A Man of Prayers, Part 2

Hey everyone.

I want to continue to look at Nehemiah and his prayer life, because I think that we can learn a lot from it, not just about prayer, but about our relationship with God.  (The commentary that I have been reading on Nehemiah, Be Determined, by Warren Wiersbe has been particularly helping to me in picking out some useful little from Nehemiah's prayer.  I hope you find the insight useful as well.)  We can really see how Nehemiah views God from his prayer.  Remember, Nehemiah is praying in distress over the state of Jerusalem.

Let's look first at what Nehemiah calls God:

• "Lord" - He addresses God first as his lord and master.  Nehemiah begins by recognizing that God is the one in charge and that he is merely a servant.
• "God of Heaven" - God is holy and is not of this world.  He is greater that the false gods that have been fashioned by human hands and dwell on this Earth
• "Great and awesome God" - Our God is awe-inspiring just to contemplate.  He is great and powerful and we all need his great power at work in us.  
• "Who keeps his covenant" - God's word means something.  If he says something, it is true.  We have to believe it.
• "of love"  God loves.  In fact God is live (I John 4:8).  He keeps his covenant, and his covenant is about love.

In just a few words Nehemiah has expressed a tremendous amount about his God.  He praises God in a number of different ways.  In our prayer, do we recognize the awesome God that we serve?  We should, because He is Lord.  He is awesome.  He is great and powerful.  He is in heaven.  He does keep his promises.  He does love.  In prayer, we have an opportunity to tap into the greatest power in all of existence and we would be foolish to ignore it or fail to recognize it.

As his prayer continues, Nehemiah asks God to answer the prayers that he is lifting up before God both day and night.  Nehemiah makes his requests to God and is consistent in it.  Then he confesses his sin and the sins of his people.  He takes responsibility before God and admits that the Israelites have really only received the scattering that their sins had deserved when they were carried off into captivity.  But Nehemiah is apparently acquainted with God's word because he looks back to Deuteronomy where God promises that He will gather his people back from where they had been scattered if they repent.  He closes his prayer with a request that God would give him success in the "presence of this man."  Nehemiah recognized that the king could make good things happen for him, but that this blessing he sought ultimately came from God, not King Artaxerxes.

Tom        

A Man of Prayers

Hey everyone. 

I have just returned from my one athletic endeavor of the year, Bogota High School's annual Senior vs. Faculty basketball game.  It was fun and we only lost by eight this year.  I held my own with four points and ten rebounds.  Not bad for a man of my age and relative physical condition.

Any way, I wanted to return to Nehemiah and see what else we can learn from him to help us build our spiritual lives and our ministries.  Now to this point we have seen that Nehemiah really cares about God's people.  His concern leads almost immediately to prayer.  In fact we can see throughout the book of Nehemiah that he is indeed a man of prayer.  As I study Nehemiah, I am reading a commentary called Be Determined, by Warren Wiersbe.  Wiersbe states that the book of Nehemiah records twelve prayers altogether.  That is an impressive number in a book that only has thirteen chapters.  That is a rate of almost one prayer per chapter.  It says something about Nehemiah - he understood the power and impact of prayer. 

Perhaps he was familiar with Psalm 127:1, "Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain."  He had something big and important to build and he was wise to turn to God to make things happen for him.  In fact, this has brought about a conviction in me that I am foolish if I do not pray.  And I do not want to be foolish. I recognize that I am not powerful enough, strong enough, cool enough or smart enough to build a dynamic ministry on my own power, but if I am not praying that is exactly what I am trying to do.  So after studying this, I have committed myself to greater prayer, and God has indeed blessed it.

Tom         

A Man Who Cares

Hey everyone, last time I wrote about Nehemiah and how he rebuilt the walls in eight weeks that had lay in ruin for over a hundred years.  Now I want to start looking at Nehemiah and what he did to make this happen.

In the opening of the book, Nehemiah is in Susa, the capital of the Persian empire.  He asks his brother Hanani about the condition of Jerusalem.  Hanani had just come from there and reports three things about Jerusalem.  First, the people there live in great trouble and disgrace.  Second, the walls are broken down and third, the gates have burned with fire.  After hearing this new, Nehemiah sits down and weeps. 

Understand that Nehemiah had risen to an important position in the Persian government.  It had been generations since the inhabitants of Jerusalem had been carried off into exile.  Nehemiah was likely born in Persia, and it is possible that he had never been to Jerusalem.  Yet when he hears this news he sits down and weeps and mourns for several days for his homeland.  Even though he had attained a place of prominence in Susa, he did not consider Susa home, nor had he allowed his heart to be assimilated into the more dominant Persian culture.  God's people lived in God's city unprotected, without walls or gates, and Nehemiah cared deeply.  He mourned, fasted and prayed for several days.  Do you think Nehemiah would have accomplished what he did had he not cared so much?  I'm inclined to think that he would not.  It was this concern that prompted everything that followed, the prayer, the hard work, everything.

As I examine Nehemiah and look at what he did that enabled him to rebuild the walls and gates of Jerusalem, I have to ask myself, "How much do I care?"  Is my concern for God's people prompting me to pray?  Is it motivating me to work hard?  God has placed each one of us in a ministry.  In my case, it is the Youth and Family Ministry.  As a high school teacher, I walk the same hallways that our teenagers do, and I can say that our teens walk around in a culture where the spiritual walls have been broken down and the spiritual gates have been burned by fire.  They need help to build their own spiritual walls and gates to have protection from the onslaught that the world is bringing at them.  I feel the challenge of this and I want to help.  I want to help our teens as individuals, and I want work alongside my co-builders to help make our ministry here in New Jersey great.   

OK, so we can see Nehemiah begins with concern over the people of God and a burning desire to do fix the situation.  So we will continue form here to see what his concern prompted him to do.