Who are the People Who are Supposed to do it?
Tom Shrader examines Nehemiah chapter 3 to reveal how effective leaders mobilize people for God's work. He identifies eight types of workers who rebuilt Jerusalem's wall in 52 days, emphasizing that everyone has a role in God's kingdom work, whether in ministry, workplace, or neighborhood. The teaching challenges believers to see themselves as missionaries wherever God has placed them and to move beyond passive engagement to active participation in building God's kingdom.
“God gave you a life not to spend, but to invest.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Just Do It (2010)
Recorded: 2010
Duration: 41 min
Themes: leadership, mobilization, service, participation, vision, teamwork, mission, kingdom, new to leadership, workplace ministry, parent, volunteer coordinator, feeling passive, ministry leader, seeking purpose, community builder
Scripture: Nehemiah 1:3-5, Nehemiah 2:8, Nehemiah 3:1-32, Isaiah 6, Ephesians, Philippians 4:9
Theological Themes: kingdom work, body of christ, spiritual gifts, calling, ministry, stewardship, ecclesiology, discipleship
Full Transcript
Open your Bibles, if you have them, to the book of Nehemiah, though you are going to wonder why I said that once we get into the lesson. I don't know if you remember back to the first week, but I said this is one of those lessons in a series where we're a little more verse by verse than others. Overall, that's my preference. That's how I teach on a Sunday, so I like that. Some lessons lend themselves more to that approach than others.
When we talk about Nehemiah, we talk about leadership. Nehemiah is almost synonymous with leadership, and you and I are leaders. That's really important for us to grasp. Even as I mentioned Sarah having the baby yesterday morning at roughly 9 o'clock, at that moment she became a leader to this baby. This baby is following her. These principles, and this is what I think I like so much about this series, are things you're going to be able to implement today. They apply in a marriage situation, in a parent-child relationship, in friendship. If you're involved in a homeowner's association (we'll pray for you), these are the type of principles that work anytime you're leading an organization or working with volunteers.
Nehemiah's Preparation for Leadership
A lot of my work in the last 25 years has involved working with volunteers, and these principles I'm talking about are really essential in that context. Nehemiah is synonymous with leadership. Just to remind you, he is a captive slave who has a passion for a project. Let's work our way through the outline, especially that first part.
Nehemiah had the vision for what had to be built. He senses in chapter 1, verses 3, 4, and 5 that the walls are down. Someone informed him the walls were down, and he has this impression, this drive, this compulsion to see that wall rebuilt.
Second, he has the permits. He's got letters from the king. He knew he would need letters from the king if he was going to make this thing work, and he stopped along the way and solicited the vendors. Chapter 2, verse 8 shows us he's thinking, "We're going to need timber, we're going to need these things." He gets all of the elements that he needs together to pull this off.
Fourth, he surveyed the status of the site. Remember what we saw a couple weeks ago: he arrives in town, and he doesn't say, "I'm the pro from Dover who's here to tell you how to do it." Instead, he says, "I want to make sure I understand the situation."
The Deeper Vision Behind the Project
We can apply these principles in a variety of ways. He begins with vision, a vision for a project, but let me remind you that the vision he really began with was the vision for himself and for the nation of Israel. When he looks at this situation, he says, "We have sinned." He understood the spiritual nature of the problem.
I want to give you some insight that may be too church inside baseball to matter to you, but hopefully it will help you see this. I constantly have pressure on me, and our organization as a church has pressure on us, to begin new ministry work. There's constant demand: "We need a program for..." and then you fill in the blanks.
For a church our size, we have very few programs. By very few, I mean very few - 5 or 6. That's very unusual for a church our size of 4 or 5,000 people. For a church that size, that's relatively small.
The Gospel-Centered Approach to Ministry
Part of the issue, and this gets to the rub, is that we want to minister to people, but so often the size of the ministry is related to a stage of life. Somebody will come in and say, "I'm post abortion, I need this. I'm addicted, I need that. I'm a single parent, I need this." There's some technique that's unique to each stage of life.
Here's what I want you to see (and I'm not being insensitive): when you're dealing with addiction or any of those kinds of issues, the answer is the gospel. Now that's not to throw a Bible verse at them, but that is to say the issue is your heart and what we've seen. We want to be sensitive and say there may be a time for a very short season when we need to get some of you who are in the same position of life together. But if all you do is sit together in that same situation of life, pretty soon that situation of life becomes your identity, and we're robbing the body from your input.
We're consistently trying to drive people to the gospel. We're trying to help ourselves see our own condition. It's a mini Isaiah 6. If I see God for who He really is, the minute I see that, I see myself for who I am, and now God begins to do the work. It's not as simple as saying it's just the gospel, but it's as simple as it's the gospel.
Understanding the Real Problem
Our staff right now, our pastoral team - we're the guys that are responsible for really leading and implementing the mission, vision, and values at church - we're taking ourselves, our own small group, through a discussion on how people change. How do you help people change? Our focus is really on the gospel: practical things, but the gospel.
Nehemiah has this vision, and we're going to focus on building the wall. But Nehemiah's vision is that our sin is the problem. God told us that this is the consequence of our sin. Let's get our sin stuff figured out here, and now let's look at rebuilding the wall. That's the thing that's driving him in all of this.
Organizing the Workforce
Under point B on your outline, what Nehemiah is understanding is that he needs the people to do the work. He's got to figure out how he's going to staff the project, and the way he's going to do it is with 40 separate crews that have 40 specific assignments. It's really common sense in that vein.
He's got this job to do, he looks at it, he breaks down the division of labor and I love to say the division of labor in the concept is as old as, it predates creation. It's the Trinity. So the Father, Son and Holy Spirit even in your salvation did a division of labor. The Father chose those that would be saved, the Son redeemed them, the Holy Spirit applied that.
So as we look at a project or we look at something in our lives, again, you have to apply this. Normally I try to just go application, application, application. It's too wide and varied today. You're going to have to put this in your own life. It might be in how you handle a family. It's as simple as Sarah trying to figure out, all right, I've got now three kids, the oldest is three, how are we going to get through a day? It may be the church, it may be whatever that is.
But he, Nehemiah, understands this is a project that's going to demand other people getting involved. And he begins to look at it and says, okay, I'm going to break this down and I'm going to break this into segments.
The Structure of the Work
Now look at Nehemiah chapter three. Just let your eye fall across this. And what you're going to see is that it almost reads like a genealogy. So you're going to see the phrase "after him," "next to him," you're going to see that 28 times in these 32 verses. So so-and-so did this and then next to him did this and after this they did this.
There's a danger in just blowing through this. Chuck Swindoll tells a great story. He's teaching through one of the Old Testament books one morning. Comes to the genealogy, said we're going to skip this. We're going to get on to really the meat of what's going on here. That night they had a guest speaker. The guest speaker said, turn to this place in your Bible. So he has him turn to the genealogy and he said, and the guy, so this will tell you how well we coordinate things. The guest speaker said, a lot of people skip over this genealogy. That would be a tragic mistake. So not good. And then he just unpacked that.
Well we're not going to go verse by verse through this, but you can if you'd like. But we want to pull some things out of this. And part of this is almost a mini picture of even the body of Christ.
I just started teaching through the book of Ephesians. And Jim told me he's getting ready to teach through the book of Ephesians here. Cal Jernigan is teaching the book of Ephesians. Scott Maxwell right now is teaching the book of Ephesians. So maybe God's doing something through the book of Ephesians and the churches in the valley, maybe something's going on there.
Well, in the book of Ephesians, you come to the church. You see the picture and the imagery of the body of Christ. There's a hand and a foot and an elbow and a knee and an eye and an ear. It's a representative of all of us participating in this overall work.
So Nehemiah's responsibility, job, task, desire is to rebuild this wall. I'll give you the punchline up front. Zerubbabel, Ezra, these guys have been worked on this wall for 75, 85 years and have made no progress. Nehemiah's going to build it in 52 days.
Who Were the Wall Builders?
Now, who are the people, under B on the outline now, who are the people who are going to build this wall? First of all, there were the ministry professionals who were called to lead. If you look at chapter three, verse one, you'll see that the high priest arose and his brothers arose and they consecrated it.
Now, I get a little phobic at this point. One of my super hot buttons is the, and I hate it, the distinction between the clergy and the laity. I don't even like the words. You'll never hear me use them other than in reference like this. I'll talk about staff and non-staff.
Here's the problem with it. I had been doing what I'm doing for a few years. We go to some people's house, dinner time, and the guy says, Tom, why don't you pray that's what we pay you to do? And so he's like, you know, I mean, it's a joke. And that's the standard joke is I'm paid to be good. You all are good for nothing.
Well, I despise that distinction. Not because there's a lot of authority and pomp and circumstances attached to it that frankly, I don't think it's healthy. But what I really don't like is I think it takes you off the hook. We're all missionaries. And we really need to grab that concept.
We take that word sometimes, I'm afraid, and use it and attach to it the idea of somebody who has a passport, a visa, and shots. You're a ministry. God saved you for a reason and a purpose, to glorify Him. And what's important is His word and people, those that know Christ and those that don't. We're all in this.
We are all, in fact, there's a guy named John Piper who wrote a book to pastors and it said, you are not professionals. And he was driving home that distinction. So he pulls in the professionals.
The Uninvolved Upper Class
The second group are the dispassionate upper crust and they were uninvolved. If you look in chapter three, verse five, you'll see that they're the nobles and they didn't support the work of the masters.
So in this group, there's a group of people and see if this doesn't sound like church or any organization. There were a group of people who didn't want to participate but wanted to reserve the right to criticize whatever was done. I don't want to participate. I don't want to do it. I don't want to be engaged, but I certainly want to be able, where's the comment card? I certainly want to fill out the comment card.
So you have the 80-20 rule and it's pretty good. I'm not sure the 80-20 rule isn't getting a little closer to 90-10 now, but roughly in a typical organization or church, I stay in church, 80% of the people are passive. 20% of the people will do 80% of the work. 20% of the people will give 80% of the money. And in a church, so I keep coming back to church because I have a bit of assumption that you all are Christians and therefore that's important to you and you're involved in a church, you should be. That's more important than being here.
In that church, you are to be engaged. That does not necessarily mean you're waiting to serve on some subcommittee—that could be God's curse on you. It means that you are engaged in the ministry and the work of the church at whatever needs to be done.
For example, at our church, we say this: the delivery system, if you're here in our church and not in a home group, a small group, we're not going to be able to serve you the way we could. Now that small group may be what you think of as a small group, it may be a ministry area where people know you, but if you're not engaged at that level, that's how we deliver services to you. That's how we love you.
Somebody the other day, all angry, went to the hospital and nobody came to see him. I said, nobody from your home group came to see you? "I'm not in a home group." Oh, you called the church and nobody came to see you? "I didn't call the church." Just kind of a curiosity, how would we know you're in the hospital? You're mad at us because we didn't see you? What is this, secret? But that's the mentality you have to deal with. You understand now, this is part of an involvement and you can't be disengaged.
You don't have the right or the privilege to sit on the side, and I keep saying church, it doesn't need to be church. It can be Young Life Crisis Pregnancy Center, it can be a myriad of other organizations that are terrific organizations. You need to be involved. But Nehemiah understands: here's Nehemiah, God's guy, God's way, God's timing, God's job, all God's deal, and Nehemiah's dealing with these people that want to get on board.
The Artists Expanded Their Horizons
Number three, the artists expanded their horizons. If you look at verses three, and then 31 through 32, you'll see the goldsmiths were engaged. You'll see the artists were engaged. Now, they weren't doing stained glass windows, they were engaged in some other work. The perfumers were engaged.
I don't know if you've ever met a perfumer, but I have. A guy came to me and said, "I've got the perfect Christmas gift for Susan." I said, "Well, don't give it to her, let me do it." And he said, "All right." And I said, "What is it?" He said, "It's perfect." I said, "I got that, what is it?" He said, "It's a guy, his company name is"—and I doubt it's even around anymore, it used to be in downtown Scottsdale—"E Pluribus Sniffum, many scents." You would go in, and he would interview you. So if it's like Janice, he would interview Janice: what's your personality, what do you like, what fragrances do you like, spring, winter, and then he would create your own fragrance. Ernie was his name. Now I sense in his high school yearbook, it was Ernie. He was, by the way, a very charming guy.
So I went home and I said, "I got..." Really? So I got out, I meet Ernie after hours. And I get this gift certificate, I give it to her. "What is this?" I said, "Well, they create your own fragrance." "Well, this is stupid." I said, "Well, they told me it's the perfect Christmas gift." So she went down and they created her own fragrance. I don't think she ever went back.
Here's the deal. You can't say, "I'm an artist, therefore I don't participate" or "I'm not gifted." It doesn't take a specific gift to work with six-month-old kids, other than patience. There are certain things around where you may not just operate in your zone. Now, what you want to do is you want to work in your giftedness, but there's going to be times and tasks that need to be done.
By the way, there's a difference between talents and gifts. So I love, if you were to say, "Name for me female singers of all time," solo artists, I would go Karen Carpenter, perfect. Natalie Cole, Shania Twain. That's the whole—it gets no better than that. Let's just, in fact, let's think about that just for a while. There are those. Well, and people say they're very gifted. Well, spiritually, we understand they're not gifted, they're talented. Now, when they use that talent to open up my heart or minister to me, that becomes an area of spiritual giftedness there. I'm just being nitpicky on the language.
There's this group of artists who are engaged in the community, they're not exempt from this.
The People in the Neighborhood Did Their Part
Not only are the artists involved, number four in your outline, the people in the neighborhood did their part. Again, as you work your way through this, you're going to see that each group is working on their part and often in their own specific areas. They're working in their own geographic areas. They're taking part of the fence.
If you look in verse 10, you see that there's Jedediah, he's the son, and he's making repairs opposite his house. So Nehemiah has broken this thing down. He's got them working right where they live. Again, I want to come back to that comment I made earlier about missions.
There are people—we've got a team. We've got two families now, one in Morocco, one on their way to Morocco. We have a single gal who's part of that team, another couple we're moving over into southern Spain, so we'll just kind of stage everything in Morocco out of Spain. Those are clearly missionaries. But I want you to understand that if you're living at the corner of McDonald's and something down here, you're a missionary to that neighborhood.
When I say neighbor, so often in our culture, like for me, a lot of my mission work was done in the office. Now, they didn't hire you to proselytize. They did hire you to be a good employee. And God is going to put people in your life who are really hurting. If you're running a business, if you've got employees, if you've got 50 employees or more—and it's going to happen in less, but if you've got 50 employees or more—I guarantee you this year, one of your employees is going to have a mom, a dad, a sister, a brother, a spouse who dies, and they have no church connection at all. And you come and...
You have an opportunity to minister to them. They're going to come and say, "You know what, we're fighting and fighting and fighting to try to make this stuff work, and we just can't make life work." You can walk in. Remember how this started? The king looked at the cupbearer Nehemiah and said, "You're sad and you're not sick. There's a sadness of heart." Are you sensitive enough to the people around you that when there's a sadness of heart, you can see it? And then if you see it, are you sensitive enough and bold enough to go in to say, "Is there anything I can do? What do you need?"
I get to church on Sunday early. Our morning service starts at 8:30. Well, everyone shows up by and large between 8:28 and 8:33. But if you get there at 8:20, you can walk around and see people all around you are hurting. Somebody in a room like this will be sitting over there by themselves, reading the bulletin or their Bible. Well, our bulletin is not that interesting. I'll go up to them all the time and say, "You're in timeout or what's the deal?" And they'll say, "No, I'm all right." And it'll start a conversation. "So you're doing okay?" And often they'll say, "No, I'm not really." And I'll say, "Okay." If it's a gal, I'll say, "Here, Barbara, you take care of it." If it's a guy, "Bob, you come and spend some time with them." But they're doing their part. They're understanding this.
Ministry Starts at Home
I know a lot of people. I spoke at a Campus Crusade for Christ event for the Jesus film—wonderful project, wonderful, holy cool deal. They were there, and they had a bunch of people that potentially had resources that could fund this. My first point the first night was, "How tragic it would be if you were invested in thousands and thousands and thousands of people, and you were able to do it, and you were invested in thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to send the gospel around the world, and the gospel has never penetrated your heart. So let's first of all see, are you followers of Christ or just rich people?"
Having said that, it would be tragic to say, "We really want to get this film, which I'm totally supportive of, to this remote area of India," when you haven't done anything to touch your neighborhood right here in Phoenix, or Paradise Valley, or Scottsdale. See, it's way easier to send somebody to India, because now it's removed and I'm uninvolved. Now when I get in the life of my neighbor, that phone's going to ring at two in the morning.
Women Rolled Up Their Sleeves
Here's the fifth thing: the women in the city rolled up their sleeves. So you'll see in chapter three, verse 12, that the daughters of one of the groups were involved. We make this point—we are, I think at East Valley Bible Church, a fairly conservative, fundamental, orthodox kind of place. I believe the Bible teaches roles for women, but in no way does it portray women as second-class citizens. Jesus was the great liberator of the day. He was the feminist of His day. One of the greatest compliments I ever got in this area was from a really cool gal who headed up our women's ministry, and she said she thought I was a biblical feminist. What we're saying is that we're equal in status, but differ in role.
Yesterday was a big day. Brooklyn was born—that's a big deal—but maybe bigger, it was National Letter of Intent Day for college football. And you can't overlook that. So we got a solid 40th class out of 120, which is where we are, bunch of two-star kids from Williamsburg, Iowa, who will be all Americans. But we recruited a kid that's 290 and he's like 6'8". And another kid who's 5'10", 175. My sense is they're going to play two different positions. That's my guess. I don't know that. I'm making some assumptions in this. That doesn't mean when we recruited him, we said you're more important to the team than you are.
Peyton Manning is fairly important to the Colts. And probably outside of Peyton Manning, Dallas Clark—Iowa kid, you can remember him—Bobby Sanders, an Iowa kid, you can remember him. The rest of them fade away. You can't name many guys on that team. They are all equal to Peyton Manning, but they've got very different roles.
Biblical Roles in Marriage
So in the marriage relationship, God says, "Wives submit to your husbands, husbands love your wives." That is not to put a wife down. It's to say God's a God of order and that's the order He has in marriage. So let me make two observations here—they're very important. I have been, although not recently, in discussions with people who want to argue about that role of women and say that was a cultural distinction of the day. I always say to them, "It's so fascinating to me that you say 'wives submit to your husbands' is cultural, but I've never had anybody say 'husbands love your wives' is a cultural aspect." Oh, put me down, is that true? I'm down for that. So she doesn't have to submit to me and I don't have to love her? Wow, I feel freedom. I don't think this marriage is going to work very well, but I feel freedom in that.
The other thing that you need to remember is this is God's design for marriage. This is not God's design for the business place. So some of you men are going to find yourself working for women and you are going to grind against that and want to try to grab a biblical principle out of it. I'll give you the biblical principle: employees submit to your employer. There's your biblical principle. She's probably better than you, smarter than you and everything else and that's why she's there. So we have to understand that. I just thought I'd throw that out.
Leaders Put on a Tool Belt
Number six: credible leaders put on a tool belt. So if you get into verse nine and you get into some of these others, you'll see that the official of half the district made repairs. He is engaged in this. He didn't say "I'm too good for this specific role." This touches everywhere. There's a verse that I go to a lot of times with our staff and it's Philippians
Peak Performers Go Above and Beyond
Paul addresses this principle in Philippians 4:9 when he says, "The things you heard, the things you saw, the things you learned from me put into practice."
I saw an advertisement for a television show the other day where the CEO becomes one of the workers. Have you seen that? It's a CEO of a company—I think it was waste management in the first episode. The CEO of waste management is down digging through waste. Let me tell you what's going to happen in that waste management company: it's going to be a better company because this guy is down there doing that work. There's no substitute for that kind of hands-on understanding.
We had an interesting conversation the other day about corporations. You have a distinct and interesting thing that has happened in corporate America, and I'm making an observation here—by the way, I'm not claiming to be the smartest person about this history, it's just my observation. In the old days, for a long time, the new CEO always came up through the organization. They started in the organization—started bussing tables, and the next thing you know, they're chairman of the board. Now we're moving CEOs around from company to company. They come in with a totally different attitude. The people in the organization become assets versus a leader who came up in the organization and talks about family and team. It just means something different.
Leadership Through Personal Connection
In that team environment, if you're a leader somewhere in that organization, it's important for you to have a lot of personal touch throughout that organization. I spend a chunk of my time just walking around talking to people who, if we had an organizational chart—which we don't—you wouldn't even be able to find them on it. But it's important for the health of our team that they know I know they exist and I care about them. The same thing is true in your workplace. You're up there as one of those district supervisors—that doesn't exempt you from the task that's at hand.
The Power of Motivated Workers
Number seven: the motivated workers stood out. There's a group you'll see highlighted in verse 20 who were zealous. They were a group that said, "You know what, there's a job to do and we're going to get it done."
If your mindset as you leave this place driving to work is "I'm going to the salt mines," and you just walk in thinking "Oh, another day, another dollar"—what's that Tennessee Ernie Ford song? "Another day older and deeper in debt, St. Peter won't you call me?" If that's how you walk into the office, don't you think that's contagious? That isn't going to move you up the ranks.
But you bring somebody in who has zeal for their work—it's not necessarily that they're at this level and they're going to go to that level. But there is a zeal for it. You know people like that. It's not just that they love their work; it's way beyond that. They understand their task is divinely placed there by God.
Understanding Work as Spiritual Stewardship
This brings me back to something I keep coming to, and you know, you've all been around for twenty years now. I fight my weight problem all the time—I'm up, I'm down, I'm up, I'm down. I work at it all the time. I don't need a book, I don't need another book from you—save your books. I don't need pills, I don't need a diet. I know what to eat. I can look at a plate and understand: here's chocolate, here's lettuce. I know. I'm not struggling to figure this out.
What motivates me are two things. One is totally human—I feel better if I eat correctly. But you know what? I also feel good when I eat that ice cream. What keeps me going is that I understand what I eat is ultimately a spiritual issue. It's a stewardship issue.
Susan and I try to be diligent with our money. We're not fanatics—and that's probably justification to say we spend some money—we're not fanatics. We give a chunk of what we make away, primarily to the church. We do that. We're not fanatic in those areas, but I understand that's a spiritual issue. When it comes to my body, I understand that's a spiritual issue too. That's one of those issues that's kind of spiritually off limits. If I talk about fornication, everybody nods. But I talk about being overweight, and they want to go have a donut and break up into small groups to discuss it. I don't get many amens when I say being overweight is a sin. But it's understanding that God placed you here, and now it becomes a motivation.
The Glory of the Grind
Robert E. Lee had a phrase that he used—he talked about "the glory of the grind." I've paraphrased it a bit and talked about "mastering the mundane." By definition, your life has to have in it—unless you're some secret agent—your life is filled with ordinary stuff.
I got up this morning and set two alarms. One went off—I hate that one, that noise. The other goes to the radio one minute later. Laying there, cold, dark, I don't want to get up. I go to the shower. I'm going to tell you what I did: I got up, went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, took a pill, took a shower, washed my hair, dried off, put on my clothes, got in the car, drove down here. That's what I did. You can't get any more ordinary than that. I didn't contemplate it, I didn't pray about what I should wear today—maybe I should have, but I didn't. I love this shirt—it's so comfortable. Plus, "nothing runs like a Deere," so I figure I'll be comfortable.
There's the mundane. I love to teach, but to teach, I don't really love to study. This doesn't take long because it's a review of stuff we've done before, but for me to do a study like I do for this coming Sunday will take hours of grind. But I have to engage in the grind to be in that area of giftedness that God gave me.
Doing Your Part and More
If I were to tie these last couple of points together, let me give you the eighth one: peak performers did their part, and they did more. You can work through the text and see certain sections where there were people who did—I think it's in verses 18 and 24—you see them listed there. These were people who did their part, and then some.
Then they did the job a little bit more. This is a postcard that a friend sent me a few years ago now. He was back touring battlefields, Civil War battlefields. If you could see this, it looks like a tombstone. But it isn't. It marks the place where Stonewall Jackson's left arm is buried.
Stonewall Jackson left his left arm in battle when there was an assessment that needed to be made of the enemy locations. Stonewall rode ahead of the troops. So we're talking about modeling, seeing, hearing. Stonewall rode ahead of his troops. There was such fierce fire and smoke that he was shot by one of his own men. The first people on the scene realized he had a problem with his left arm. They cut off his left arm. By the way, when Robert E. Lee heard that, Robert E. Lee said, "Today, Stonewall Jackson lost his left arm, but I lost my right arm."
Stonewall Jackson was not sitting back sipping brandy and cigars going, "I wonder how the battle's going" or "give me reports from the field." You see the engagement of a leader. You see the role of the leader. When you get to the last part of this, you see guys who are doing their job, and not just their job, but they're doing more. They're going above and beyond.
Mastering the Mundane
I used to teach at Bible study down in Tucson. So every Wednesday morning, I'd get up at 3:30 and drive to Tucson, teach at La Paloma, maybe have breakfast or something, turn around and drive back. The drive down was awful. The drive back was 50 times worse. I hated this. This is not like driving along Monterey. The highlight of the drive are the pecan groves at Picacho Peak. It's terrible.
But even in that, there'd be certain, right about this time of day, the sun would come up over the mountains, and it would be a beautiful scene. And I learned to take that time down to listen to tapes, to sing, to praise God, to think, mastering the mundane. So that it's the glory of the grind, so that you're prepared to be the person God wants you to be. God's job, God's way, God's timing.
Wholly Invested
I would add to this, for you to be wholly, entirely invested. I was in a meeting one time with this high profile Christian guy. So they're dialoguing about his life, and we're all going back and forth, and it's burnout, don't burn out, be careful, don't burn out. So when it was all done, I said to him, "I think you got some crummy advice there." Because I'm afraid sometimes we're so worried about burnout that you're going to die with a tank that's three quarters full.
Don't be stupid, but God gave you a life to invest. Not waste. God gave you a life not to spend, but to invest. He gave you 168 hours this week to invest. Various levels, various things. There are things to be done, and you play a part in this.
You fit. Somewhere in what we talked about today, you fit in that someplace. And it may be that at the office, it's a role here. In another organization, it's a role here. At home, it's a role there. It's to understand these roles and to understand that God's placed you there and He's divinely placed you there. He's sovereignly placed you there for your good and for His glory.
Opposition Is Coming
Now, you're God's guy, God's way, God's timing, got all these people involved. The heading on the next chapter in my Bible says, "work is ridiculed." Some of yours will say "opposition increases." Just because you're God's person doing God's job, God's way, God's timing, do not assume there will not be opposition. There will. How do you handle that? Super practical, how do you handle that? We'll look at that next week.
Father, help us see these amazing truths and then let them change the way we think and the way we live. God, thank You so much for Nehemiah. For a lesson like this that I confess, if I were just to read through this book, I would blow through this chapter. But thank You for reminding us that we need to have some sense of vision and purpose in where we're going. And as You bring things into our life, You designed us to live in community with people that as we begin to do Your work, we're going to have to engage other people at all different levels and it's going to require this using of our gifts, but also sometimes moving out of that gifted area and just pitching in and getting things done that need to be done. You are a good and holy God, sovereign God. Father, we love You and we worship You. We pray You use us. Our prayer is offered to You in Christ's name, amen.