This morning we’re going to deal with the topic of prayer. And I’m pretty sure that my task this morning, although it is not easy, is actually pretty simple. But let me ask you a few questions just to confirm that:
• How many of you think you pray enough? So it looks like I don’t really need to convince us this morning that we need to pray more, do I? So that means I’m not going to waste all of our time trying to convince us to pray more or make us all feel guilty that we don’t since it appears we already understand that.
• How many of you believe that prayer is powerful? Apparently there are a few of you that either don’t believe that or you were too lazy to raise your hand or perhaps you’ve already tuned me out. But it looks like that for the most part we all know that prayer is powerful, so I’m not going to spend our time to try and convince you of something you already believe.
• How many of you believe that prayer should be a first response and not a last resort? Keep your hands up for a moment. Again most of you believe that. But let me ask a follow up question for all of you that have your hands up. How many of you consistently actually do that and make prayer your first response and not your last resort when you’re faced with some difficulty or trial in your life? OK, it seem that we’ve identified at least one aspect of prayer where we struggle and can use some help. So that’s where we’ll spend our time this morning.
How do we make prayer our first response instead of a last resort?
As we look at the first chapter of the book of Nehemiah this morning, I think we’ll find some things that will help us answer that question. And what we’re going to find is that the key to making prayer our first resort in our lives is to make sure we have a correct understanding of the purpose of prayer. I’m confident that once we’ve developed the Biblical view of the purpose of prayer, we’ll then find that our practice of prayer will be transformed as well.
So go ahead and turn to Nehemiah chapter 1 and follow along as I read. If you’re not sure where to find Nehemiah in your Bible, start with the Psalms, which should be right near the middle of your Bible and then turn back toward the front of your Bible to Job, then to Esther and finally to Nehemiah.
The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah.
Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.”
(Nehemiah 1:1-3 ESV)
Nehemiah sets the stage for us in these first few verses. Nehemiah, whose name means “Comfort of YHWH”, identifies himself as the son of Hacaliah, which probably means something like “wait for YHWH”. As I mentioned last week, that’s about all we know about Nehemiah or his family other than the other fact that we’ll find in verse 11 when Nehemiah reveals he was the cupbearer to the king.
The events here occur in the month of Chislev in the 20th year of the reign of King Artaxerxes. On our calendar the month of Chislev would be late November or December. It is likely that the 20th year of Artaxerxes’ reign occurred in 445-444 BC.
Although Nehemiah is in the king’s court in Susa, which was the capital of the Persian Empire and about 800 miles from Jerusalem, he is not unaware of the plight of the Jewish people. So when one of his fellow Jews, a man named Hanani, returns from Jerusalem, Nehemiah is anxious to get a firsthand account of the conditions there.
It is obvious that Nehemiah had a genuine concern for the people of God. We don’t yet see why that is the case, but I think we’ll get a pretty good idea what fueled that concern as we continue through the chapter this morning. He doesn’t just rotely ask Hanani how things are going in Jerusalem like we often tend to do with each other, but He is genuinely interested in the welfare of his fellow Jews.
And the news is not good. The remnant in Jerusalem was suffering great trouble and shame and the walls were broken down, which exposed them to attacks from their enemies. But those broken walls were also a symbol of something far more troubling – a broken people. That is clearly indicated by the way Nehemiah responds to the report:
As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.
(Nehemiah 1:4 ESV)
Nehemiah’s very first response to what he learns is to weep and mourn. As we look at Nehemiah’s prayer in just a moment, we’ll see clearly that Nehemiah’s sorrow was far deeper that just lamenting over the fact that the walls were in disrepair. He weeps and mourns because God’s people are hurting and most of all because God’s reputation has been tarnished. We’re going to see that Nehemiah had such a deep personal relationship with God that when he observed those things which broke God’s heart, it broke His heart too.
Is your walk with God like that? Are you so tuned to God’s heart that you mourn over the very same things God mourns over? If not, then this message is particularly relevant for you because we’re about to see how Nehemiah developed that kind of relationship with God.
And Nehemiah’s broken heart led him to immediately engage in continued prayer and fasting before God. Before one batch of mortar was mixed, before one trowel was lifted, before one stone was put into place, before one gate was repaired, Nehemiah prayed.
I don’t know about you, but I long to be more like Nehemiah. I know my tendency when facing a difficult situation is to get busy trying to fix it and then only bring in God when I get into trouble. And even when I do make prayer a first response rather than a last resort, I rarely pray as fervently and persistently as Nehemiah did. As I’ll demonstrate to you in a moment, when Nehemiah says he “continued fasting and praying”, his idea of continued prayer is a whole lot different than most of ours.
So let’s look at Nehemiah’s prayer. I’m going to ask for your help again here. Although this is normally not something I want to encourage, I’m going to ask you to look at your watch, or for those that normally check the time on your phones during the sermon, you have my permission to use your phone. I’m going to read the words of Nehemiah’s prayer and I want you to time how long it takes me to do that. I’ll start reading in verse 5 and you can follow along as I read:
And I said, “O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father's house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.”
(Nehemiah 1:5-11 ESV)
So how long did it take me to read that prayer?
How long do you think it took Nehemiah to pray that prayer? We don’t have to guess because Nehemiah tells us how long he prayed that prayer. Remember, that Hanani had returned to Susa in the month of Chislev in the 20th year of the reign of King Artaxerxes.
Now turn to the first verse of chapter 2. There we learn that Nehemiah is done praying and ready to act based on what God revealed in that prayer in the month of Nisan, also in the 20th year of the king’s reign. The month of Nisan would be in March or April on our calendar and it is four months after the month of Chislev on the Jewish calendar. So before he ever took any action at all, Nehemiah spent four months in prayer. Do you see now why I said earlier that Nehemiah took the idea of continual praying to a whole new level?
How did Nehemiah come to be that kind of prayer warrior? I think we find the answer to that question by looking at the prayer he prayed. In just a minute we’re going to take a look at the elements of his prayer in more detail, but if we step back and take a look at his prayer as a whole we find this key idea:
God delights in prayer that seeks God’s heart, not God’s handouts
If we’re honest, much of the time we pray, it’s because we want something from God. So much of our prayer life is spent trying to convince God to give us something we want – better health, better grades, a better job, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a spouse, kids who respect and obey us, more money, a bigger house, a newer car, for the Cubs to get to the World Series or for someone to beat the Dallas Cowboys. And if I’m not praying those things for myself, I’m often praying for God to give those same things to others.
Certainly some of those things, particularly praying for the Cowboys to lose, are legitimate prayer requests. But I would suggest to you that based on the prayers we find in the Bible and particularly Nehemiah’s prayer that we’re looking at this morning, asking for those things is not to be the main focus of our prayers.
When I look at Nehemiah’s prayer here I see a man who prays to God out of the overflow of a vibrant, intimate relationship with God and out of a genuine desire to know the heart of God in every area of his life. For Nehemiah prayer is a natural response to God’s revelation. And I’m convinced that having that kind of desire to know God’s heart is really the only motivation for praying that will lead to a consistent, effective prayer life.
If prayer is just something I do as a task so I can check off one item on my to-do list or if it’s just about asking the God who already knows all my needs and those of the people I’m praying for to give us something, I’m not going to be able to sustain that kind of prayer life very consistently or for very long.
Once again, let me clear that I’m not saying that we shouldn’t pray about our needs. What I am saying is that if that’s all we do, we’ll miss out on the main purpose of prayer, which is to know God’s heart.
When Jesus’ disciples asked Him to teach them to pray, in the model prayer Jesus shared with them He did encourage them to pray for their daily bread. But if you look at that model prayer carefully you’ll note that it is much more God focused than self focused. We’re going to look at that prayer in some more detail in the “Connections” time today so I encourage you to stay and be a part of that discussion.
So let’s see what we can learn from Nehemiah about…
HOW TO SEEK GOD’S HEART IN PRAYER
This morning we’re going to develop an acronym for this kind of prayer by looking at Nehemiah’s prayer. Normally, I’m not real big on acronyms because they can often be quite contrived. But when it comes to prayer, I think that a simple acronym that serves as a reminder of the kind of prayer that allows us to seek God’s heart can be useful.
Some of you are familiar with some other acronyms that have been developed for prayer. Probably the most popular one I’m familiar with is this one:
Adoration
Confession
Thanksgiving
Supplication
I also ran across a couple others this week:
Praise
Repentance
Ask
Intercede
Speak the Word
Enjoy His Presence
Praise
Repent
Ask (or Access)
Yield
There is nothing wrong with any of those and all of them would be useful in guiding our prayer life. And they all contain at least some of the elements that we find in Nehemiah’s prayer. So I’ve certainly borrowed from these other acronyms in the process of developing our own this morning.
Praise
All the models I’ve mentioned this morning begin with some form of adoration or praise. And Nehemiah certainly begins his prayer like that:
O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments,
This may very well be the most overlooked aspect of prayer and yet if we don’t begins with this essential foundation our prayer life is never going to be effective in helping us to seek the heart of God. That’s why when Jesus taught His disciples to pray, the model prayer he used began with praise:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
(Matthew 6:9 ESV)
The reason that beginning with praise is so important is that it immediately gets our eyes off of self and our problems and our needs and our desires and gets our focus where it should be – on God. We will never be able to discern the heart of God if we are focused on what concerns us rather than what concerns God.
In the Bible we find a number of ways that we are commanded to praise God. Some of them are probably pretty familiar and pretty comfortable for most of us. Most of us know we can praise God with our words as we testify about His character and the great things He has done. Most of us are pretty comfortable praising God through song, either together with others in a corporate gathering of worshipers like this or on our own. But did you know the Bible also commands us to praise God by making an offering, shouting, clapping our hands, playing instruments, and even dancing.
One great way to develop our ability to praise God is to use Scripture. Psalm 150 is a great summary of a lot of those aspects of praise, so right now why don’t we practice this aspect of prayer together as we stand and read that Psalm together. Before we read this passage, let me just point out that every verse ends with an exclamation point which ought to tell us the kind of passion and exuberance that we ought to employ as we read this passage.
Praise the LORD!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!
Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD!
(Psalm 150 ESV)
Once we focus on God’s greatness, the next step is a natural outflow…
Repent
In the few places in Scripture where we are given a peek into the throne room of God, those who are exposed to God’s greatness and his holiness are immediately overcome by a sense of their own unworthiness and so they immediately humble themselves and repent.
And once Nehemiah is reminded of God’s greatness through the act of praise, He, too, turns to repentance:
let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father's house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.
It would have been real easy for Nehemiah to excuse his sin or to rationalize it or to separate himself from his fellow Jews back in Jerusalem who had brought these horrible conditions upon themselves by their sin. But Nehemiah doesn’t do any of those things. He makes an honest assessment of his own life and acknowledges that he is not innocent because he and his family have been part of the sin that has separated God from His people.
So he prays and confesses his own sins as well as the sins of his people. He acknowledges that they have acted corruptly by not keeping God’s commandments.
For the most part I really enjoy working with new basketball and volleyball officials to help them get better. Some of those officials are eager to learn and when you point out their shortcomings. They are quick to agree that they need to do those things better and then they actually try to apply what they’ve been taught. So even if they don’t do that perfectly, I’m eager to do everything I can to help them improve.
On the other hand there are those officials who think they know it all. They argue that they’re not doing what you say they are doing or they make excuses for their actions and they make no effort at all to change. When that happens, I’m not going to waste my time trying to help those officials. If they aren’t willing to change what has already been pointed out to them, why on earth would I think they would heed anything else I tell them?
I think God views us a lot like that. He delights in revealing Himself to us and allowing us to get to know Him better. But if we’re not willing to act in a manner that is consistent with what he has already revealed and when that is pointed out to us we just deny it or make excuses, why would God think we are really interested in having a relationship with Him and getting to know Him better?
Repentance is an act of humility that lets God know that we are really serious about getting to know Him and His heart. By confessing our sin we acknowledge that we are serious about loving God and learning from Him. And when we do that, God delights in revealing Himself more fully to us.
Acknowledge
Notice that Nehemiah still hasn’t asked God for anything yet. Before He does that he takes time to acknowledge that he is praying in a way that is consistent with God’s character:
Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand.
On Monday morning, we spent some time discussing the word “remember”, which almost seems like a command from Nehemiah to God. But it actually serves more as an acknowledgement on Nehemiah’s part that what he is asking for is consistent with God’s own words.
It is extremely significant here that Nehemiah essentially prays God’s own words back to Him. First of all, it reveals that Nehemiah was familiar with God’s revelation of Himself through the Scriptures. Even though Nehemiah didn’t have a King James Bible on his shelf, he was clearly familiar with God’s Word. As he had been taught the Scriptures, those words had become inscribed on his mind and in his heart, not just on a piece of paper.
But I also think that praying God’s Word back to Him is an act of respect. It shows God that we value His Word as well as the One who authored it. I think God is delighted when we do like Nehemiah did and humbly remind Him of His promises on which we are basing our prayers.
Yield
Nehemiah ends his prayer with these words:
O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.”
Remember that this is a four month long prayer so obviously Nehemiah didn’t write down every single word he prayed over those four months. Had he done so Nehemiah might well have been one of the longest books in the Bible. But maybe not as long we might think. I have to believe that Nehemiah probably spent as much or even more time listening to God as he prayed as he did speaking to God.
While Nehemiah may not have known exactly what God was going to call him to do as a result of his prayer, the evidence in the text indicates that when Nehemiah began to pray, he had already yielded his heart to God. Rather than come up with his own plans and then just asking God to bless those plans, He spent four months praying so he would yield to God’s heart and not his own. And once he heard from God, he was willing to be used by God as part of God’s answer to prayer.
Yielding to God like that is not easy. How many times when we pray do we ask God to satisfy the desires of our heart and not His? And even when we really are seeking God’s heart in a matter, how often do we pray something like “God, you need to do something about that” when we’re not willing to let God use us as part of the solution.
Chapter 1 ends with this final sentence:
Now I was cupbearer to the king.
Next week when we get into chapter 2, we’ll spend some more time discussing the significance of his position.
I’d like to close this morning by issuing a 6 day prayer challenge for all of us.
6 Day Nehemiah Prayer Challenge
1. Starting tomorrow, set aside some time to pray each day. Don’t just make this an item to mark off your “to-do” list. Just pray as long as you feel like praying.
2. For this week only, as you pray make every effort not to ask God for anything. (Use some common sense here – obviously urgent life threatening situations are going to be an exception.)
3. Use the P.R.A.Y. acronym to guide your prayer time.
4. Use Bible passages to guide your prayer time – especially the Praise and Acknowledge aspects of prayer.
5. Be creative – feel free to sing, shout, clap, play an instrument or dance. (These are all Biblical forms of praise.)
6. Take time to listen as well as talk.
7. Be obedient to anything that God reveals to you during your prayer time.
8. Come back next week and share your experiences with others. We’ll schedule some time in the gathering of worshipers for you to do that.
