If You Can't Build Consensus, You'll Never Build the Wall
Tom Shrader continues an eight-week study in Nehemiah, focusing on chapter 2 where Nehemiah demonstrates practical leadership principles. He shows how Nehemiah strategically enlists the king's support, gathers facts before acting, and builds a team to accomplish God's work. Shrader emphasizes that true leadership begins with understanding how you want to be treated and treating others the same way, while trusting God's timing and process over human results.
“Leadership at its core, to me, is common sense. Understand how you want to be treated and treat other people that way.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Just Do It (2010)
Recorded: 2010
Duration: 42 min
Themes: leadership, planning, wisdom, teamwork, timing, strategy, service, trust, new to leadership, pastor, elder, mentor, team leader, struggling with planning, learning leadership, young adult
Scripture: Nehemiah 1:3, Nehemiah 1:6, Nehemiah 1:10-11, Nehemiah 2:1-20, 1 Kings 11:11, Acts 4:12-13
Theological Themes: biblical leadership, servant leadership, stewardship, providence, gods timing, discipleship, biblical wisdom, spiritual maturity
Full Transcript
If you have Bibles, you can open them to the book of Nehemiah. We started a study last week. We said we're going to spend eight weeks in this study. Nehemiah's 13 chapters, we'll work our way through that, do a bit of a flyover. That's why I said it's a bit of a tweener in terms of a lesson. It's not verse by verse, but there's a lot of verse by verse to it. The downside is that no one's happy. But maybe the upside is everybody gets a little bit of what they either enjoy or are accustomed to.
Just again, another FYI, we're going to meet right through until August. Fourth of July is on a Sunday. I don't know how to justify taking that off. I'm going to try to find a way, but I'm having a hard time justifying it. So we'll just meet now, and I'll be gone maybe once in a while for some stuff. But we'll just meet right through until summer break, which sounds really far away.
Nehemiah and Leadership
Let me remind you, and I think it's important to look at a summary part of this. When you talk Nehemiah to people that have been around, a word association is Nehemiah and leadership. Nehemiah is used constantly as this picture of leadership, what a leader is like, characteristics of leadership.
I tend to like things simple, and I think just people by their very nature want to make things complicated. Life for one person is complicated. You put two people together, call it marriage, and it gets even more complicated. A week from yesterday, Sarah's going to have a baby. She's going to have the baby next Wednesday morning, so it's all scheduled, C-section, 7:30, all set. Well, she has two little girls, and the oldest just turned three, and so she's going to have a third little girl. It's not like when you go from one child to two, it gets twice as busy. It gets exponentially more busy. I just tell her, man, I'm so happy for you, but life just gets complicated for whatever reason. I think it's sin, but for whatever reason, we want to make things more complicated, so you build whole industries around them.
I don't know if I mentioned it in here, but there was a great— I was watching the other night the 1956 World Series game, Don Larson throwing a perfect game. They're showing the game, and then Bob Costas is interviewing Don Larson and Yogi Berra, so they're going back and forth. They're coming into the last inning, and Bob Costas—now, this is 2009 thinking. Bob Costas is saying, "What are you thinking as they're coming to the plate? What kind of hitter, what are you thinking when you're dealing with Roy Campanella? What are you thinking in these different situations?" Yogi said his fastball was working. Costas is trying to go, "But what's the book on him? What's the computer say?" Yogi was, in essence, saying this: "If we can't hit a curveball and we can't throw one, what difference does it make?"
I'm telling you, everybody's made everything too complicated. When you get to leadership, you have whole industries that are built around this, books that need to be sold, seminars that need to be given. I'm for that. I understand that place. Leadership at its core, to me, is common sense. Understand how you want to be treated and treat other people that way. Now, is there more to it? Yeah, there's nuances of it, but you can make this thing way too tough. Nehemiah is a picture in leadership.
The Outline of Nehemiah
We gave you some outlines, so I know some of you go nuts if we don't fill these in. Let me give you those first four real quickly.
The situation was pitiful. You could probably pick any word you want in there. The situation just was pitiful. It wasn't good. Remember what we saw, the remnant in verse 3? The remnant was back in Jerusalem, and the city was in great distress, and the walls were broken down.
The background, the spiritual background, was essential. I was really focused last week when Nehemiah, we get to chapter 1, verse 6. Nehemiah starts to look at his own life, and he understands that the issue here is a spiritual issue, happens to be sin. And that's the remedy. Let me say it a different way. That's the cause so often that we're then trying to regulate or legislate.
Sin as the Root Issue
So I understand that health care is an issue. From everything I read, if the doctors didn't cheat, and the hospitals didn't cheat, the patients didn't cheat, and the insurance companies didn't cheat, they think they can cut costs by 40%. So you got that much sin built into it. If you walk through over at Fashion Square today, and you go store by store by store, you could cut retail cost, cost to you now, sales cost, by somewhere between 10% to 20%, depends on the store, based on eliminating employee theft. Well, that's all sin.
Nehemiah gets it. The wall's broken down, but before he's out trying to look for why this is there, he's the villain assigning blame. He begins with his own sin.
Number three, the strategic opportunity was incredible, and the assignment was unmistakable. Remember how verse 11 of chapter 1 ended? Real simple sentence. "Now, I was the cupbearer to the king." Nehemiah understands that there is this incredible opportunity. He's not exactly sure how it's going to play out, but he uses his common sense.
God's Covenant and Promises
He understands Scripture. He understands 1 Kings 11:11, where God said to Solomon, "Here's what's going to happen now. If you guys violate these covenants, this city's going to be destroyed. I'm going to scatter you all." God did that. He also made a promise that if you repented, He would restore this.
So Nehemiah understands it's our sin. He also understands his own life. Though there's nothing necessarily at all significant about this particular day in his life, he understands God's at work. That's how God does it, it seems to me. God does these extraordinary things so often in our life that never show up on my schedule. Those ordinary-looking days that have extraordinary consequence.
Positively and negatively. So when you get in the car today and turn on the radio, you're going to hear about traffic. Somebody's going to have a serious accident. Somebody's on their way to the hospital. It was just an ordinary day. They're just driving to work, doing what they always do. And somebody's going to have a life-changing experience today.
Nehemiah senses that God's doing something and that he's part of it. He understands his personal assignment, though he may not know exactly what it is. His goal is this—and it's your goal and my goal—to be God's person, doing God's job, God's way, and God's timing. That's what I want to do. I want to be God's guy, doing God's job. Don't know exactly what that means. For now, it's being His guy.
Whatever I understand He calls me to do, I want to do it His timing. His timing's perfect; mine isn't. I want it now. He so often says, let's wait. And then there's times when He says, let's do it now, and I say, let's wait. But in His time and His way, it matters. The process matters.
Nehemiah's Strategy: Enlisting God
When we get to our outline, we pick up where we are today. Nehemiah's strategy for building this consensus begins with enlisting God by appealing to His character. That's what we saw when we looked at Nehemiah's prayer last week, just finishing up chapter 1, in verses 10 and 11:
"They are your servants and your people, who you have redeemed with your great power by your strong hand. O Lord, I beseech you, may your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant and the prayer of your servants who delight to revere your name."
When he talks about name, he doesn't mean the formal title. The name carries with it the idea of all that God is. It demonstrates His attributes. During the Clarence Thomas hearings—great television, most of you don't need a history lesson, you remember all of this—as it got to the end, Clarence Thomas said, "This is basically an electronic lynching." His call at the end was "I want to clear my name." It wasn't that they didn't know how to spell Clarence Thomas. What he understood is that name began to represent who he is.
We can do this in a thousand different ways. I can say a name and you just have something that comes to mind. Richard Nixon—we don't have to study this stuff. There's a whole body of work, a ton of stuff. If I say Tiger Woods, and again, not taking a shot, but you're talking about a guy that until 60 days ago, if I had said Tiger Woods, you would have said greatest golfer ever, perhaps. Now you think of his wife knocking out the window of his car with a golf club. See, when you say a name, it carries with it all that you are.
All of a sudden, what Nehemiah is realizing is his sin and the understanding that when he reveres the name of God, what he's saying is, "I worship you, the one true God." That's why he's praying. There's the power. We understand that God cares or we wouldn't pray. He can do something about it or we wouldn't pray. It doesn't obligate Him.
Understanding Prayer and God's Will
Susan's teaching a class in women's ministries, and obviously I wasn't there yesterday, but I'm talking to some gals that were there. She was talking about miracles. They said it was incredible—she can just teach. She's so natural. All three of the girls—Sarah is that way, Haley is that way, Susan is that way. They have an incredible presence at the front. They're much more composed than I am. They're much better communicators than I am.
She's talking about miracles. Well, I know in her brain she's thinking, "I could use one." And I know she believes God could heal her, but she also understands that her belief that God can heal her doesn't obligate God to do anything.
Let me get ready because it's just four or five months until junior high camp. Here's what we would do at junior high camp right now. I'd say, "Okay, everybody look up here. Look up here now." You've got to get their attention. Then I'm going to do this.
When we're talking about praying, our mentality is not, "God, you're here, and I'm here, so I want to pray to move you here." No. "God, you're here, I'm somewhere. Here's why I'm praying, God. I want you to get me smack in alignment with you." So if you want it to rain, God, I'm not going to see the rain as a hassle. This is all theory. I'm going to see it as the blessing that it is. If you want this job situation, God, I don't get it, but for some reason we're in it, your will be done. You're the God that I trust and I worship and I praise. This is not about me getting what I want, God. I'm praying to you, and when I do—remember last week—you cause me to wait and you clear my vision and you quiet my heart and you activate my faith.
Nehemiah's Practical Planning
Now, with all that said, Nehemiah doesn't check his brain. When you get to chapter 2, Nehemiah recognizes this is a given: if the wall needs to be built and if Nehemiah is going to be part of it, the king's going to have to buy into it, humanly. Could God just one day take Nehemiah and transport him from where he is to Jerusalem? Sure. Doesn't tend to work that way, though. Could, doesn't, always. So Nehemiah thinks, "I'm a slave. Somehow this king is going to have to play a role in this."
"It came about in the month of Nisan in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes"—so in chapter 2, verse 1—"that the wine was before him, and I took up the wine, I gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence."
There's a period of about four months that's passed. Remember the intense reaction that Nehemiah had when he heard the wall was torn down? He began to weep, mourn, pray, fast. For four months, the king hasn't seen this.
The King's Question and Nehemiah's Fear
So the king said to me on this particular day, "Why is your face sad, though you're not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart." Then I was very much afraid. Why is that? In that culture, it was a capital offense to be sad in the presence of the king.
king. That'd be a cool deal. I only see happy people. What a nice life that would be.
Now think about Nehemiah. He's been containing this and containing this and containing this. He can't stop it anymore. You cannot help but see this brokenness on his face. Make sure you understand what's driving the brokenness. His sin, the nation's sin, and the condition of his people. It's not about a personal gain. It's not because his deal isn't closing. I'm not minimizing that. I'm just saying that's not what's driving him.
And I said to the king, "Let the king live forever." Now I believe that was the call of every cupbearer. That's just my own theory. I don't know if that's right. "Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my father's tombs, lies desolate, its gates have been consumed by fire?"
And then the king said to me, "What would you request?" So I prayed.
The Moment of Preparation
Let me stop, move outside the scripture, speak from my own experience. If I've been thinking about this for four months, if my heart is achy and I understand that the king is going to be part of this solution, in my mind, I'm role-playing, dreaming, fantasizing about this moment for 120 days. I'm thinking, what happens at the moment when the king says, "What do you want?" I'm playing that through.
Do you do that? I do that all day long. I've got a conversation today and there's a couple of things I want to get in there. And all the way driving up today, I'm thinking, I want to make sure I say this. I've got to come over there. If he says this, I'm going this way. If he says this, I'm going that way.
I can't imagine. Maybe it is. Maybe it's true. Maybe I'm the only one. Maybe Nehemiah wouldn't. But if that's me at this moment, this incredible moment, when you understand it's there, when he said, "What's your request?" I'd be pulling out my little iPhone and I'd go to the section that said notes and I'd go "request to the king" and I'd start to read them.
What did Nehemiah do? So I prayed to the God of heaven. You see what Nehemiah gets? It's not theory. Nehemiah gets all the way along. Important for Nehemiah to do his part. It doesn't matter what he does in the sense that if God's not in it, it ain't going to happen.
The Request and Response
And I said to the king, "If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor before you, send me to Judah to the city of my father's tombs that I might rebuild it." And then the king said to me, the queen sitting beside him, "How long will your journey be? When will you return?" So it pleased the king to send me. And I gave him a definite time.
Again, I'm only speculating. It's an interesting question. The king doesn't say yay or nay. He just says, "How long are you going to be gone?" This is a slave. He's a cupbearer. We can get a bunch of cupbearers. I think Nehemiah had so represented himself before the king that there is a genuine affection that's going on here. "How long is this going to take, do you think?" And I gave him a time frame.
Now it could have been as simple as this. The king could have known that they've been trying to rebuild the wall for 85 years and he could simply be saying, "You think you'll be gone 85 years?" He could have maybe understood the planning and zoning process in Jerusalem and said, "Just getting through the town will take a while." I'm going to tell you the punch line here. Nehemiah gets the wall built in 52 days. So that's one way we know it wasn't done by committee. That I'm pretty sure about.
Practical Preparation
Now look at practical. You're a slave. You're moving with maybe some other people and maybe some goods and you're moving through to Judah. You know you're going to get stopped along the way. Nehemiah has a presence of mind to say, "Wait, if they stop me and I'm a slave, they're going to say, 'What are you doing out here?' And I'm going to say, 'Well, the king told me I could do this.' And they're going to say, 'I don't think so.'"
So what does he say? "I said to the king, if it please the king, let letters be given to me for the governors of the provinces beyond the river that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah. I want to be able to make this trip. I need to make this trip. And I need your permission. And I need your authority. Can you give me a letter to the keeper of the forest because I'm going to need some timbers and I'm going to need some materials for the gates?"
When Faith Becomes Visible
Now put all that together. Artaxerxes looks at Nehemiah and I believe he sees something in him. It's the same thing we saw when we studied Joseph. Potiphar looks at Joseph and he saw the Lord was with him.
There's a great scene in Acts chapter 4. Here's Peter. He's given this beautiful sermon. The Jewish leaders come against them. They tell him to knock it off. He says, "I can't." Acts chapter 4 verse 12: "Their salvation in no other name, no other name but Jesus." And then Luke who's writing the book of Acts offers this insight. They then recognized the Jews looking at Peter and John. They looked at Peter and they said he was uneducated. He was untrained. But they saw that he had been with Jesus.
The point is this: your faith has to be visible. When you go through the checkout line today at AJ's, they should be able to see that there's something different about you. Again, not odd different. When somebody's interacting with you and they're transacting business with you, they're going, "That was the smoothest transaction I ever had. That's different than anything I've ever experienced in my whole life. You're different than everybody else."
Do they, or are you like everyone else?
A Personal Example
I went yesterday. Had a meeting in Paradise Bakery, 24th and Camelback. Now I don't understand. I'm going to ask the question though to somebody. Because I know the people who own that mall are smart people or they wouldn't own the mall. But I don't understand why you're putting that parking meter stuff in there. That does not make any sense. I can't understand it. I would think as a retailer you would want me to park there. So I got to get a coin. I'm all edgy, man. I mean, I'm all...
The lanes are barely big enough to get through. Everybody's running in. This was a terrible idea, but I guarantee you it's free market enterprise. These are smart people. This isn't a government thing - somebody did something.
I don't know what to do with a coin. I don't know anything about the coin. I asked the guy and he said get it validated. I said, "How do you validate a coin?" I'm meeting somebody there and it was a lady. She said, "Let me go." I said, "No, you stay here. I'll get a drink. What would you like?" She said, "I want a latte." I said, "Okay."
So I go up to get a latte and that gal said, "You want soy milk, skim milk, whole milk?" I said, "I don't - I got a coin. I don't know what to do with this coin. I'm still trying to figure out the coin." I said, "Look, make it as fattening as you can because I'm sure she'll like that." I said, "I don't do the coin" and she said, "All right, give it to me." Have you been through this yet? Then they give me the coin back. There's no marking or anything. I don't know what to do.
So I go back out. The whole meeting, I'm thinking, "I've got to figure out this coin." I put the coin in and it said, "Go get your coin and your receipt." Well, there's no receipt. I went to the guy and he said, "Well if you're there less than two hours, there's not a receipt." I said, "But the thing said I need a receipt" and he said, "No, you drop your coin in and you're out." I guarantee you - and this probably speaks volumes of me and my sin - I was stressed. I don't think either of those people knew that. The gal next to me is screaming at this coin machine, just screaming at this coin machine.
Now, is that a simple illustration? Yeah, but there's supposed to be a visible difference in you and me.
Keeping Options Open When You Don't Know God's Plan
There's another point here that we need to grab: Nehemiah doesn't know exactly what God wants him to do, so he keeps his options open. I spend a lot of time with students - junior high or high school seniors - and I'll say, "What are you going to do?" They say, "I don't know what I want to do." The parents are grinding them, and that's stupid because when you ask that question you compound the problem because they don't know what they want to do. They're frustrated. Everybody's frustrated.
They'll say, "You got any advice?" I said, "Here's my advice: You've got to have a degree." I used to tell my kids, "I can get you a job at State Farm tomorrow, but I can't get you an interview without a degree. Go to school." They say, "I don't want to go." I say, "Go to a community college and take two classes." I'm a big community college guy - that's where my girls went. I have no problem with the community college thing.
I always say to the guys, "Don't take two classes, take 18 hours. Take as many hours as they'll let you take, because if you take two classes you're going to get frustrated and drop one. After four years you're going to be a second semester freshman and you're never going to get through this. Take as many hours as they'll let you take, get your C's and get out. This is not about learning - this is about getting the degree." Now I understand that's a little pragmatic, but it's true. There's not one of you in here - unless you're an architect or a surgeon or something - you're not using anything. You need options.
God's Preparation Process
When God saved me in 1980, I didn't know God was doing something in my life. I didn't know what. I went to Larry and I said, "I don't know what God's doing. Something - I don't know what I want to do." I don't think I'm a driven guy, but I can get kind of focused, and so I wanted to solve this. He said, "What do you think?" I said, "I think maybe I'd like to teach." He said, "I'm going to give you a piece of advice." I said, "All right. Hang on, man. I'll get my notebook."
He said, "If you're going to teach, you need to have something to say." I said, "Well, I need to write that down." He said, "No, you ought to write that down." What he was telling me - and you may think I'm one of these at this very moment - is there's a lot of guys teaching who have nothing to say.
So what I realized is I had to do something that I'd never done before: I had to study. Because my whole basis on getting through school was just what I showed you - to get through. I couldn't care less about learning. Here's what happened: I started studying and reading - Bible study in the morning, Bible study at night, Bible study, Bible study, read, read, read. When I got home I read. Susan came to me after a period of time and said, "Hey pal, this is the same as when you were drinking except you don't throw up at the end. This is the same thing. You're not here, you're over there. You come home, you go in there. You're over there. You come home, you go in that room and you read, your face is in these books. What about me and the girls?"
Getting the Right People on Board
Here's what I knew: Obviously I knew she was right. But here's what I knew - whatever God was going to do, He was going to have to have Susan on board with this. So I said, "You know what? That's God telling me something."
See, Nehemiah doesn't necessarily get it, but he knows he's not getting from here to there without the king. So you need to figure out who's the equivalent of the king or the Susan or the person in your life. It may be in different situations. Maybe somebody at work. It may be somebody in the family. It may be somebody - if you're in a church, it may be somebody. Let's say you want to go and you want to make a difference. You want to run - like Clark - you want to be on a city council or you want to be in a homeowners association or you want to do something where you want to make a difference. You've got certain people you know you need on board.
So you begin - not to manipulate those people - you begin to pray for those people.
When you begin to build a relationship with those people and you understand that God being God can do it another way, but in all likelihood, you're going to need those people on your team. Nehemiah gets it.
Now what happens is he begins this sojourn and he ends up in this city. Chapter 2 verse 9, he's moving to the city and along he comes and he begins this process of enlisting people's connections. He gets on board the king, he gets on board all the people he needs, and then he decides to enlist partners and he needs credibility.
Nehemiah's Strategic Planning
Beginning in verse 11, he arrives at Jerusalem. When he arrives at Jerusalem, he does exactly what I wouldn't do—he takes a breath and he gathers his facts. You see that he came to Jerusalem, was there three days, and you can just let your eye fall over that he begins to go out at night and understand the condition of the city.
He takes the time to plan. He understands that there's a project to be done, but he also understands he's going to need people to do it. So he goes, he doesn't come in like I would potentially and say, "You guys have had 85 years to rebuild this wall, why don't you let me show you how to do it." He knows that he's got a project to do, but he's going to build a team along the way.
Look at the way that he begins to resolve this stuff. The first thing, we want to stick on this outline just because I know you're going nuts if you can't fill it out: V5, he enlists his enemies by demonstrating his resolve.
Opposition Comes with God's Work
So here's what happens. When there's two guys, we meet them in verse 10 and verse 19, Sanballat and Tobiah, and what it says is they were despising him, they were displeased with him. So let me make this point and try to tie this together, we've got 11 minutes.
When you're doing God's thing, God's way, God's timing, God's job, don't think there won't be opposition. These guys rise up again. We've seen it clearly, right? God's guy, God's timing, God's job. Along comes this idea of opposition.
If you are doing something that God's called you to do, don't labor under the false illusion that everybody's going to rise up and call you blessed. If you're going to take on a battle, if you're going to identify an issue, you're going to be—here you go, you're Tim Tebow and you decide that you're going to do, all you're going to do is tell your story. You're not even making any big, you're just telling your story. "My mom was advised by the medical community to kill me in the womb. She decided not to. Here I am. That's a life."
The Language of Life
When my alarm went off this morning, the first ad I heard was a gal saying, "I never was a singer. They would boo me at karaoke, but I sing every day to my baby." And she starts talking about her baby in her womb. "And my baby never boos me." And it's an ad for the March of Dimes.
But see how the language matters? You've never heard a girl on the way to get an abortion say, "I'm going to kill my baby." But you've heard of a girl who's going to keep that baby. They can't wait. Two months into it, they'll say, "Do you see the pooch yet? No, mine's bigger. I mean, my pooch is bigger than your pooch. And I'm not pregnant. I have my baby."
What, man, if you're going to be Tim Tebow doing an ad and they're beating the snot out of you. If you're going to take a stand and do the right thing the right way, not even on a theological ground.
Opposition in the Workplace
I had a guy that was here. His mom is dying. And his company had a branch on the East Coast. So he said, "I'll get transferred out there. We can go out. We can care for my mom." So he's going through the interview process. His last interview is the guy who will be his direct supervisor. And his guy said, "OK, I want to hire you. Here's two things I want to tell you. Number one, I work 70 hours a week. I expect you to. Number two, and I can't even imagine somebody saying this in this day and age. He said, we got mission, vision, values. We got all that. Well, we don't care about that. Here's the deal. Our customers are trying to screw us. We're going to screw them first."
Now that wouldn't look very good on a mug, but can you imagine that? This guy is trying to do the God thing.
Distinguishing Criticism from Preference
Don't mistake, by the way, people's preferences for criticism. I use an illustration like this all the time. It happens all the time. I'll just take one Sunday with everybody sitting in the same experience, just like you. I will hear "music was too loud," "music was perfect." "That piano at communion enhanced the experience." "Why is the piano playing at communion? It distracts me." "It's too cold." "It's too hot."
I don't take any of that personal. None of that, that's not criticism. That's preference. You want it quieter, they got it just right, can't fix it. I'm not talking about preference. I'm saying people are going to come at you with levels of criticism and they're going to oppose you. That's okay. That's part of the deal. You started by saying, this isn't about you.
Staying Focused Despite Opposition
Nehemiah is not going to get distracted by his enemy. I made this comment in church the other day. I think I make it everywhere I go. We're so polarized. We can't even have a discussion.
I mean, I didn't want, God is so good to me because I got a text from my son-in-law saying, "What did you think of the State of the Union?" You know what I did? I forgot it was on. I had five Fraziers to watch. I watched five Fraziers back-to-back. I didn't even know it was on.
So then I figured out what I watched. So the president did his thing. Ten minutes later, the other side's up doing his thing and then there's a meeting where predictably this guy's screaming about this guy and this guy's screaming. Not even a dialogue. There wasn't a dialogue about any issues. There's not a dialogue about, I don't understand or I don't get it all and I disagree with it and my views are fairly clear. So there's not even a dialogue about anything.
I'm just telling you, when you start culture warrior, you got battles, man. There's no dialogue in that. I vilified you already. I've started to kind of talk to some people—
about the immigration issue. Oh my golly. You can't even have a talk about it. I'm trying to form a view. So I'm hearing, let me try my little punchline on you. Here's what I'm hearing. What part of illegal don't you understand? Well let me ask you this. What part of love your neighbor as yourself don't you understand? We can play this game both ways, man. But if we're not going to have a dialogue about this stuff, we're getting nowhere.
Building Teams Through Partnership
Now you come to the workforce. If you're the boss, if you're management that assumes labor wants to screw you, and they probably do, then you're going to have a whole different relationship than if you go, we're a partnership. Howard Schultz, when he's putting together the Starbucks thing, goes to his board and his guys and says, look, we're going to give health care to part-time workers. They said, you're nuts. You will screw up this company and bankrupt it.
He said, I don't think so. We're going to ask people to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and come in here and open this thing. We're going to ask people to do a whole bunch of these things. Now what they found, and I don't have numbers, what they found is if a typical training budget and retraining budget would be this high, Schultz's is like this high. If you're working 20 hours and you've got full benefits, you aren't going from deal to deal to deal. If you're working flipping burgers for minimum wage with no benefits, and now you can go over here for another buck, you're going.
There's the whole idea of just building a team. That's what He begins to do, those last two under C. He begins to build a team. He begins to pull people together. And He all of a sudden begins to experience success. He prays, and then He answers, and then God begins to move, and the opposition comes.
God's Definition of Success
Verse 20 of chapter 2, so I said to them, I answered them and I said, the God of heaven will give us success. Now when I say success, we think results. I watched a show the other night, top nine pitching seasons of all time. And you're starting, I mean I'm watching this and I'm going, you've got to be kidding me. Sandy Koufax gets through a year with an ERA of 1.12. That's how we are. I don't follow basketball. For whatever reason it just doesn't get me, like college football is a deal. But the New Jersey Nets are 4 and 40, I just heard that today, 4 and 40. See that's not a good year, and that's not good.
So if you've got a fan, you've got a shirt that says Nets, somebody said how you doing, you just say 4 and 40. Well that's how we answer it. How's business? Sales are up. How's the golf game? Shot 68. That's how we think. We think results. God thinks process.
Our success is how we measure it humanly. Did you get the order? God's success is did you represent Me and the company with honesty and integrity? And you may get the order and you may not get the order. My fear always, and I told you already, Nehemiah builds the wall in 52 days, so humanly He has huge success. My fear is we read this story and the story becomes a formula for us thinking if I do X, Y, Z, I'll get success.
The Danger of Transactional Thinking
If I go to a Bible study on a Thursday morning in the rain, God must owe me something. Right? I mean, you laugh, but you're thinking that. If you have a bad day today, you're going to go, God, I don't really understand it. I got up when it was cold and dark and rainy. You will. You watch. Because that's how I think. And that's how you think.
Everyone Is a Leader
Nehemiah, interesting guy. Big job to do. Lots to teach us about leadership. Let me make the point again. And I don't care who you are. You're a leader if somebody's following. You may be a leader. You may be running a business with thousands of employees, hundreds of employees. You may be running a division with a little team of four or five. I use my daughters all the time. They're leaders. Haley is leading a four-year-old and a two-year-old. Sarah is leading a three-year-old, a one-and-a-half-year-old, and a newborn. You're a leader, man. They're watching. How do you lead?
Just think about it. You're reading books, Leadership by Attila the Hun. Is that your role model? And I don't even know what's in the book. I mean, Patton on leadership. Hey, man, we're not conquering enemies in World War II. You'll get an awful lot out of people in this day and age. I got it that you're going to get taken advantage of. But let me tell you, think about how you want to be treated and treat people that way. Is there a place for discipline? Obviously. But you know what? There's a whole bunch of love.
The Call to Love
I think I'm going to spend a little time developing in my own mind. What part of love your neighbor as yourself, you don't understand? That's the call. That's the call at the office. All the challenges are going to express themselves differently, but that's the call you have on your line as a representative of Christ.
Story continues next week. We'll pick up right there.
Father, help us see these truths, live in a way that brings honor and glory to You. We look at Nehemiah, and we cannot help but see Your hands all over Him. God, don't let us look at that story and say, good for Nehemiah. You, the same God that empowered Him, the same Spirit that led Him, is the same Spirit that leads us. Fill Your people with Your truth, with grace, with love. We ask it in Christ's name, amen.