Don't Despair--Take It To God in Prayer

Sermon Transcript

“DON’T DESPAIR—TAKE IT TO GOD IN PRAYER”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 1:4-11

September 16, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

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Philip was leading us and we were singing about that part of the son that said, “Remember your promises, oh Lord.” Well that comes directly from the book of Nehemiah chapter one. And so I want you to take your Bibles, if you would, please, and just open them up to Nehemiah chapter number one.We just got started on this last week, a series in the book of Nehemiah and I believe God is already doing tremendous things in our heart.  Listen to Nehemiah 1:1The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the citadel, that Hanani one of my brethren came with men from Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.  And they said to me, "The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire."  So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.And I said: "I pray, LORD God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments, please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father’s house and I have sinned.  We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses.  Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’  Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by Your great power, and by Your strong hand.  O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man." For I was the king’s cupbearer.Would you bow your heads as we go to the Lord in prayer?And our Father, we pray, of course, that you would add your blessing to the preaching and teaching of your holy Word.  And, Lord, I pray this morning as we go now and take this second look, this second step in rebuilding the walls of a broken down life, I pray, Father, that you would just anoint me as I speak this morning.  No one cares to hear my message.  No one wants to know what Phil thinks today.  But what they would like to know is what you have shared and what you have impressed upon me by your Holy Spirit and through your Word.  And, God, I pray that you would touch hearts this morning.  And as I always pray, Lord, whether out loud or in private, if there be one here that does not know you personally as Lord and master I pray that they would come to know you today, not only for eternal life in heaven, but to make sense out of the life on earth.  We ask you that you would bless this sermon in Jesus’ name.  Amen.And so this week you have a Scripture sheet that says, “Don’t Despair: Take it to God in Prayer.”  And last week as we got started we got started with this thought. And that is, is that the way Nehemiah was able to get anything done was Nehemiah took a real honest look at the situation at hand.  He faced reality. And that is exactly what we have to do.Some of you are here.  You were here last week and, perhaps, you have begun to face reality in your own life.  This story is the story about the rebuilding of literal walls and a literal temple and a literal city.  But God is not dwelling in buildings and behind walls. He is dwelling in our hearts.  He is dwelling in the bodies, the lives of believers today. And so we are talking about rebuilding or building in the first place a broken down life.How do you do that?  How do you do these things?  Well, number one, face reality.  And we said it last week.  We’ll say it again. Boy, some of us here are just given over to all kinds of problems, habits, hurts, hang-ups, addictions.  Perhaps we have just got addictions to anger or we have got addictions to this, that or the other.  Maybe it is a substance or a liquid or maybe it’s a relationship or maybe it’s some certain sin.  We have got these things and we need to face reality.  And no man stands alone. The things that bother you also bother your family, your relationships and people that you interact with. And so we have got to face reality.Now, when you get done today I want you to remember that having faced reality, when you go home I want you to remember this, I want you to remember that God says that the way that after facing reality that you can begin to rebuild is through prayer and recognizing your position.You say, “My position? What do you mean my position?  I’m not high and mighty and have some elected official position.”No, no, no.  God has placed each and every one of us in the exact place, in the exact position that he wants us to be in.  Now, we are really getting into this book of Nehemiah and, without doubt, it is one of the most amazing stories of recovery and restoration in history.  What everyone else had given up on was the very thing God used Nehemiah to bring to pass. I love the very thought of this whole story.  Everybody had given up. Everybody in Jerusalem was walking around the junk, over the junk. They figured it’s a lost cause.  Might as well give up. But I want you to know that the thing that everybody had given up on was what God used to bring to pass.And I want you to know when we give up, God doesn’t.   Did you know that?  When we give up on the whole thing, that’s just about the time that God is getting ready to work. And so he did that.  And the whole issue of Jerusalem and its broken down walls is a bigger story than the failure of the city maintenance crew to do their duty.  All of these walls were broken down.  It goes all the way back to the time of Nebuchadnezzar.  They are broken down, 150 years have been lying there.  Nothing has been done. Even the rescue crowd they sent there to try to make a difference didn’t get anything done because, now, well, they just became discouraged, despondent, disappointed on and on it goes.  And so this was a very important thing.But we have to understand something, that the failure of Jerusalem is not just a logistics problem.  It is not just that they can’t live there anymore.  It is a theological problem for the Jews.Down in verse number nine it says, “Yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.”You see, the city of Jerusalem has been a city that has always been a place where God has decided to make his name and his authority known and great.  He did that. All of the promises concerning the city of Jerusalem and the Jews are eternal and earthly in nature.  None of the promises of God concerning the Jews and the city of Jerusalem will go without being fulfilled.  It will be an eternal city.  But at that time it was in ruins. There were things that were going bad.  Things were going from bad to worse and no one was ready to do anything about it.Well, I’m just so glad that God is always God.  And I want to just say something to you here just for a moment.Do you know what is curious about this book of Nehemiah? That is that having read through it now dozens of times in preparation over the last year for this series of sermons, I want to tell you something that there is no miracle recorded in the book of Nehemiah, no miracles.  I mean, this unbelievable accomplishment of these people is done by God through them, but there is no miraculous intervention.  In other words, there is no Red Sea crossing like Moses did. There is no manna falling from heaven in the morning for them to gather up the free food.  There are no plagues against their multiple enemies.  I mean, there is no miraculous thing that is going on here in this story.Well, what is abundantly clear is that God’s providence is at work and that is nothing less than absolutely miraculous.You say, “Well, what are you talking about?”Folks, I want to tell you that God is God and God is God all the time.  Can you say, “Amen?”  You see, God is always God.  And I just want to say to you this morning as we get started, you and I need to be thankful from the bottom of our hearts that God never takes a day off, that he never takes an hour off, that he never takes a minute off.  In fact, utter chaos and wreck and the end of all of our lives would result if God took three seconds off.  I mean, God is always God.  And God is at work in this situation.  For Nehemiah who cannot see at this moment how things can work out, he is 1000 miles away, he can’t do anything about it personally.  And all the people in Jerusalem are in despair and the great name of God seems to have lost its luster.  The authority of Lord Jehovah...it just seems like nothing is happening. And so we might be ready to thrown in the towel to give up. But I’m here to tell you that God is God, God is always God. God never stops being God.  He never takes a day off.  And when we think things are not working out right, God is working things out right.Now, be honest with me.  Raise your hand if you just, sometimes, “Pastor, I got to confess.  Sometimes in my life with some of the difficulties, the reality of my life, sometimes I just can’t quit see how it is working...all going to work out ok.”Would you raise your hand?  How many of you ever have a big problem that you don’t understand?   Put your hand up.  All right.  Do you know that God knows exactly how he is working out everything?  You’re talking about somebody with experience.  Folks, God has been around a long, long, long time.  God is totally infinite. The one who created you and me has got the...he has got the experience of the eons. He is limitless. He is unlimited.  He is infinite.You say, “Well, give me something to help me understand infinite.”Well, one of the smartest men that ever lived in history was Einstein. They say that when Einstein was doodling his doodling was probably light years ahead of the rest of us. I mean, what his brain did in neutral was way ahead of what most people do when they are working at it as hard as they can.   But I want to tell you a little something about Einstein even with his theory of relativity and everything else.  He started and he stopped.  He began here and he ended here.  He knew this much.Our God knows everything.You say, “Why are you telling me all this?”Because he knows all about you, too.  He knew about Jerusalem.  He knew about the rocks. He knew about the junk. He knew about the city.  He knew about the walls. He knew about the defamation of his character.  He knew about Nehemiah and where he was.This is just so amazing.  God’s providence. And, folks, we don’t talk about this a lot anymore, but I want to say to you that God is sovereign and God is providence and he is working everything out. The events of Nehemiah’s life and Nehemiah’s day were out of control. They were out of his control. But they were never out of God’s control.So here is the first thing we learn. We learn that the place to go when we are in despair is to go to God in prayer.  In prayer?  God reveals to us just how we are in position for God to work through us and through us work to repair the broken down walls of our lives.The prayers that repair our lives is where we are going to pick up.  Write some things down on your Scripture sheet.  Please don’t miss a word of what I am going to share because it will really help you as you move through difficulty in rebuilding your life.We ended seeing that Nehemiah wept and mourned and he prayed and he fasted.  He didn’t do it for a minute.  He didn’t do it for an hour as you will see in next week’s sermon; proof positive.  He did it for four months.Boy, there was no “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer involved in this situation. He...when he got a grip of the severity of the problem and the depth of the situation he was moved to pray.  And he prayed.  He wept. He mourned.  He prayed.  He fasted.I want you to see some things in this passage.  Write these down. The first thing we need to do, prayers that repair our lives, is number one, pray recognizing God’s character.  Write that down.  Pray recognizing God’s character.  Verse five. “And I said: "I pray, LORD God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments, please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You.”He talks to the Lord and he says to him.  First thing he says, recognizing who he was addressing he said, “The Lord God of heaven.” Now that puts everything on a different plain.  That, I mean, we’re not talking about the little despots and the little people who think they are gods with the little people who act like gods or some deity that has never written a book, never revealed anything to anyone, never bettered anyone’s lives, all of these so called gods all over the world that always end in an ism.  None of those things.When Nehemiah bowed, he prayed to the God of heaven.  He prayed to the God out of reach of manipulation of man. That’s pretty much a phrase that appears many times.  You know, Daniel prayed to the God of heaven.  Even Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, they both prayed when they were converted, to the God of heaven.  Even in Persia it was a well known phrase, the God of heaven.And so when he talked to the God of heaven he was talking to the God that man couldn’t manipulate.Do you know what mankind is trying to do to God today? They are trying to bring God down, set him beside them and make him a real cool guy that’s really hung up with all the same hang ups that they have.  Bring God down.Well, folks, I want to tell you a little secret. You can’t bring him down and God...we would like him to be just like us so we feel a whole lot more comfortable and don’t feel like our sin is such a big deal.  But God is not like us.  In fact, God is a three times holy God.  He is holy. He is holy. He is holy. And we are nothing like God.Can anyone say, “Amen?”We are not like God.  God is holy.  Do not try in your fondest imagination, do not try to bring God down and make him like you. The closest thing that ever...the realization of that was when Jesus took on the form of flesh, came into this world and lived 33 years a perfect life and died for our sins.  That was God in the flesh.  Yet he was perfect. He was tempted in all points as we are yet without what?  Sin. People don’t like to talk about sin today.“Oh, sin, what a big problem.  I don’t want to talk about sin.”We like to talk about mistakes.  We make mistakes.People sin.  Years ago people sinned.  But today we just have missteps.  We make mistakes.“You know, I made a mistake with those three affairs.”“I made a mistake when I was lying to the IRS.”“I...”We talk about mistakes.  Folks, mistakes are what you do in a check book.  Mistakes are when you try to get an answer right on a math exam.  Sin is when we do those things that God tells us not to do and we do them anyway.  We pray recognizing God’s character.  Well, God is God of heaven.  He is great and awesome.  He is beyond our description.  We are all, as the song says, were all the oceans ink and all the heavens parchment  you could not write all there is to know about God in his greatness across the skies if you wrote from now through eternity.  He is...he is great.  He is awesome.And then something else about God.  You keep your Word,” it says in this passage.  It says here in verse number five, “LORD God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy.”  The Jews had a problem, but it wasn’t because God didn’t keep his Word. It was because they didn’t keep theirs.You know, God is a covenant keeping, promise making and keeping God.  God keeps his promises. God does what he says he is going to do. It is just that we like the part where God promises to bless us, but we don’t understand and like the part that he keeps the part where he says he will also correct us if we do wrong.But, you see, that’s exactly what he said.Listen to this.  Exodus 34:6.  We looked at it in a different context a few weeks ago, but it says when Moses wanted to see God, “And the LORD passed before him [Moses] and proclaimed, ‘The LORD,’” That is the all powerful owner, “‘the LORD God,’” the powerful owning God, “‘merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” Boy that’s the part we really like.  I mean we like that merciful, longsuffering, patient, forgiving.  That is just...boy when we talk about God that’s the way we want to talk about God.You know, I had three children. They were growing up, you know.  I mean, you’ve got children. I see  Kevin down here. He’s got boys at his house.  And you just all over the place. We’ve all got children.  We all were children.  You know how it is when kids are growing up the first thing that the parents want to do is they want to approach their child when he starts going the wrong way or misbehaving or becoming rebellious, they want to approach them with the very loving, kind...”Well, now, Junior, you know, let’s don’t do that.  Let’s don’t be kicking daddy in the shins.  Kick mommy in the shins, but don’t kick daddy in the shins.”You know, just...we want to be loving about this whole thing.  Just loving and kind and gracious and we want...that’s the way we want to work with our children. Well, that’s natural.  We would rather love them into obedience than we would correct them into obedience.But guess what?  Just about the time you knees start getting sore from the kids kicking you in the shins as you are trying to get him out of the grocery story and all that stuff.  You’re, you know what you do?  You say, “I am going to get some obedience out of this child one way or another. If he is not going to respond to my love, he will respond another way.”This is when I told you that my mother loved to apply the board of education to the seat of learning in my life.  And it worked very well.You know what God’s like?  Let me tell you what God is like.  First of all, God is loving, kind, patient and merciful, longsuffering.  He is forgiving. He shows mercy to generations to the fourth generation.  But he visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third generation and the fourth generation.Oh, I just want to pull over and say to you moms and dads that are making choices that you think you are free to make.  You make choices and you make decisions and you say, “I am free and I will do what I want. It’s my business.  It’s not anybody else’s business.”  Yet you set the example of indulgence.  You set the example of faithlessness and unfaithfulness.  You set the example of addictions.  And all you are doing is opening up the door for your children to fall prey to the same things to the third and fourth generations.Oh, pay attention.But God is loving and he is kind and he is faithful and he would far rather come with mercy than to come with correction.Pray recognizing God’s character.  And then we’re talking about this first element over here, prayer and position.  Position is the last thing. Several things on prayer. The second thing: Pray repenting of personal and corporate sin.  Pray repenting of personal and corporate sin.  Verse number six.  “Please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which,” big word, circle it, “we have sinned against You. Both,” circle the word, “my father’s house.” And look at this, “And I have sinned.  We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses.”We.  I.He included himself.  Pray repenting of personal and corporate sin, verses six and seven.You know, Psalms 106, verse six says this. David writing, “We have sinned with our fathers, We have committed iniquity, We have done wickedly.”  There’s a couple of points you need to fill in under that.  Number one, my sins are mine.  I told you about the word “sin.”  Please don’t minimize what God calls sin, call it a mistake a misstep, a happenstance, you just messed up. No, no, no.  No.  Let it be what God calls it and let it be an offense against God’s character, his love and his grace.  Sin is an offense against God.And my sins are mine.  They are personal.You know, in the affair that David had with Bathsheba he confessed clearly. Nathan the prophet came up to David and he said, “David.”  And he told a story.  He said, “But you are the man, David.  You are the one who has sinned.”And David immediately responded and said, “Yep, you’re right.  I have sinned against God and God only have I sinned.”  He confessed.Do you know what David didn’t do?  Well, the first thing he didn’t do is he did not blame it on Michal his arranged marriage by King Saul who despised him and said, “Well, you know, my first wife she was just such a problem. I might as well just go out and live it up because look what she did to me.”And, you know, we are in the...we are the world’s greatest blame game people. We just pass it on.“You know, I’m a rebel and an idiot and a jerk because my daddy didn’t take me fishing when I was six.”Or, “My mother, she didn’t have a very good Christmas for us in 1970...whatever it was.  And that’s why I’m just...”You know, we blame somebody for everything.I think some of the funniest things I have ever heard are people who are found at fault in automobile accidents and they fill out their insurance forms and if there is just some kind of way they can pass it on, it’s not their...no matter what the police said it’s not their fault. And I could tell you stories.Listen to me this morning.  We have to understand that my sins are mine. David didn’t say, “Michal did it.”  He didn’t blame it on Abigail. He didn’t say, “Well, you know, Abby is getting kind of old now and I just had to have somebody to meet my needs.”He didn’t do that.  We do that today, but he didn’t do that.  He didn’t even blame it on Bathsheba and say, “Well, you know, she was on top of that house and she was out there bathing.  It’s all her fault.  She was asking for it.”He didn’t do that.  He said, “I have sinned.”You know, if we are going to pray and we are going to go from, “I understand the reality of my situation to lay the next building block.”  We’re going to have to pray honestly and we are going to have to face up to our own sin.And then there is something else.  My sins are mine and then our sins are ours. And that is corporate sin.You say, “What does that mean?”He confessed his sins as a member of his father’s household and as a part of his people. It would have been a whole lot easier for him to say, “Well, you know, I didn’t do this.  Jerusalem is 1000 miles away.  I wasn’t there. I’m not the one that broke the sabbath.  I wasn’t even born when they were doing all these things.  I didn’t commit idolatry.  I didn’t break the sabbath.  I didn’t break any of those...”He could have just said, “It’s not my responsibility.  Let them pay the price for what they have done.”He went on and identified that he himself was a sinner in his heart.  But not only that, he felt a part of his people and he felt responsible.It is easy today as a Christian who is for the Word of God and for those things that are spiritual to simply say, “I am against abortion.  I am against gay marriage.  I am for the...”We just wash our hands of the whole deal and just point to the world around us.Folks, let me just say something to you.  You listen to your pastor.  We bear some responsibility for the depths to which we have allowed our nation and culture to sink as Christians.  We have been standing by while the ship is sinking. And we have been doing nothing to make a difference.You say, “Well, what’s the best way we can make a difference?”Folks the wall had fallen down not on the basis of one man’s problems, but on the basis of the entire nation generally turning their back on God.  And our nation is made up of many individuals, many of whom have known the Word of God all of their lives. They have been in church all of their lives. But what we have done is stand by and we have not lived the life that God wants us to live in the world.  We bear responsibility as well for what is becoming of our homes.Please, now let me just step over here and speak to you daddies for a moment, you fathers. I do this.  If you’re new here today I do this.  I really come and speak to the men. And I want to talk to you men for just a minute and I just want you to understand something.  God really does hold men responsible for the direction of the society and for what is going on.  I could talk all day on this.Do you know something? We give passive permission to our families to do things that are wrong by being silent, by just not speaking up.  We have decided that, “Well, we are just not going to fight these fights in our home.  You know, whatever the wife says, whatever the kids say, whatever anybody does, whatever the neighborhood says, what everybody...just whatever.  You know, I just want to go along, get along. I’m just going to be silent.”   And by our silence we give tacit, passive approval to everything.What’s going on in our homes, what’s going on in our lives, what Junior is into. We have little Junior growing up learning how to be a slier and a dicer and loving blood, blood, bloody, bloody video games thinking it’s the greatest thing on earth.  And we just sit by and think that’s not going to have anything to do with the way he looks at life when he gets older.You’re dreaming, you know that?What we allow our families to feast their minds on is what they are going to think about and it is where they are headed in their life. What we are becoming, by being passive, is laid at the responsibility of the father.Let me give one more. We give personal...we give passive permission by our silence.  We give personal permission by our example.  We give personal permission by our example.Kid ends up in the principals office because he got mad and threw his books across the room and screamed and yelled and called the teacher a name.  The parents show up down at the school and what to know what’s going on?  You grab the kid and say, “What in the world has gotten into you? And they start screaming.  And get home scream and yell and throw thing all around the room wanting to know why that kid is doing those kind of things.I had a lady tell me not long ago, “I don’t know what happened to my daughter.  She is 17 years old and, boy, no sooner did she get to where she could get out of the house and she started drinking and now she’s a drunk.  She gets drunk every weekend.  I don’t know where in the world she thought she got that permission to do that.  Why does she think she can...doesn’t she have any sense to know that she is not supposed to do that?”And the little girl looked at mom and dad and said, “Well, I learned it from you.  You have yours every night.”Don’t be surprised what your children emulate, imitate and follow.  You see, we bear some responsibility.  And that’s what Nehemiah was saying.  He wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the city.  But do you know what?  He said, “We collectively have stood by and done nothing.”The next thing is:  Pray by reminding God that you believe his promises. And this is so wonderful. We sang about it a few moments ago. Here is where it came from. It says in verse eight:Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’He tells the Lord, “Lord, you know, I have been in your Word and I have been reading what you said and, you know, yes, you said you were going to scatter us. But you also said that you would regather us.”  And so he reminded the Lord of his promise.The Bible says in Deuteronomy 4:29 which is what he was quoting:But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.  "When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the LORD your God and obey His voice  ‘(for the LORD your God is a merciful God), He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them.’”You know, God keeps his promises both to correct us and to comfort us. Adam and Eve had no idea how well God was going to keep his promise.  God  said to them, the day that you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the day you die.  They doubted it. Satan encouraged the doubt. They said, “Hah, it can’t be that way.  God’s not that hard.  He’s not going to make us live to the letter of the law.”  And they went ahead and did what God told them not to and they found out that God doesn’t just keep his promise of love and mercy, God also keeps his promise from his warnings of how he will correct us.  God keeps his promises.And so he says to him, “God, you are a promise keeping God.”  And so that is how he appealed to God.I want to get on to this next one because it is so important. And that is:  Pray requesting specific help from God.Do you know that general prayers get general answers?  Do you know what many of us are in the habit of praying such generic and general prayers that we really never do know whether God actually, specifically answered a prayer or not?  We didn’t ask specifically, carefully that God would act on our behalf. And so because we didn’t ask specifically we didn’t get a specific answer to prayer.Many of you filled these out last week.  It was interesting to read them.“Oh, God, help our family.”“Lord, help our nation.”“God, we’re in trouble. Help.”I mean, just, you know, just sort of very, very, very general.  That way, you know, we’re not on the hook that we asked God to do something he didn’t do and God is not on the hook that we asked him to do something he didn’t do either.And so I mean everybody is off the hook because we didn’t get specific. God gets no glory from general prayers.Look at this passage of Scripture.  Let’s see what it says.  It says here in verse number 10.Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by Your great power, and by Your strong hand.  O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.You say, “What man?”Artaxerxes, of course, the king of the world, the tyrant of the whole earth at that time.  Here he sat.  You know, Nehemiah was nothing. I think we get it in our mind that, you know, hey, Nehemiah was really something. You know, he was way up there sitting right there by Artaxerxes.And, you know, it was a place of honor, I’m sure.  But do you know what Nehemiah’s job was?  He was the last stop before poison got to the mouth of the king and killed him. I mean, whoever was against the king had to go through Nehemiah.  And if it was going to come through some stabbing in the back or some sword thrust at the last second when he is coming to dinner or some poison Nehemiah is the one that is going to stand there.  He was in that position because he was a slave. He was born into slavery and that entire...the whole...all the people of the Jews at that time were classified, even if they weren’t functioning as slaves, they were under ownership of the Persian Empire at that point.  That’s what they were. They were just slaves there.So here is Nehemiah.  He is sitting beside the king of the world.  And there he sits and he has been thinking about this not one day, two days a week or a month. He has been in fear and trepidation. He has been praying with tears and mourning.  It’s not, “Now, I lay me down to sleep,” that he is talking to God about. He is not saying, “Lord, you know, bless this food and just help us have a great day today and bless all my children.”  That’s not what he is saying. He is saying, “God, Jerusalem is in a disastrous situation. Your great name, oh God, is in disrepute. And so, Lord, for your name’s sake, for the restoration of Jerusalem and for all of the children of Israel, Lord, please give me mercy in the sight of this man who has led this kingdom to capture other nations and drag them in chained by the neck and dragged them into the city of Susa and Shushan and to make fun of them as they become subjects of the world’s greatest kingdom.”And he is sitting beside the guy and he is about to go into him and say to him, “Oh, by the way. Listen, oh king.  You know, I have been serving you for quite a while here and I want to go back and rebuild one of those cities you destroyed.”Think about what he is getting ready to do.  Do you know what he did?  He prayed.  And he prayed requesting specific help from God.We ought to know better. Philippians 4:6 says, “Be anxious for nothing.”  I suppose he was anxious.  “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”Be thankful. Be humble. Oh, for a little humility.  Oh, the Bible is so full of it.  Why do we think we can come in God’s presence stomping around in our ball cleats and telling God what he has got to do and what he doesn’t have to do? And who in the world do we think we are to tell God we’re mad at him because he didn’t do what we thought he ought to do when we said to do it?Folks, we are not God and he is not our servant. We are not the sun and he is not the moon.  We are not in the middle and he is not our satellite. He is the God of heaven.“If my people who are called by my name shall [what?] humble themselves and pray.” The Bible says in the New Testament that God in 1 Peter 5 he says that, “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the [who?] the humble.”This man is humbling himself.  He is humbling himself because he knows that only God, he is at the place where only God can change this man’s heart.He prays for mercy.You know, there is something that we really need to understand there and that is that he did not develop a prayer life at this moment.What, what, what, what, what, what, what?I said, “This man, Nehemiah, is not only recently developing his prayer life.”He didn’t live a happy go lucky slap happy life all of his life and then comes a crisis and say, “Oh, time to get spiritual.  I had better to learn to pray.” And go in and learn how...You know what?  In this very prayer he is recalling the history of Israel, the promises of God. He is laying claim to what Moses said and what God told...Do you know what?  He was already in the habit of prayer.  It is not a good idea to learn to be a prayer warrior when the crisis is on you.  Do you know that is pretty much the way we do as Christians?  Oh, no. We’re supposed to learn to pray.  Do you suppose Daniel learned to pray when he got thrown in the lion’s den?  Do you suppose that David learned to pray when javelins were flying from the hand of Saul?  Was that when he first started learning to pray?No.  These men prayed.  Daniel when he did pray he didn’t pray in general terms.You know, I could just imagine, you know, he has been thrown into the lion’s den, in this same kingdom, by the way, the king of Persia, Darius.  He gets thrown into a lion’s den.Imagine Daniel coming down to the bottom of the lion’s den, opening his eyes up after he shakes off the jolt from being thrown in.  He opens eyes and here is a bunch of snarling hungry lions in there.  Do you suppose that he prayed in general terms?  “Oh God, you are a great God and this is a wonderful day and I just, you know...God bless everybody an, Lord, you know, I might be in a little bit of a fix here.  Would you please help me, you know, for something.  You know, Lord, I’m looking around for the foot holds and places to get up out of this lion’s den and, you know, I’m going to do my best, but...”You know what?  He didn’t do that.  He looked up and saw those lions and he said, “Oh, God.  Shut the mouths of the lions.”And God answered his prayer.  But he didn’t learn to be in contact with God when he hit the bottom of the den.The three Hebrew children also that were thrown into the fiery furnace. They didn’t become prayer warriors then. And when they got into the fiery furnace they didn’t start praying, “Well, here we are boys.  What are we going to do?  I guess it’s time to pray.  You pray first, Bill.”They didn’t do that.  They called out to a God they knew very, very well. They prayed specifically.“God, shut the mouths of the lions.”“God, help me with Saul. He’s trying to kill me and my enemies are mounting up higher than my head.”“God help me with this fight.”You know, they prayed specific prayers.There is a man by the name of George Mueller who lived from about 1804 to 1898 and George Mueller wanted to be a missionary.  He grew up.  As he grew up he felt the call of God to be a missionary and to carry God’s Word to the ends of the earth.  And he was on his way to do that and he stopped in Bristol in England. And while he was in Bristol he looked around and he saw that it was a terrible place for child labor and for orphans. And what they would do is scour the countryside, find the orphans, bring them to Bristol, put them into these terrible work homes and work houses and moms and children and children all over. They would just work them. And, oh, he saw it.  It broke his heart.And George Mueller began to pray.  And he prayed very specifically.  He said, “Oh, God.  For the glory of your name and not man, Lord, by your grace we will house and feed these children.” And his daily prayer was, “Give us this day our daily bread.” And George Mueller, a guy, a human, not a god, not an angel, made a promise to God.  “God, as long as you will supply the need, I will never ask a man, I will never ask a man for one single dime.”At Ashley Downs there is a picture on the internet that you can go look at up under Wikipedia and you can see what even the world, not Christians, what the world had to recognize about George Mueller as he never asked anybody for anything.  And they built locations that looked like Iowa State University or looked like college campuses where they housed these children and where over his life time he saw more than 100,000 orphans with no other hope in life come through. And God housed them and fed them and put beds under them and roofs over their heads and they had food to eat and he educated them and they never went back to the work houses.Are you listening?And he did it because he asked God specifically in prayer.What happens to Christians who faced reality and went to God in prayer?  What happened to Christians who understood that God is a prayer answering God?Nehemiah knew God’s Word. He knew how to pray and he did it. He specifically asked for mercy with help in their terrible plight. He asked for God to grant him mercy in the sight of Artaxerxes.Oh, these verses in the Bible like Jeremiah 33:3 that says, “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know,” ought to ring in our ears.  We ought to call out to God.Are you a husband today and you have got a wife that is just not interested in the things of God and not interested in keeping her feet at home?  Have you prayed to God, called out to God and said, “Oh, God. Show me something that I can do myself.  I am calling out to you.”Do you have children in your home?  Do you have teenagers in your home that you have tried everything but the world has got their attention?  And you’re...listen I want to encourage you.  Be the best parent you can be.  Be the most consistent you can be.  Be loving.  Be kind.  Be patient.  Be firm. Be all of the things that we can teach you this morning. But be on your knees for your children and pray that God would bring those children back to you.“Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”This is the most amazing thing that I think I want to finish with this. And that is: Pray realizing your position.You said, “What?”That’s that bottom word over there.  Pray realizing your position.You say, “What position is that?”Well, it is the position that God has placed you in.You see, Nehemiah was a thousand miles away and the first inclination would be, “Man, if I was over there I could do something, but I can’t do anything and, wow, it’s just really bad.  Lord, you’re going to have to send somebody.”That’s not what Nehemiah did.  In the time of prayer, here he is praying and weeping and going on for four months and during his time of prayer here is what he did.  He came to understand that “I am sitting next to the only man on the planet.  I am sitting next to the only one on the planet that can really do anything about this.  This is the guy that can give me not only permission to go back. This is the guy that can give me direction.  This is the guy that can help me. This is the guy that can make this thing happen. And I am sitting right...oh God, you have placed me in an unbelievable situation.”You say, “Well, what does that have to do with me?  I don’t have a position like that.”Here is what I would like you to understand.  Number one, you are always in the place where your prayer can be heard.  Will you write that down?  You are always in the place where  your prayer can be heard.There is no such thing as getting beyond the realm of prayer.  You are never in a place too far from God that he can’t hear you.  I mean, the vilest sinner, the person who has gone farther than anybody should ever go, the prodigal that has just gone to the ends of the earth in rebellion against parents and against family and against God and his Word and against...I don’t care how far you have gone, you have not gone so far that you are not sitting right next to the person who can do more for you, can do it all in just a moment of time with humility and confession and somebody would say, “I have sinned.”The second thing is that you are already in the position where your prayer can be answered.  You are in the place where your prayer can be heard and you are in the position where your prayer can be answered.  God can always answer the prayer that you are praying.I hesitate to share this this morning because the gentleman is sitting right back here.  Where are you, Tom?  There he is.  Wave at me, Tom. Everybody look at this hand over here on this side.You better come up here, Tom.  I wasn’t going to do this, but you just better come here.  Can you come up here?  You need help?Tom, you weigh about 90 pounds less than what you did when you started, right?  Come on up here.  Come on, man.Friday afternoon I went on a picnic.You say, “Pastor, do you relax?”Yeah.  I do.  People think I’m some kind of machine or something.  I love to have fun.  I watched Tennessee get slaughtered on the ball team, on the ball game last night, too. I mean, it was terrible.Hey, you know what?  I got a phone call.  Can I tell these people?“Absolutely.”I was going on a picnic and Bonnie was there and we were all the staff and we were going to go over and play dumb games. And I got a phone call. And the guy on the other end says, “Is this Phil Winfield, pastor of Grace Church?”I said, “Yeah.”He said, “I mean, the Phil Winfield, pastor of Grace Church over on 235 where the people really pray?”I said, “Yes, that’s me.”He said, “I mean the...”I said, “Ok, ok.  Who is this?”He said, “Well, this is Tom.  Tom McCarl.”And I said, “Well, Tom, what’s going on? What’s happening?”And Tom says, “Well,” he said, “I just go to share with you.”  He said, “I’m at Mayo Clinic and I’m on my way out right now and my wife and I we are driving down the road and I’m leaving and they told me I don’t have to come back for four months.”And I said, “Well, what’s that all about?”And he says, “Well...they told me that they have done the MRIs and they have done their exams and more than one of their specialists at Mayo Clinic,” we’re not talking about here in Des Moines.  The May clinic said, “Well, Tom, we don’t know what to say to you, but we cannot find the cancer.”Now, Tom, you may get run over by a car on the way home and die. But it’s not going to mean God didn’t answer your prayers.  Do you understand that?Are you listening to me this morning?  Tom, did God answer your prayer?“Absolutely.”Did he?“And so many people here that were praying for me. Thank you all.”It is absolutely unbelievable what God has done in this person’s life.And I want to ask you a question.  Were you general in your prayer or were you specific?“Very specific.”Would you go have a seat?Let’s give the Lord a hand for what he has done for Tom McCarl.Realize your position in the Lord today.  You are in the exact position where God can hear your prayer and answer what you need.  You have children that you really would like to get their attention?  Pray.  Listen to some of these great verses in the Bible, would you?So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.Jesus said, “Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.” Luke 18:11 Thessalonians 5:16:Rejoice always, pray with out ceasing, in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ concerning you.Now, I want to give you what I think may be the most impacted little piece of a verse that we really need to get a grip on. And that is James chapter four when he is talking about the wars and the fights and the arguing and how we strive to get what we want and how we try to work it. “Ok, God, you’re busy. I’ll take care of it.” And we try to fight and grab and pull and smash and jerk. And we just try to manipulate until we get what we want in this life. And then he makes this statement.Jonathan, this has got to be one of the most profound Bible verses that has ever been written.  It says: “You have not because you ask not.”Are you wanting wisdom at rearing your family?  Well, you don’t have wisdom because you are not asking God. I don’t mean one time. I don’t mean today, not next week, but the next.  I mean are you asking God to give you wisdom every day of your life so that you know how to be a good husband?  Do you have a wife that is just not in tune with your family and your home?  Well, I want to say to you there is a better answer than just shipping her off and finding a new one.  The answer is to go to God in prayer and go to him continually. Go often.  Go early.  Stay at it. Pray.  Fast.  Ask God because you have not because you asked not.Do you have a husband that is just laughing at your Christianity and he doesn’t care about the things of God?  Well, here is what I want to say to you, dear lady. Then you go to God early. You go to God often.  You go to God continually and you pray because you have not because you ask not.How much clearer can it be?Now, don’t go asking God to help you win the lottery because that’s not what it’s all about.  Don’t go asking God to give you a new Mercedes Benz. That’s not what it’s all about. That verses says we are not supposed to consume it upon our lusts. But we are supposed to ask himDo you have wayward children?  Do you have a family that is out of kilter?  Do you have an addiction?  Have you asked God for deliverance?You say, “What are you talking about?”I am so up to here with people coming and emoting with a great show of emotion.“I’m just sorry for all these little...oh God, help me.”They get up and go do it all over again.Oh, you need to come to God in true repentance and humility. And you need to say, “Oh, God, these walls of my life, this self destructive behavior, these addictions.  Lord, I need deliverance and I am going to lay it here and get up and when the tempter comes I’m going to say that man is no longer alive. I am not going to do that anymore.  God help me. And help me to ask so that I can receive from you.”And you have not because you ask not.I have three children.You say, “Well, they are preacher’s kids so they are not perfect.”You are right.  And they are not perfect.You say, “Well, I thought all preacher’s kids were perfect.”Will you please give me a break?  There is no such thing as that.This little lady sitting right here on the front, my wife Bonnie and I when Philip was born and she had three c-sections and all you know, a lot of pain and all that stuff.  Little Philip was born and he was brought to her the first day. She had little Philip, the same thing with little Sherry, the same thing with Amber.  All of the first prayer that this lady and I prayed together for our children which went something just like this.  We prayed together and we said, “Oh God, please save this child at the earliest age.  Let them understand that they need a Savior.  Oh, Lord. Save them from their sin.”The second thing we prayed is, “Oh God, let them love you and let them grow up to love you with all of their heart and seek to be obedient to your Word.”And the third thing we prayed for is, “Oh God, give them a mate who loves you.”I prayed that prayer the very first day of their life and every day of their life since.  “God save them at an early age. Help them grow up to love you and God please let them find a mate who loves you.”God answered all three prayers.Are you listening to me this morning?  I prayed and I would not stop praying that prayer?  Are you praying?  Are you praying for your children? Are you praying for your mate?  Are you praying for your loved ones? Are you praying for your nation?  Are you praying anything specific?Maybe you want to get that blue card out again.  Don’t write your name on it.  Just write down there. Ok.  Here we go.  16^th of September, 2007, “God, I am going to learn to pray and I am going to read your Word and I am going to pray your promises and I am going to pray for my husband. I am going to pray for my children.  I am going to pray for myself.  Oh God, please take away the biting tongue.  Please take away the criticism.  Please take away the envy and jealousy.  Please take away this terrible disposition and criticism.  Lord, please help me not to make everybody...help me not to have a perfectionist mentality.  Lord, please help me.”Write it down.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not,” he told Jeremiah.Nehemiah 1:1-11 (All Scripture references are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless indicated otherwise).Nehemiah 1:9Nehemiah 1:5-6Nehemiah 1:5Exodus 34:6Nehemiah 1:6-7Psalm 106:6Nehemiah 1:8-9Deuteronomy 4:29-31Nehemiah 1:10-11Philippians 4:6Ibid.2 Chronicles 7:14 (King James Version)1 Peter 5:5Jeremiah 33:3Jeremiah 33:3Luke 11:9-10Luke 18:11 Thessalonians 16-18Paraphrase of James 4:2Jeremiah 33:1 (King James Version)Page  PAGE 1 of  NUMPAGES 22