Knees That Bent
Last week we began to dig into the book of Nehemiah, and we discovered that he was a man that had a heart that cared, knees that bent, a mind that prepared and feet that went. I talked about how those four things need to be kept in a somewhat equal balance for success in any endeavor. For example, prayer without caring won't last, and prayer without preparation won't be effective. The spiritual and the practical needed to be properly balanced, one without the other is like rowing with only one oar, you won't get very far.
Last weeks message was entitled: "Can I Trust You With This?" In it we discussed the fact that God is looking for people He can share the burden of His heart with, and is always looking for soil in which His seed (By that I mean His burden, calling) can take root and not be choked out, many are called, few rise to the challenge. Finally I mentioned that God has an assignment for everyone, and for every stage of your life. One thing I want to mention as an addition to that message and a segway into this one is that your, "assignment," often has a season of preparation, and so your "assignment," for this season may simply be: get ready, get ready, get ready.
I had four years of Bible college training, my assignment was study, study, study. Preparation time is where a lot of people get disillusioned. They want to get feet on the ground, when God wants them to get knees bent in prayer, or a head in the bible. Modern warfare techniques can teach us much about the need for preparation, or as I would like to call it in this message:
PRAYERPERATION
When a nation is going to send 100,000 soldiers into battle in another country you better have a plan in place to feed, fuel, and provide a constant stream of every imaginable resource: bullets, bandages, bombs, etc.. You don't just send 100,000 soldiers into battle without a supply chain staged, and ready to keep functioning.
In like manner Nehemiah prepared for what was ahead in two ways: he PRAYPERED and he prepared. I will talk about preparing more next week this week we will talk about prayparing.
Let's look at the text now:
Ne 1:4 Now it came about when I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.
Ne 1:5 And I said, "I beseech Thee, O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who preserves the covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments,
Ne 1:6 let Thine ear now be attentive and Thine eyes open to hear the prayer of Thy servant which I am praying before Thee now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel Thy servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against Thee; I and my father's house have sinned.
Ne 1:7 "We have acted very corruptly against Thee and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which Thou didst command Thy servant Moses.
Ne 1:8 "Remember the word which Thou didst command Thy servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the peoples;
Ne 1:9 but if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause My name to dwell.'
Ne 1:10 "And they are Thy servants and Thy people whom Thou didst redeem by Thy great power and by Thy strong hand.
Ne 1:11 "O Lord, I beseech Thee, may Thine ear be attentive to the prayer of Thy servant and the prayer of Thy servants who delight to revere Thy name, and make Thy servant successful today, and grant him compassion before this man." Now I was the cupbearer to the king.
1. He prayed fervently.
We are told the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much in James 5:16. Nehemiah prayed fervently because he had a heart full of sympathy for his nation. Sympathy is very simply - your pain in my heart. The pain so deep he had to vent it to God in prayer.
I would like to read the lyrics to a song by Simon and Garfunkel, entitled, "I am a Rock."
A winter's day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I've built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
Don't talk of love,
But I've heard the words before;
It's sleeping in my memory.
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.
Obviously it is the sad refrain of a person who was hurt because a relationship didn't turn out they way they wanted it to, so they closed their heart to feeling, and decided to become a rock and a solitary island. It was a very popular song, and continues to be so, because it resonates with everyone: "if I never loved I never would have cried."
To pray fervently means to open your heart to pain, that is why we read of Nehemiah weeping so much in prayer. In response to Simon and Garfunkel, I like what Tennyson said: "It is better to have lived and loved, than to have never loved at all." The bible tells us that one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit is to take away stony hearts:
Eze 36:26 "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
God's love for us, is a painful love, and yet God chooses to focus on the joy not the pain. He wept over Jerusalem as He prayed, but He endured all because of the joy set before Him. May God help us to hear with new ears, and to remove the stony places in our hearts. Praying is often difficult work because it involves us getting our hands messy with the needs of others.
One of the ways that God takes away our heart of stone is by planting one of His tears in our heart.
Nehemiah began praying in the month of Chislev, and continued fasting and praying up until the month Nisan - that is 4 months. Those were not easy months, but if you continue reading in the story you will find they produced incredible results. That is next week. Lets stay where we are and say that fervent prayer is difficult prayer because it is birthed in pain for others. Fervent prayer is also difficult because it attracts the notice of rulers of spiritual wickedness. The other side of that coin is this: fervent prayer is blessed because it is birthed in pain for others, and fervent prayer is blessed because it attracts the help of heaven.
Ne 2:10 When Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard [of it], it grieved them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel.
These guys, Sanballat and Tobiah are in the natural what demons are like in the spiritual. If someone gets stirred up about building the Kingdom of God, it greatly displeases them and they set out to do everything they can to discourage and stop that.
This kind of praying doesn't bother the devil:
Jas 4:3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend [it] on your pleasures.
Whenever we talk about prayer we hardly ever talk about how difficult it is. We talk about it as a duty, a privilege, a blessing, but I don't think we talk enough about how prayer can be very difficult. Fervent prayer is praying through. Praying through distractions, discouragement, bad reports, set backs, physical attacks. Praying is sometimes like having bees flying all around you while you are pressing in.
I have an interesting verse that I think sheds light on the difficulty of prayer, when I first show it to you, you will say what does that have to do with prayer?, some of you will catch it right away but for the others, give me a chance to walk you through it.
Ge 25:21 Isaac prayed hard to GOD for his wife because she was barren. GOD answered his prayer and Rebekah became pregnant.
Ge 25:22 But the children tumbled and kicked inside her so much that she said, "If this is the way it's going to be, why go on living?" She went to GOD to find out what was going on.
Ge 25:23 GOD told her, Two nations are in your womb, two peoples butting heads while still in your body. One people will overpower the other, and the older will serve the younger.
She had twins inside of her and they were fighting. They still are fighting today 5000 years later. In Rebecca's womb two nations are fighting the Edomites and the Israelites. Often times in the spiritual womb of our prayer closet two nations are fighting, the Kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of darkness, and the battle can be so intense we can be like Rebecca and say, why go on living? We would rather quit that fight, that is how intense spiritual warfare can be.
Every pregnancy has moments where the mother really wished she wasn't. I wonder how many Christians have had spiritual abortions because they didn't want to endure the struggle of the fight in their womb.
Sometimes the neighbor you are praying for has attracted the attention of Sanballat and Tobiah, and praying then is going to become 10 times harder. We've got to pray through!
2. He prayed the word
Ne 1:8 "Remember the word which Thou didst command Thy servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the peoples;
Ne 1:9 but if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause My name to dwell.'
There is so much in Nehemiah's prayer that we could spend a few weeks analyzing it, but for brevities sake I will keep my remarks short, because I want to key in on what the Lord has directed me to share for this group at this time.
Let me say this about Nehemiah's prayer that will hopefully provoke you to study it beyond what you hear in this message: In the NT Paul said, that God was able to do exceedingly above all that we could ask or think. Very few times in life do people get that kind of answer to prayer. Nehemiah did, he got paid time off, an armed escort, the kings forest was ordered to give him whatever lumber he wanted, and he was also given letters that all the governors where ever he were to travel were to provide him with such assistance as he needed. Imagine for a moment the president of Iran giving a Jewish man materials and assistance to rebuild Jerusalem, because that is exactly what happened!
That said, his prayer was wonderfully answered, we would do well to study it at length. I may come back to it again next week. We will see, but for today let me say, that in his prayer he had what I call, prayerfully caught promises. You notice he quotes the word in his prayer. When Sanballat and Tobiah attack, God countered, but giving Nehemiah promises he could claim. So that as those two nations collided in his prayer closet, Nehemiah rose above the fray and came out victorious.
(Illustrate with fly swatter. Sometimes we need to imagine we have a spiritual flyswatter when we are in prayer. So that when the enemy tries to disrupt our prayer we swat him away)
Faith conquered fear.
Confidence swatted back dismay.
The Word smashed the lie.
Strength slammed cowardice.
Boldness belted intimidation.
A prayerfully caught promise flattened unbelief.
3. He laid his prayer request in the bed of expectancy.
This is illustrated by his claiming both the promises of God, and appealing to the honor of God. Illus: The great woman of Shunem, (2 Kings 4) her son died and instead of laying him in a tomb, she laid him in the prophets chamber in the bed of expectancy. Don't lay your prayer requests in a tomb, that is where dead things are, lay them in the tomb of expectancy. Lay them on a bed of the promises in the word of God.
Close: Do you need to have God soften your heart, have you been closing up like in the Simon and Garfunkel song? Are you willing to let God give you a burden that hurts to carry around? Have you thrown in the towel on some prayer requests. Believe again, pray again.
