
I can't imagine being a Christian in Haiti with 200,000 dead people around me and 2 million homeless people and see nothing but tragedy everywhere. I can't imagine, because I hear this—I got people around us now, and I'm not at all minimizing the hardship.
When I got to my desk Tuesday, I had eight pages of prayer requests from Sunday. Eight pages. You could fill in the blank on what they are. So many of them are, "We're really hurting. We're running out of money. My kid's in prison. Our marriage is falling apart."
I got one the other day—I might have mentioned it last week, but it was the week before that we got it: "Our marriage of 55 years is in jeopardy." Fifty-five years! Man, just suck it up. You're about to die. I mean, just hang on. Golly, you're going fast.
Well, what do I need in those moments? I mean, if I'm sitting in Haiti or I'm sitting in my office or I'm sitting and they've cut me and I don't know what's going to happen, I got to know this: "God, you said you'd never leave me or forsake me, so you haven't left me. You're doing this for a reason. Don't know why. I don't even really need to know why. I just need to know that you're there. And you told me you're there." That's the promise that you have. And those same promises that God's made—
made to you. He said to the disciples, "It's better for you that I go away." That's always blown me away. He said it's better for you that I go away. Why? Because I won't leave you as an orphan. If I leave, the Holy Spirit will come.
You've got the Spirit of God living in you. Jesus says this is better than me walking around with you. Now He had to leave and die, I got that, to redeem us, to allow that Spirit to come. But that's what you have in you. And I have to go to those promises over and over and over again in my own life. You do too.
Calling on God's Promises
Here's the last point. He's saying, "You said you will do it, and now God, we're calling on you." It's verse 11: "O Lord, I beseech you, may your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant. May the prayer of your servant, who delights to revere your name, make your servant successful today and grant him compassion before this man."
He begins this process and now he's praying. He's counting on this relationship. He understands these promises and he says, "God, that's what I'm asking for. This is what I'm praying for." I'm really specific here.
Do you pray in that way? I encourage you to pray that way, really specifically. Not "God, I'm hurting." "God, I'm hurting. Here's why I'm hurting. Here's what's going on in my life right now." And I do believe that does begin to clarify your vision and to quiet your heart.
The Power of Specific Prayer
Josh McDowell used to tell this great story about this Mustang that he wanted. So he's talking to a mentor of his and he said, "Have you prayed about it?" And he said, "Well, yeah, not really, sort of." And he said, "Well, pray about it. And when you pray, I want you to be very, very, very, very specific."
So he said, "All right." So he started praying, "God, I want that Mustang. Want that Mustang down there in the blue one. I think it's a '65 Mustang, God. I really want it. Amen." And the guy said, "No, no, no, really specific."
So over the course of the week, he began to pray, "God, I want that Mustang. It's the blue one. It's the blue one that has the dent in that fender. It's the blue one that looks like it needs a lot of work. It's that blue one over there. God, I want that Mustang, that blue one that needs a lot of body work. And I saw the interior. It needs some interior work. And the guy just told me it doesn't run very well. God, thank you for not giving me that blue Mustang." I mean, that's what God begins to do in your life.
Setting Up for God's Plan
Now, we've got to end. Look at the end of verse 11: "Make your servant successful today and grant him compassion before this man." Who is "this man"? Who's the man in there? The king. See how this is setting up? This is really setting up well.
Nehemiah is saying, "God, there's this huge issue. My heart is breaking over Jerusalem, breaking over that wall. God, you've touched my heart. I'm broken. I'm fasting. I'm praying. God, I want to acknowledge my sin." This becomes a real good pattern for us to follow every day. "I want to acknowledge my sin. I want you to understand that I understand that I'm a wretched person. By nature, a sinner, but now I'm a saint. That's what you call me. God, I know that I still continue to sin, but you've made promises to me. You won't leave me or forsake me. You haven't promised me a blue Mustang, or you haven't promised me an easy life, but God, here's what I'm asking."
Practical Application for Today
Maybe right now, you're in some situation, you got some people around you, it's just, you don't know if you're gonna take another day of it. All of a sudden, rather than get together with two other people and talk about how stupid the boss is, how about if you start praying for that guy?
There's nobody, you all have had to endure me for years, there's nobody who's more frustrated and angry. I was way, way more angry way before there was a tea party. Been angry and frustrated for a long time. You know when I do best with this? Because I've noticed it hasn't changed a whole ton. You know when I do best with this? When I'm praying for these guys. When I'm praying that God might use them. That God might save them. When I understand that some of those guys that maybe politically I can't really agree with, that they got the same issues in life that I got.
Strategic position he's in, not powerful, but he knows the guy that's powerful, that's the king. And somehow at this point, in Nehemiah's mind, the king might be what God's gonna use to address that situation. And then that verse ends with, "Now I was the cupbearer to the king." The king might hold the key to this, I'm in that position, and there's almost an excitement in there saying, "I wonder what God's gonna do." Pick up right there next week.
We pray to you about a whole variety of things. When we do, God, you make us wait. And you do tend to quiet our hearts, and clear our vision. And God, you activate our faith, our faith in you. There's a time for us to move, and to move decisively. There's a time for us to wait. There's a time for us when we say, "This is something we can do," and a time when we say, "We really can't, but God, you can do it somehow, somewhere, some way."
God, will you take these really general principles and apply them to our heart specifically? We tend to be little wanting machines. And God, I pray that you would replace those things that we want out of the flesh with the things that we desire out of the spirit. That we would want, but we would want what you want. We would want your way, and your will to be done. God, we pray these things to you in Christ's name, amen.