When a big challenge faces you, essentially there are only two things you can do about it:
You can rise to the challenge. Or you can sit down and ignore it.
When there is a big task to be done, I am saying, there are two entirely different ways to approach it. There is the rise up approach and there is the sit down approach. The rise up approach and the sit down approach.
The rise up approach means that you take charge and you do. You get out there and do. For a whole lot of folks, in fact, it means that you do by yourself. If you are addicted to the "rise up" approach to that big challenge, you say, "Aha, I can do this. I can do it myself. I don't need any help." Do you remember that old commercial, "Mother, please, I'd rather do it myself."? The rise up approach.
On the other hand, if you are a bit worn and weary, or if you are devoted to the sit down approach, you look at that big job and you say, "Well, this too will pass. Well, I'm sure it'll all work out. What, me get excited? Not my problem." And you do as little as possible, you just let it slide.
I have a couple of minister friends with whom I've worked on committees; and when the committee meeting is over and everybody supposedly has an assignment, somehow these dear brothers always manage to get out of the meeting with nothing to do! Never could figure out how they are able to do that!
Rise up; or sit down: two radically different ways to react when life hands you a major task to do.
There is a hymn, you know, that advocates one of these approaches. The hymn counsels us to be active, to get at it, to do. It sings: "Rise up, 0 men of God; have done with lesser things; give heart and mind and soul and strength to serve the King of kings." Rise up! Robust, active, get-with-it stuff. Rise up!
But one wag has re-written the hymn as one which you could sing if you are on the other side. I don't suppose you will ever find this one printed in a hymnbook, but maybe this one suits you better than the one I've just quoted: "Sit down, 0 men of God; the phone for you ne'er rings; keep cool and calm and deaf and dumb; you need not do a thing". Sit down! Quiet, peaceful, let-it-slide stuff. Sit down!
Two approaches; two personality types; two radically different reactions to what life deals you.
The message today is really about how we can take control of our lives. What can we learn from both the rise up folks and the sit down folks?
Our old friend Nehemiah shows us what the balance is. Nehemiah shows us how to rise up and how to sit down, both. Nehemiah, God’s great master builder, God’s premier picture of leadership, facing this monumental need to build the wall of the city, demonstrates what happens when you know when to sit down and when to rise up.
We go to the beginning of his story today; I know it's backtracking and that we've already spent three weeks helping him get this famous wall constructed, but today I want to go back to basics, back to the beginning, and see with you how Nehemiah got started when he first saw the need for this tremendous project of wall-building.
The book begins with Nehemiah receiving a report of the deplorable condition of the city wall of Jerusalem. And it moves him. It disturbs him. He cannot shake it off. Notice what it moves him to do.
Nehemiah 1:4
And then after a long prayer of confession, Nehemiah tells us what he felt led to do.
Nehemiah 2:1-8
I
Nehemiah, learning that there was a wall to be built and a city to be reconstructed, began with a sit-down tactic. He began with prayer. But I want you to notice that beginning with prayer was not beginning with nothing; it was beginning with something, and a very powerful, very important something.
Nehemiah has been told by his friends that the city of his fathers, the city of Jerusalem, is in perfectly miserable shape. And there he has way up there in Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire. What could he do? How could he expect to do anything about the problem? Nehemiah could well have been excused for taking the sit-down approach and shrugging it all off. Why should it be his worry? Why should it be his problem?
Well, Nehemiah takes the sit-down approach, all right. But it is not being passive; it is not being lazy; and it is not a do-nothing stance. Nehemiah sits down and prays. He prays. And that, I submit to you, may look like doing nothing, but it is not. Prayer is not a nothing; prayer is a something. Prayer is doing something. And it is important.
Listen to the part that prayer played in Nehemiah's approach to this massive task:
"When I heard (about the wall) I sat down and wept, and mourned for days; and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven." And then the text goes on to give us Nehemiah's great prayer, after which he goes about the business of preparing to own and to meet the challenge.
What happens here? And why is prayer, why is the sit-down approach, so important? What does it do?
The psychologists talk about Type A personalities these days. Type A personalities are not comfortable unless they are up and doing. Type A personalities are often uncomfortable with reflecting or thinking or delaying. Type A personalities often just get up and do, rise up and do, sometimes before they really know why. Type A personalities have as their motto, "Don't just stand there; do something!" But the trouble is that a whole lot of those projects are half-baked, they're not thought out, and they just won't work.
Several years ago my wife's parents were visiting us here, and we were in some department store. As we passed through the section where they sold porch and lawn furniture, a set of furniture caught my mother-in-law's eye, and she said, "Oh, look, that's just the kind of thing I've been looking for. That would be just right for our back porch." We admired it for a couple of minutes and then moved on to some other part of the store to do whatever it was we came for … all of us, that is, except for my father-in-law. He sort of disappeared around the corner. And five or ten minutes later, when he showed up again, he announced that he had bought the lawn furniture, lock, stock, and swing set. Just marched right up and bought it.
Well, of course, he had not yet thought about how to get a swing, a chair, a glider and a table six hundred miles back to Louisville, all in one car. Nor had he measured to see whether it would fit in the space they had for it. And, most of all, he had not lingered long enough with his wife to see if that was really what she wanted. And we had a pretty entertaining little incident right there in the basement of Hecht's, getting a refund on porch furniture bought only fifteen minutes earlier!
You see, that's our problem if we take nothing but the "rise up" approach to the things that need to be done. We'll act too soon. We'll act impulsively. We'll act without enough planning. And most of all, we'll act without lingering with the Father to see if that is really what He wants. Our impulses do not necessarily reflect the will of God. If you and I do not sit down first and think and plan and pray, we are likely to go running off on our own whims and will not reflect the will of God.
Notice, just quickly, what sitting down to prayer did for Nehemiah. Notice that sitting down to prayer got his full emotional involvement with the issue, and not just his off-the-top-of-the-head instincts. He says, "I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven". "I sat down and wept and mourned for days." Sometimes, you see, you just have to let your own feelings mature. You have to let your own insights grow. You have to engage your whole personality, your whole being, and the only way to do that is to sit down and pray and wait. In other words, ask the King of Heaven for the wall.
II
But Nehemiah also shows us that when the prayer time is over; when those insights are matured; when the full person, heart and soul and mind, is engaged on the problem … then it is time to ask the other king for the wall.
What do I mean? Once Nehemiah has finished his prayer, he does not delay, he does not temporize, he does not shrug it off and suggest that somebody else ought to do something. Once Nehemiah gets up off his knees, asking the King of Heaven about the wall, he goes straight to the King of Persia to get him involved in supporting the project. Nehemiah is asking both kings for the wall. Nehemiah is backing up his prayer and his convictions with involving others who have something to give.
You see, here again, our problem so much of the time is that we want to do it ourselves. Whether we be sit down or rise up personalities, we are reluctant to pay the price of involving others. We act as though God has given us a private vision, a personal mission, and nobody else gets the privilege of sharing in it.
But Nehemiah teaches us that when God hands you a great challenge, He does not expect you to handle it alone. Some few of you are old enough to remember Charles Lindbergh, flying the "Spirit of St. Louis" across the Atlantic all by himself. They called him the "lone eagle", and everybody was caught up in this act of personal bravery. We seem to idealize "lone eagles" going it alone.
But let me tell you that most of the time God does not expect you to be a lone eagle, flying across the ocean by yourself. If you do that too often, you will end up being the lone wolf, howling at the moon in frustration and disappointment!
No, listen to Nehemiah; listen to his instincts once he got some clarity from his sit-down prayers about what God wanted him to do:
"I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king, ‘If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, … send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers … that I may rebuild it.’” And then Nehemiah gets even bolder in his requests: "’Let letters be given me to the governors … that they may let me pass … and a letter to … the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress … and for the wall of the city.’ And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me.”
In other words, "Rise up!" Get with it! And when you have finished with sitting down and asking the King of heaven for His will, then rise up and ask the King of earth, the resources of earth, for whatever is needed, and you will be surprised what will happen.
I say again that our problem is that once we take on a task, so many of us want just to keep it to ourselves. We want to do it alone. Sometimes that’s because we want the glory and the recognition for ourselves. But more often, I think, it’s because it’s a whole lot of work to involve other people and to motivate them, and we just don’t believe they’ll do it right.
This week, a church member was talking with me about the way I have snatched a day of vacation here and a day there, without really getting away from it all. And she said, "Delegate. Just delegate and go away. That’s what you need to do." Now I didn’t say this to her, but something inside me said, "Well, but I just can’t delegate my work, not my work. The rest of the staff has plenty to do, the deacons are loaded up, and nobody but me can do this".
And then a couple of days later I pulled out of my files notes I had taken on a lecture I’d heard about the stress-prone personality, about the kind of person who is asking for a heart attack or a stress syndrome; and guess what it said at the very top of the list? The stress-prone person is unwilling to delegate responsibilities, believing that nobody else will do it right! Wow! Thank you, Lord, that hurt! Thanks, I needed that!
The issue is that when we have a big challenge before us, after we have sat down and found our way through God's will, then we want to rise up and do it all ourselves and keep the goodies for us! The issue is that when we've discovered what it is our God wants us to do, we assume that nobody else can share that vision, that no other resources are available, that we are indispensable to God. And that, my friends, is the height of arrogance.
No, we need to ask both kings for the wall. We need to ask the King of heaven and then we need to ask the kings of earth. We need to ask those who have something to contribute. We need to find out what God has put out there for us to use, and use it.
A few days ago our Associate Pastor and his wife were at a Gospel concert, and when the concert was over, as they were making their way out of the concert hall, a man sort of went out of control. It was obvious to Rev. Arnold that the man was having some sort of attack, and he and Deborah went over to see if they could help. When they got there they found a man talking to himself and jerking around and falling allover himself. And they also found a distraught and embarrassed wife, clutching a bottle of pills, and saying, "He's failed to take his medicine for three days. If we can just get him to take his medicine, he'll be under control again."
Well, Rev. Arnold says that all around the "holy folk" … that’s his phrase, not mine … the holy folk began to pray, "Help him, Jesus; save him, Jesus." And that's all right. But I like Rev. Arnold's astute comment: God had already provided healing, right there in that bottle of pills. And it was now our responsibility to get the medicine in!
You may sit down and ask the King of heaven, and you should; but the time also comes when you rise up and use the people and the things and the resources that God has provided. You rise up and ask the kings of earth too. You ask both kings for the wall!
By the way, I guess I can't leave you hanging. Adrian and Deborah accompanied these folks to the hospital and the gentleman was brought back under control. All is well, so far as we know.
You can sin by being too spiritually lazy to sit down and pray and ask the king of heaven for the wall; but you can also sin by being so just plain lazy that you will not rise up and ask the kings of earth for help!
In the 18th century, a young shoemaker, William Carey, stood up in his English Baptist business meeting, and expressed his sense of calling, born out of a long struggle of sit-down prayer, that God had called him to rise up and begin what we today know as foreign missions. But the Baptist leaders of Carey's day squashed him, saying, "Sit down, young man. When God wants to save the heathen, He'll do it without your help or mine." But Carey knew better. Because Carey had already sat down; he had sat down with the king of heaven! And slowly, painstakingly, gradually, William Carey involved others and gathered the resources and made his way to India. His motto, his testimony says it all, "Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God."
Sit down and rise up, both. Ask both kings for the wall. Pray and do. Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.
