The Heart of Renewal
Introduction
(Introduction was not recorded)
Key Point: If God is at the heart of our plans, by His hand renewal will come.
Transition: How can we ensure that Renewal will come?
1. Seek God’s Plans for Renewal
Nehemiah 2:12 Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me. And I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem.
Heart
We often think of “heart” in the sense of emotions (“wears her heart on her sleeve), or that which we hold dear (“you’re in my heart, you’re in my soul”—Rod Stewart).
In the Bible, “heart” may refer to our mind, an all the things we think there:
2 Chronicles 7:11And Solomon finisheth the house of Jehovah, and the house of the king; and all that hath come on the heart of Solomon to do in the house of Jehovah, and in his own house, he hath caused to prosper.
A natural outflow of that thinking is to think of the heart as the control center for our will. What we dwell on in our heart will overflow into actions.
2 Chr 12:14 He did evil because he did not set his heart to seek the Lord.
The Bible is clear that we should seek the Lord, not just to be morally pure, but also when we make our plans for our lives, not to mention for the direction (and renewal) of God’s people.
Pro 19:21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established.
Pro 19:21 We humans keep brainstorming options and plans, but GOD’s purpose prevails.
Pro 19:21 People may plan all kinds of things, but the LORD’s will is going to be done.
James cautions us to say “if the Lord wills, we will do ‘this or that.’”
Don’t get ahead of ourselves (or God)
The Gibeonites (Joshua 9)
Joshua 9:14 So the men of Israel took some of their provisions, and did not ask for the counsel of the Lord.
John White (Excellence in Leadership . . . Nehemiah):
• Prayer is where planning starts. Our first goal in prayer is not to get a steam head of power but to find out what God wants. (p. 40)
• Planning that arises from and is the product of prayer is far superior to planning that is merely “backed up” by prayer
• The plan that is God’s plan, revealed by him to those who wait on him, is a plan that cannot fail. Real efficiency comes from waiting on God—we might have “success” without God’s approval, but what good is that in the long run?
• John goes on to recommend that committees start their meetings with prayer, but not as usual—if a meeting is to last 90 minutes, the first 45 should be spent in prayer, allowing time for worship, confession, and “time for the Spirit of God to change our perspective and enlarge our vision.
Former Church board meetings: spent a large portion of our meetings pouring over numbers, offering endless discussion, at times getting heated (in Christian love) and defensive (including me), and then we’d close with a “circle of prayer.”
Not all bad, and hopefully God worked in spite of us . . . but no one really had the desire to go to these meetings. It was a “necessary evil” that was always in search of a quorum.
We longed for a different approach, and we discussed how we could be more spiritual. It wasn’t until one day that one of the elders finally decided we were going to spend time addressing the spiritual state of our church, and to spend extended time in prayer that we actually got to experience the joy that comes from given our cares up to our Lord in prayer
Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir—would sometimes spend the bulk of their practice times praying. She wasn’t even a trained director—couldn’t read music. (Story from memory from Fresh Wind Fresh Fire, Jim Cymbala)
Plans with out prayer don’t go far. We’d tried for a few years to come up with a plan—a vision—for how we’d carry out God’s mission for his church. People had prayed some, people had had little one on one meetings, but until the leadership got on the same page, and were working together and helping the congregation submit to the Lord in unity did we start to make any headway.
That is the desire of the leaders at Monroe, and we pray (literally) that it is yours, too
Transition: If we truly do pray for God’s plans to be laid on our heart
2. Expect God’s Hand to Help Bring Renewal
We are in woeful need of God’s help. Nehemiah certainly felt that
4 Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven.
v. 6 “If it pleases the king. . . So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time.
(Again) And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given . . . And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me.
Do you think that Nehemiah was strengthened at the evidence of God’s hand at work in his life?
He certainly recognized God’s “good hand.”
The Lord has a mighty and powerful hand. It has been used both for and against people.
Jer 21:5 And I Myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath.
Here, it is for the benefit of Nehemiah and God’s people, as they return to him. It is not just a powerful hand, it is here described a “GOOD” hand.
The privilege is that we often work WITH God to accomplish His will. So it is with Nehemiah
16 And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing, and I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and the rest who were to do the work. 17 Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.”
18 And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, “Let us rise up and build.” So they strengthened their hands for the good work
What an encouragement it is to work with God. I know that for me, just one small but very important aspect of that privilege is that I know that without God’s help, I really couldn’t amount to much.
Kind of like when Ed was over at my house yesterday, looking at my electrical problems, saying “oh yeah, that’ll be no problem. . . .we’ll just fix this or that. My eyes kind of glaze over . . . (uhhh, can I get you the screw driver Ed?)
Or digging a trench to take care of something in his back yard. I don’t have much clue—they are the masterminds—but I can respond in a Tarzan like fashion: “give shovel. Me dig hole.” Until my back gives out
We really do need God’s help. Trouble is when we start thinking we are doing ministry (God’s work”) on our OWN strength
Deu 8:17 If you start thinking to yourselves, "I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!"--
Deu 8:18 well, think again. Remember that GOD, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors--as it is today.
Even if we think we are getting something on our own power, we have to realize that in the very least, those gifts and that power come from the Lord (God and Scientists Create Life)—the Assyrians thought they were laying waste to Israel with their own might
Nehemiah doesn’t make that mistake, twice he makes reference to the good hand of God, and then at the conclusion of our passage he responds to those that are trying to discourage him with doubt and sarcasm and threat:
“The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build, but you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem.”
Even in the NT, we see that God was credited over and over with the growth of the church:
Acts—God added to their number
(even though the apostles were preaching, people were being healed, evangelists were reaching out to the lost.
. . . God made it grow (it grew “all by itself" a key point of Natural Church Development)
I think God has helped me see this in a number of ways:
• MMS: first summer: this is EASY . . . (a story about how my wife commented that “without God’s help she couldn’t survive during our first couple months as teachers and residence hall parents at a residential school for at-risk children. I replied: “I don’t think it has been that bad . . . basically saying I didn’t see the need for God, it wasn’t hard. That was my last “easy day” feeling at Mountain Mission School. As if God said: go ahead dan . . .)
• Sermon prep: this is HARD (then he comes thru with help, and I praise him)
CONCLUSION
No matter how good or gifted we are, we really won’t amount to much without God’s help.
One of our great mistakes will be if we think we can do it all on our own because of our
• Training
• Spiritual gifts
• Success in the business world
• We can tie our own shoes
If we realize that all our plans, all our effort amount to nothing, we do have a source of comfort and help.
Andrew Murray, (Waiting on God) says (p. 12)
The answer to every complaint of feebleness and failure, the message to every congregation . . . ought to be simply, “What is the Matter, Have you not GOD??? If you really believe in God, HE will put all right
As John White (Excellence in Leadership) pointed out,
God cuts through all the maze of problems and solutions, and knows just where to focus.
Like Napoleon who overlooked the battle from a hilltop and gave the key to victory to his generals, God knows what to tell us and gives us the means to do it.
