Get Ready For A Change

Sermon Transcript

“GET READY FOR A CHANGE”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 2:1-10

September 23, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  http://www.gracehome.com

Online Sermons: http://gracehome.sermonaudio.com

Now I want to ask you a question. I want to ask you, as we looked at the facing reality and then we began to pray—and we talked about this quite extensively the first two weeks—I want to ask a question.  And you have got it on your Scripture sheet to write it down. And that is: When is, pastor...When is a good time to pray?  When is it that I should pray?And somebody is going to say, “Well, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says pray all the time, ‘Pray without ceasing.’”  And David prayed early in the morning. Jesus prayed, you know, before every temptation and every problem.Yeah. There is a great time to pray. But here is what I get from this passage of Scripture that we have been studying. And I want you to write it down so that you won’t forget it. And that is: When is a good time to pray?  The answer: Pray before I do anything else.  Just write that down.  Pray before I do anything else in my life.Prayer is a priority for those that would find help and seek meaningful change from the status quo.Somebody might ask, “Pastor, now aren’t we going to have to do more than pray if we are going to get our lives straightened out?  You know, I’ve got situations.  I’ve got circumstances. I’ve got people.  I’ve got all kinds of things and issues and I am going to have to confront them. And so don’t I have to do more than pray?”Yes.  We are supposed to do more than pray.  We are going to have to do more than pray to change our lives.  But we should never do anything until we have prayed.  And we learn that from this first chapter and second chapter of the book of Nehemiah.   He was going to take action, but he didn’t take action until he had prayed.We studied his prayer and found out that it wasn’t a little two minute, two second, 30 second little prayer that he shot up to the Lord, but rather he spent months in prayer and we will see that in just a little bit more in a moment.What we find is that Nehemiah’s prayer was followed, then, by action.  He expected God to do something. He was going to be ready when God did it.  His plans involved the risk. He risked his position, his rank, even his life to seek the good fortune of an occupied country from the very occupying king. He must face the king.  He must face his fears.  He must have a plan.In building block number one we have to face reality.  We can’t ignore it.  We can’t deny it. We can’t minimize the junk.  And the disasters of our lives, we cannot minimize the effects that the junk of our lives has on the friends, relationships and the influences of our life.Now, as we assess the needs, we need to ask God to do something. And then we need to be ready to seize the opportunity.If you have your Bibles they need to be open to Nehemiah chapter two and we are going to look at the verses one through 10.  I want you to allow the words of Nehemiah to speak God’s living Word into your heart.In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before; so the king asked me, "Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart." I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, "May the king live for ever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?"  The king said to me, "What is it you want?" Then I prayed to the God of heaven,  and I answered the king, "If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favour in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it."  Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, "How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?" It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.  I also said to him, "If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah?  And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?" And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests.So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king’s letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me.  When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites.All right. Let’s bow our heads and pray and ask that the Lord would bless our time.And, our Father, we do thank you, once again, as we come into your presence. We have heard not only just a simple reading, but a dynamic reading of your Word this morning, Lord. And I pray that you would add your blessing to the preaching and teaching of your Word.Lord, as we are in our third week, now, we start getting into the meat of what we have to do to change.  I pray that these would not be words passing over my lips that only entertain.  I pray that folks would not just be engaged by my mannerisms, but I pray that they would hear the message and make changes, Lord, in their own heart.  Bless us now as we are in your presence in Jesus’ name.  Amen.So if you have your Scripture sheet out it says, “Get Ready for Change” at the top. I need you to write a few things.  The key building block for this week is obviously going to be the word “faith.”  And that is the third in the series that we are building.  As we build and rebuild our lives it is going to take faith. And the key opposition is going to be the word fear.Look at verse number two of the passage just read.  And it said, “‘Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.’ So I became dreadfully afraid.”I believe that there is a misnomer.  There is a mistaken thought out there that Christians, believers in Jesus Christ, never fear, that they just go forward and they never have a fear in the world. Well, just not true.  Faith and fear are those elements that are always present in a Christian’s life. And as your faith increases, the opposition is going to increase. The difficulties are going to be there and we are going to fear.Sometimes I read lots of different information in books and I read about people like Douglas MacArthur and we look back on him as just that war hero that was just rock solid and he just never feared.  Not so.  Read his memoirs and find out the times of fear and trepidation in his own heart as he was leading men into battle and trying to conquer that area of the world in World War II.It goes on like that.  There is always fear going to be present in our life.On your sheet, there, the first thing we have to do is we have to recognize that whenever we come to understand the situations of our life, the circumstances of our life, the first thing we are going to find ourselves doing is waiting. We are going to pray and then we are going to wait.  We don’t like waiting.  I am not one of those people who likes to wait. I don’t think anybody here particularly loves the whole idea of patient waiting for anything.Somebody said that the definition of a split second is how long it takes between the light turning green and the idiot behind you to blow his horn. I mean, it is just really, really, really quick.  We don’t have a lot of patience.  And  I am just as bad as the next person. I feel so bad for Chris Eller here at the church.And you say, “Well, why do you feel bad for Chris?”Well, up till now one of his responsibilities has been babysitting... I would say babysitting a bunch of computers around here and taking care of the technology, but truthfully, he is not babysitting the computers as much as he is the impatient people like me that want it to do what you want it to do yesterday, never mind the fact I don’t push the right buttons and click and drag and do all the things I am supposed to do.  And so he is always having to do that because we are just not patient people.And I can imagine the emails that he gets from different guys around here.  We have got five or six pastors and we have got secretaries and we have got administrative people and, you know, the emails come in and I bet he wonders which way to turn sometimes because we all need it yesterday.Well, a lot of us are like that concerning our prayer life and concerning the situations of our life. And I want to say to you that the decision, the facing of reality that brings us to the place of heart brokenness or that brings us to the place—after we faced reality—that we need to do something, is a wonderful step, it is a necessary step, it is a priority step, it is the first step, but it is not the only step.Many times people will face the realities of their lives even in the spiritual realm in church or somebody will have a messed up life or a messed up home or they have been mean to their family or their wives or their children.  And they splintered their relationships.  They have got fragmented relationships everywhere and all of the sudden they say, “Oh, I am the guilty one.”  So they confess and then they come and they have an emotional response and they tell God, “Oh, God, I am going to change and I want to change it right now.”And then we get up and we expect that that’s it and everything is going to be different from then on and God is just going to remake us.  Listen.  It is just not going to happen that way.  It is necessary to face reality.  Then it is necessary to pray, to meditate, to think and to plan.  But it is going to take some action.And I want you to know that true repentance in our life—which is what we need. And I don’t want to get off on that big Bible word and doctrine and theology. But just simply to say that true change in our life is going to happen, it is going to happen when we not only face the truth, when we pray about it and give it to God. But then we turn around and take measures. We take steps. We make advances.And so we don’t like to wait.  But what we are going to have to do is while we are waiting for an opportunity to actually do something we need to be patient.Will you look at verse one again? “And it came to pass in the month of Nisan.”You say, “What do you get out of that?”Well, Nisan is four months later than the month Chisleu which we first saw in the first verse of the first chapter.  So what I am saying is that this man, Nehemiah, has come to know and understand the desperate situation that was going on concerning his people. And for four months he has been carrying it in his heart. He has carried it on his shoulder.  He has prayed about it. He has mourned about it. He has wept about it. He has fasted about it.  He has gone into long prayer and meditation over it. And now, then, we are four months later.  The first thing we have to face is that we need to be patient.I am amazed how many times when I am studying something in the Bible that God is able to bring me to other passages and bring other illustrations that I wasn’t even thinking about to bear on the subject.  It is kind of like this.  I don’t know about you, but whenever this kind of happens in our life anyway.  It’s kind of like, you know, when you have a relative that moves to a distant state that you have never visited or you don’t know anything about and as for you it might as well not be a state. They moved to that state and then all of the sudden you start noticing.  It seems like every other plate on somebody’s car is from that state.  I mean all of the sudden you are aware.  You are awakened to that whole thing.Or perhaps it is you get a different car and maybe you get a car of a year and a model and a date and a color. And the next thing you know, you never noticed these cars before, but now you have one and the next thing you know, everybody has got one of those. I check out every Chevy pickup in the entire city every time because that is what I got.  I have a little Chevy pickup and after I got it—I always had Fords up to that point because I was a Ford guy, you know.  And then I was just Fords.  And then I finally got one and now I’m pooh-pooh on Fords.  I like Chevys because that’s what I got.  And so everybody...I look around.  And he’s a cool guy because he has got a Chevy.  And so on.You know how we do.  We just start noticing things like that.Well, I was studying this about patience and I was reading in my devotions this week and all of the sudden I come to this passage of Scripture that talks about patience and it leapt off the page.  It  concerned King David.And, you know, we think about King David.  We look back on his history in the Bible as this glorious reign of King David, but do you know there was probably no Bible character that was in more trouble all the time than King David. He was always in hot water.Sometimes it was his own fault. Sometimes it wasn’t his own fault. But he was always in trouble.  And I read in Psalm 62—and I want you to listen to what David said about his times of trouble in the life that he was living.  And the first thing he says in verse one:Truly my soul silently waits for God; From Him comes my salvation.  He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be greatly moved.You drop down to verse five and he starts talking to himself.I  will never forget the first time that I encountered one of these people with these new techie telephones that hang on their ear.  You guys know what I’m talking about? How many of you have seen those? They look like Dr. Spock or Captain Kirk or somebody, you know, just sort of a little behind the time. They got these things hanging on their ear. And, you know, you are looking at them.I will never forget.  One day I pulled up to a red light and I’m sitting at the red light and I am waiting on the red light and I looked over to the right and a guy in this land over here is sitting there with his hand on the wheel and he is gripping that wheel.  He is just talking like that.What in the world is wrong?I mean he is just really just talking. I thought, “Man this guy is...they need to pull him over, get the guys with white coats, get, you know...”  I didn’t know what was going on there.Finally, I guess Philip or somebody said, “Well he is probably on the phone.”I said, “Well, his hands...he was holding the steering wheel.”They said, “Yeah, but you ought to...you know, get with it, pops, you know,” he said.  “You know there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about. And these little phones hang on your ear and you just voice actuated and all that.”And I said, “Well, I’m so far behind.”You know, I thought he was talking to himself.David was talking to himself in this verse.  Listen to what he says.  He says, “My soul, wait silently for God alone.”He says to himself, “David, hey, in there. David, wait in God.  You have learned this lesson. You have been down this road.  You have been in trouble before. Don’t run ahead.  Don’t solve it yourself. Don’t put your hands in there.  Wait on God.”We have a really, really hard time waiting on God once we have decided to start trying to put things right in our life.  I want you to listen as I give you some very important thoughts this morning concerning this.  Don’t miss it.Patience before God when praying for a change is crucial. I want you to see this.  If God answered all of our prayers just as we pray them, just when we pray them, we would miss out on the lesson that God is teaching through our problems.And think of this. God is teaching us something.  God, if he answered all of our prayers just like we prayed them, then our character would suffer. And the reason is that God is far more interested in our character than he is our comfort and our convenience.Let me say that to you again.  Please do not miss this statement.  God is far more interested in your Christian character, in you becoming more like Jesus Christ than he is your comfort and my comfort, your convenience and my convenience, because if you look at the life of Nehemiah he already had a life of convenience. And the very prayer he was praying was going to take him through great discomfort, great trepidation, great fear and is going to complicate his life tremendously.God is more interested in making us what we need to be, more like Jesus, for his use than he is for us to just simply be comfortable and convenient.I want you to listen to this.  Nehemiah wanted to bring about a change and he would certainly need character to do it.Have you ever thought about your prayer lives and just sort of summed them up?  Think about this statement.  Many of our prayers are directed at asking God to remove the circumstances he is using in our life to make us more like Jesus.You probably didn’t hear that so let me say that to you again.  Pay attention and listen.  Many of the prayers of our life are directed at asking God to remove the circumstances of our life that he is using to make us more like Jesus.You say, “What?”The Bible says in James, it says, “Count it all joy when you fall into different temptations and trials because the trial of your work, because the trial of your faith works what?” Patience.  “And let patience have her complete work.”God is doing things in our lives. And if we get on the wheel of God’s workings as if we were a piece of pottery and we don’t like the pressure and we don’t like what God is doing to us to make us a vessel fit for our use, then we start complaining and we start, “Oh, God, take away the pain.  Take away the hurt.  Take away the bad relationship.  Take...”We start asking God to take away the very things that are making us useful for him. Don’t forget.  God’s purposes supercede our pleasures. Let me say that again.  God’s purposes always supercede our pleasures in our life.  God is doing something in our life.And many of our prayers are directed at asking God to remove those circumstances instead of embracing them.  Many prayers are directed at removing us from the place where God knows we need to be to be used by him.Imagine Nehemiah getting to be a complaining sort of a person. “Oh, God, I’m in Babylon. I can’t believe this.  Or I’m in Persia and here I am and I am not where I want to be and I would love to be over there and oh if things were just different and if timing was different and if I had a different boss and if I had a different wife and if I had a...”And you know how we go with that.  You know, I spend half of my ministry dealing with people on these two question: If and then.“If this was going on then I could do that.”“If I could get a different situation.”“If I had a different job.”“If I could get my bills paid.”“If I could get my mortgage down.”“If I could get these kids through school.”“If I could get my wife to pay attention.”“If I could get my kids obedience.”If, if, if...we go all the way through life if, then, if, then, if then.Nehemiah said, “Now is the time. I am going to pray and I am going to wait on God because now is the time.”It is not a matter of if and then.  It is a matter of God is working here and he is working now.  And God is building into your character what he wants you to be so that you and I can be fit for his use.Be patient in prayer. Pray not only for deliverance.  Pray for understanding.  Pray not only for deliverance.  Pray for understanding.After you are in this situation of being patient, then be preparing.  Write that down.  Be preparing.There are four months of time since he found out about the conditions in Jerusalem to the day he is going to face Artaxerxes and he is scared to death.  It says there in verse number two, “I became dreadfully afraid.”So for four months he has been praying. He has been fasting. He has been weeping.  He has been mourning. He has been meditating.  He has been thinking. He has been planning.  He has been praying and he has been planning.“Well, if I were to go to Jerusalem what would it take?  And if I was to get over there what are the things that I am going to need to help get this thing done?”And so he begins to think about it then.  “Well, the first thing I am going to have go have is help from the king.  Nobody is going to do anything without the king’s permission. I have got to have the king’s help. And then I am going to have some help from some people. I can’t do this all by myself.”As we get through this study you are going to find out how important working together is.  But even on the difficulties of an individual life you still have to work with the people of your life in order to be able to accomplish it.“I need help from the king and I am going to need help from some people. I am going to need whole lots of materials, you know. I mean, the place has been burned with fire so that means anything that was wood was burned up and it is not just a matter of stacking stones.  I have got to have girders and I have got to have beams.”And so he is thinking all...  “Here is what I am going to need. I am going to need this and that.”And here is the thing that we have to understand. If Nehemiah failed to plan then he was planning to fail. And if you and I fail to plan, then we are planning to fail.You say, “Well, how in the world does this work out in my individual life when I am trying to get back in order and get back on track with what God wants me to be?  How does that work?”Well, you are going to pray faithfully.  You are going to pray first.  You are going to pray sincerely. You are going to face your reality. You are going to pray continually and then you are going to begin to plan the things that will be necessary to make it all happen.He was planning.Well, what might you need to plan?  Well, things like this.  “All right.  I am an angry person.  I don’t know why I am so angry, but I get angry and I stay angry and I explode and I have a phosphorous type personality.  I am just like a little match. I explode when anybody rubs me the wrong way.  And so, Lord, I need help with my...I am going to have to face my anger. I am going to have to put a lid on it.  I am just going to have to do something with it.“The next thing is I have got to give time to my relationships. The truth is as I look at this matter and I sum up all the problems, I just...I have got relationship trouble with my wife, with my children or with my husband and my relatives.  I have just got these relationship problems.  And I am just going to have to give some time to these problems.”And so you start taking steps. “All right. How do I do that?”Well, you take a look at your life. You look at your calendar, what you have to do and you start blocking off time to be with them.It is amazing to me that when man and woman first meet and they are dating in the dating period before they get married, I mean, being together, they just can’t get enough of each other. They want to be together.  And men are the most conversational animals on planet earth before the conquest is over.  But once they have made the conquest, marry the woman and go home, then he moves on to other things and she is just...he just doesn’t have time.You know what?  It is going to take time on strained relationships. Can I say that again?  It is going to take a dedication of time.  And so what are you doing? You are planning.  So you are planning to face your difficulty, your anger.  You are planning to face your relationships.Something else we have got to do, I have got to put my priorities in order. I am going to have to face my priorities and see if I have got them in the right order.I hear Christians all the time and I have, you know, I am one and I talk.  And I am just as guilty as others from time to time. But sometimes we have to have a priority check.  We have got to look and find out: Is God first?  Is he first in our life?Let me just bother you.  It is that time of year when the great cathedrals of the autumn sport are now open.  And the great cathedrals, the great temples and those gods, those gods of the gridiron are out there running around and they...and we are giving enormous offerings to be able to go to those games and to be able to see them.  And we are giving enormous time and enormous worship.  It is not enough to go to the game and enjoy it and to buy a pop and Coke and a $17 hot dog or however much they cost.  It is not enough to do that. We have to come home and then get online and we have to talk to everybody in the county about the game that we just went to see. And we have to get on the chat rooms and we have got to read what ESPN said.  And then we have got to read what Fox Sports says. And then we have got to read what Yahoo Sports says. And we have got to read...You say “How do you know all that?”Because I do the same thing.But, you know, there are lots of people that would say, “I love God with all of my heart and he is first in my life.”Yet you will allow the god of the autumn cathedral to take first place and you will put God on hold, his work on hold, his service on hold, his giving on hold.  You will put it on hold in favor of being in a certain location at a certain time when it contradicts with being in the house of God.Let me tell you a little something.  When revival comes to a soul, when revival comes to an individual heart, they give God first place and they do not forsake the house of God.You say, “Well, that sounds so foreign. That sounds like 1957.”Well, I’m not trying to carry us back to 1957, but there was a lot of things going on in 1957 than are far greater than 2007: dedication, honesty.Listen to me for a moment.  We have to make some plans.  I have got to plan, put priorities in order.  I have got to get rid of selfishness.Let me tell you the phrase that is killing America, especially men and women.  “Well, I have just got to do the thing that I think is the best for me.  I know that you know what?  It is going to be rough on my wife and kids, but, you know, I just can’t believe God doesn’t want me to be happy.  And this relationship doesn’t seem like it is going anywhere and I just want...I know God wants me to be happy so I am just going to have to obey...  In the name of God wanting me to be happy, I am going to break all my promises. I am going to eliminate my vows.  I am going to go the opposite direction.  I am going to...my choice...I am willing to condemn the next generation, those children that are going to come up, because I am ready to go and do something different in the name of personal, selfish happiness.”Well, first of all, you don’t know anything about happiness if you think being happy is pleasing yourself non stop.  And, second of all, you don’t have the right to seek your own pleasure at the expense of everybody that knows you.You have to make plans, plans to face yourself, face your relationships, face your priorities, face your selfishness.And, guys, let me help you. You have to face this whole idea of the fact that in order to have a good relationship with your wife you are going to have to actually stop and have a conversation.Could I please give all the men a little revelation here this morning?  Your wife likes to talk to you.  She likes to have a conversation.  And she doesn’t like it to be limited to the commercials in the ball game.  In fact, there are other necessities that sometimes supercede that and there is not even time at the commercials.  They like to talk to you.  You need to talk to them.Now, folks, I talk for a living.  That’s what I do.  I talk.  I talk here at the church and I make phone calls all day long and talk to people and I talk to people in the staff and I talk to the secretaries and I talk to people in counseling and I talk about this and talk about that.  And when I go home and I walk in and Bonnie just, you know, it’s automatic.  Just hit the switch.  I walk in and oh she is so glad to see me.  “What was your day like?” And this and that and the other. She wants to talk.  And she begins to talk and everything like that and I kind of...my ears are hurting from so much listening.Do you know what?  It doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make any difference at all because if I want to be happy, if want...if she is going to be happy, if we are going to have a nice relationship then we are going to have to talk.You say, “Well, what kind of plans do you have to make to talk?”You are going to have to plan to put off something that you think is so much more important. And you are going to have to talk, converse, husbands and wives.Do you know that in all the studies that I have read, anything that I have read about anything concerning to do with husband’s and wife’s relationships, one of the largest categories of difficulties is...You say, “Well, it’s sexual.  That’s the big...”No, that’s not the big one.  The big one is that just cannot communicate.We are going to have to face it.  Face the situations.  Make plans. Plan to change.  And if you don’t...if you are failing to plan then you are planning to fail. I don’t care how many times you confess at the altar. You can confess and tell God you are going to change until you are blue in the face, but until you are making...Do you know what Nehemiah did?  Nehemiah said, “The walls are down. The walls are down. The walls are down. The people are in trouble.  And I am going to go to God.  And then when God lets me I am going to go to them and I am going to help.”So what do we have to do?“God, look at the situations of my life.  Ok.  I am going to pray. I want you to get my heart right. And now, then, Lord, give me the opportunity. And I am going to wait for it and I am going to step out there and I am going to help in this situation. I am going to confess.”Be patient in prayer. Don’t pray only to be delivered.  Pray that God would teach you.  Pray that God would use you. Put your priorities in order.The next thing is, be in position.  Be in position.  Do you know what? He was present when his opportunity came.  Whenever Nehemiah was...he had been praying that God would help him as he knew he was going to have to face this man. He didn’t miss work that day.  He didn’t miss his opportunity.  He was in a location where he could actually interact with a person he had to interact with.A lot of people have the whole idea of, “Man, you know, things are just getting so, you know.”  There are guys that would rather work 80 hours a week than to spend a few hours at home in conversation because they don’t want to face it. They don’t want to confess. They don’t want to be honest. They don’t want to work on it. They are not planning for anything to be different.We have got to be in position. We have got to be where we are.Do you know what?  Nehemiah did not shirk his responsibility.  He was present.  We shouldn’t either.How many of us are just not ready to show up in the face of difficulties?  If Nehemiah had been absent when his opportunity came it was going to affect not only him, but also his entire race of people were going to be affected.I want to say something to you about you parents.  You don’t know when your opportunity is going to come, but you need to be there for your children.  Be there for your children. You need to be there so that when the opportunity arises you are not out of pocket, you are not out pocket, you are not off on your own thing, you are not doing this, that or the other. You are there to have the influence on your children that you want to have.I know a person.  I won’t call their name. They are not a member of this church, but this person is very, very, very, very politically active. I mean big time.You say, “Are you against political activity?”Of course not. I think we ought to stand up.  We ought to speak up.  We ought to speak out. We ought to do what we ought to do.  But here is this individual that is just so...this person has two wonderful children. They are growing up and those kids are starting to develop some rebellious attitudes and starting to question what is going on in their home because mom is never there because she is in Washington and she is here and she is there and she is traveling and she is going and she is coming and she is doing this, that and the other.  And she is fighting abortion and she is fighting for the rights of parents and she is fighting for the home and she is fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting. And guess who she has time for? She has time for everybody, except two people. Who do you think those two people are?  Two kids.You have to plan for it.If you want the opportunity to arrive, you are going to have to be present and accounted for while they are there.Can I debunk something for you once again?  I have said this many times.  Can I please help you? I want to help you.  Throw away the idea that quality time is better than quantity time. It is a lie.  It is not true.  You are going to have greater opportunity in the regular habits of everyday life to influence your children and to show them what life is about than you are by borrowing money that you do not have, taking a trip that you cannot afford to go down there and have them fall in love with Mickey Mouse while they are still upset with you.  Quality time does not supercede quantity time.  You need to be present and accounted for.I have talked to you about my mom and dad.  Momma was here a couple of weeks ago. She is a little lady about that tall.  And my mom and dad—and you have heard me talk about them. I love them.  I revere my dad. My dad is...You say, “Was he perfect?”Of course not.“Did he have any quirks?”Yep.“Did he get upset about things?”Yep.“Did he have a temper?”Oh, boy.“Was your mom perfect?”“Were they highly educated?”“Were they smarter than other people?”“Did they have advantages?”No, no, no.  My dad graduated from high school. My mother didn’t. Neither one of them went a day of college. They didn’t know anything about that.You say, “Well, what do you think the great blessing of your mom and dad be?”Well, they did several things very, very well. Number one, they took us to church.  Number two, they believed in God and demonstrated it. But here is the big one.  Number three, that is, they were there.You say, “What do you mean by that?”I mean that the project of my father’s life was his three boys.   I mean that the project of my mother’s life were her three boys.  I remember like yesterday.  It was just like this.  Here it was.  Now, I’m not, you know, I know I am old and I know I am old fashioned and I know I came from another generation.  I know I am short, fat and bald headed.  I know all that stuff.  But listen to me for a minute.Here is what my mother would do.  I came home from West Haven Elementary School just like it was yesterday.  I came home from West Haven Elementary School in the Otis Dale subdivision of Memphis, Tennessee and I walked in that door. And when I walked in that door here is the succession of events.“Well, hello there, Philip.  Let me give you a hug.”That was my mother.  She would give me a hug and then she would say, “How as school?”And I would say, “Well, we did this, that and the other and this boy beat me up at recess and so on.”“Oh, I’m sorry.  Here.  Here is a cookie.  Here is some milk and where is your homework?”Every single day of my life going to school.You say, “Well, we don’t live in that generation. We live in another.”I know we do and aren’t we doing well?I am not here to glorify an epoch of time.  I am here to tell you that you are going to have make plans for change.  Don’t just have an emotional outbreak because you know you have a problem. “And, oh God, help me.”He will help you.  You call out to him.  “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”  He will answer you. But here is what is going to have to happen:  You are going to have to next make plans for change.  That is what you have to do. Make plans.Plan on changing.  Plan on getting rid of your anger.  Plan on being with your family. Plan on communicating with your wife, with your husband, with your children.  Plan on addressing those relationships. Plan on loving one another. Like just plan on it.  Make time for it and plan on it.Oh, I have got to hurry. Time is gone.  Let me get to the end of this.  When your opportunity comes and you are going to have to do something else, when your opportunity comes, number one, proceed in spite of fear.  Verse two said he was dreadfully afraid.Let me let you in on a secret.  Fear is not failure unless fear stops you.  Fear is never failure.You say, “Well, I just can’t imagine people were fearful.”Listen, Douglas MacArthur was fearful. George Patton was fearful.  Joshua was fearful. This man Nehemiah was fearful. God never promised that there would never be any fears in our life.In the book of 2 Corinthians here is what Paul’s testimony was.  He said there was conflicts without and there were fears within.  He said, “I was always being attacked from the exterior.” And he says, “I was always fearful on the interior. But God stood by me and his hand was on me.”Fear is not failure. Fear is only failure if it stops you. And so don’t be paralyzed by fear.I know people that never learned to drive a car because they are so fearful. I know people that never learned to swim because they are so fearful.  I know people that never go to college because they are afraid to approach the whole idea.  I know of people who can never call for a dental appointment, a medical appointment or call to apologize or talk to somebody or even invite anybody over for dinner they are so fearful of the telephone. They are fearful to apply for a job, fearful to talk to an offended family member.You are going to have to go forth in faith because faith is going to conquer fear.  You just step out there.Let me give you a little bit of history about how my dad taught me to swim.You say, “How did he teach you to swim?”Well, we went to Clearwater pool in Memphis, Tennessee, south Memphis and he said, “Well, there is the water.”  He grabbed me and threw me in.  He said, “Beat your arms and beat your legs.”I said...“Beat them harder.”That’s how he did it. When I...when he thought I was in trouble he jumped in, grabbed me out, put me on the outside, beat me on the backside and said, “How are you doing?”I said, “I’m doing ok.”He said, “You’re doing all right?”I said, “Fine.”“Ok, in with you again.”  He kept doing that.Guess who learned how to swim? Me.You say, “Well, I don’t know how to face the fears of my life. I don’t know how.”Yes, you do.  Face them.  Go forward in spite of the fear.  Talk to your wife.  Talk to your children.  Talk to your husband. Talk to the people you have offended.  Talk to your boss. Go see them in spite of your fear trusting God, having prayed faithfully.Face yourself the same way.  Face your alcoholism.  Face your drug addiction.  Face your pornography addiction.  Face your fits of anger and your panic attacks. Face them.[?] and then go forward in spite of the fear.  You are going to have to face these things.  Proceed in spite of fear.And there is nobody harder to approach than somebody who is suffering because of our life.The next thing, chapter two, verse four, we have spent a lot of time on this last week, but this is a little different.  Chapter two verse four says, “So I prayed to the God of heaven.”I like to call this the quick arrow of prayer, the quick arrow of prayer.  What did he do?“Well, the moment has come. Here we are.  Doomsday. I have got to face the guy. Oh God, help me.”Do you know that is where most Christians live right there? They never ever bother with talking to God, never even bother with the whole idea of a real prayer life until there is a major crisis and then they want their whole prayer life to be made up of, “God help me.”We start shooting arrows of prayer to God.Did you know this guy who is shooting an arrow of prayer to God has spent the last four months in weeping and wailing and gnashing his teeth over the situation?  He has been talking to God about it, praying about it and fasting about it and weeping about it and mourning about it. This was  not the first time he prayed.Let me let all of you in on a little secret. Whether you have been a believer for 50 years or five minutes, let me just let you know something.  Let me tell you about Christianity 101. Christianity 101 is you need to be reading a little bit of God’s Word and you need to be praying, talking to your heavenly Father.Now, let me teach you Christianity 201.  Christianity 201 is that you need to be reading a little bit of God’s Word every day and then you need to be talking to your heavenly Father.Now, let me move on to Christianity 301.  Christianity 301 means that you need to be in the Word of God a little bit every day and you need to be talking to your heavenly Father.Do you get the gist?  Do you understand where I am going with this?If you are going to be a growing Christian you are going to be in communication with your God.  No communication with your God, no intake of the Word of God, no talking back to God about what you just took in and you are not going to grow.  I don’t care how many seminars you go to. I don’t care how many conferences you go to.  You can go all over this country.  You can attend every conference on spiritual growth and on prophecy. You can attend everything. But until you and I as an individual get in the habit of talking to God about what God is talking to us about then we stagnate in our growth, our Christianity becomes peripheral, external and web come griping, complaining Christians because God doesn’t ever seem to listen to our prayers.Christianity 1001 is you need to be in God’s Word and you need to be talking to your God.  Conversation with God.  That is exactly who Nehemiah was.Do you know why it was so easy for him to say, “Oh, God, here it comes.  Help me.”It is because he had been talking to God continually about that.You say, “Pastor, do you ever falter?”Of course.“Do you miss a day?”Yeah.“Are you happy about it?”No.  But I do have a habit that I don’t want to face any day without talking to God about it first.  Oh, I wish I could get you to understand that as a Christian.  You can’t face any problem. You can’t face any relationship.  You can’t face any hardship.  You can’t face a good day.  You can’t even face your best day without talking to God first.  Why? Because you are going to give yourself credit for the good day you had.Oh, you need to talk to God.  I need to talk to God.  Oh, we need to be real Christians.  Oh what it would do for us.  There is going to come a day in this country, I believe, before my ministry is over where I cannot stand up and preach to you like I am doing right now. And your relationship to your God in heaven is going to be based on what you do by yourself alone because I believe days are coming when they are going to make it very difficult to be an open outspoken Christian.Oh, you need to be in the Word of God.  Reading it, praying it, talking to God about what you just got done reading.My, my.  Present your plan to God for change. That is chapters two, verse five through the end.  You know what you need? In this situation Nehemiah knew he couldn’t do anything without the king’s permission. And what I can say to you this morning is that you can’t do anything and shouldn’t attempt anything without your king’s permission either.He said, “I can’t go over there and do a thing.  I can’t lift a finger. I can’t move out of his sight unless he gives me permission. He is the king of the world.”Do you know who the king of the world is?  Do you know who the owner of everything is?  Do you know who owns everything?  Our heavenly Father and his Son Jesus Christ.  And before you make any decision, before you decide to marry or unmarry, before you decide to move, before you decide to dump a job and take a new job, before you decide anything you need to talk to your God about it. Get the king’s...You say, “Well what doe his permission look like?”Well, if you go to the Lord in prayer, you lay it all out before him and you seek the Scriptures and make sure you are not...Listen.  God is not calling you to leave your job. He is not calling you to leave your job and to go run a house of prostitution.  He is not calling you to do that.I mean, there are some things that are abundant in the Word of God.  He is not calling you to leave your job and go open up a corner bar.  He is not calling you to do that.Now, I could go on and on.  But here is what I am saying to you this morning. If you are going to leave one place and go to another place, if you are going to uproot your children, take them out of this school and their friends and go somewhere else, you had better talk to God about it and get his permission.You say, “What does that look like?”Well, the Bible says in Colossians chapter three, verse 15, the thing that is going to assure our hearts is the peace of God.  God’s peace.  “And the peace of God will keep your heart.” God’s peace will be flooding your soul.You say, “Well, what if I am still scared and I don’t know?”Fear is not the determiner.  Peace about doing what God has said and what God says is the right way is the determiner.  Let God’s peace guide you.  You need the king’s permission. You need the king’s protection.  And he protected...he gave him letters.  He was going to cross dangerous territory. He needed letters of escort. He needed people to go with him.You need the king’s provision.  You can’t do anything in your life without God providing for your needs.  And the Bible says that in John 15, “Without me you can do nothing,” Jesus said.All right.  And then, finally, you can count on God’s providence. And I want to end with this verse six here.  It says there, “Then the king said to me (the queen also sitting beside him), ‘How long will your journey be? And when will you return?’”You know, it put that little phrase in there,  “(the queen sitting beside him)”Very, very interesting.  For those of you that are Bible...you have been around the Bible, you know what the very next book in the Bible is. What is the next book in the Bible?Esther. Thank you very much.  Esther became the what of what?  She became the queen of what nation?  Persia, this one right here.Now, it so happens that these two books cross over. They are contemporary.  Do you know that this queen may have either been a relative, a daughter, a granddaughter or somebody of Queen Esther who had it in her heart to protect the Jews with all of her ability?Let me ask you a question.  Do you suppose that a queen...if either Esther or one of her relations were sitting there who was very much a protector of the Jews and the Jewish people, do you suppose she would be interested in raising up the wonderful walls and the wonderful city of Jerusalem again?And I have got news for you.  If the queen is not happy in a family, they ain’t nobody happy.  And in this story if Queen whoever she was, who was sitting there by the king wasn’t happy then that king was going to get an earful and he wasn’t going to be able to get away from it. And shew as going to talk to him.God had placed this queen right where she needed to be to be the influence that God needed for her to be over this king right there at that time just like Queen Esther for such a time as this.Will you listen to me for a minute?  I want to say this to you. I said this last week.In all of our difficulties, in all of your hardships and heartaches and all of your problems and all those things, let me say this to you.  God is God. He was God yesterday.  He is going to be God today.  He is going to be God tomorrow. He doesn’t take a vacation, a week off. He doesn’t take an hour off, a minute off or a second off.  He is always God and let me say this to you. God is working.You say, “But it hurts.”I am still telling you that God is working.“But my heart is broken.”God is working. Wait on him.  Wait for him to move. Look for your opportunity.  Plan for your opportunity.  Proceed in spite of the fear.  And listen to this.  Look for God’s providence, his sovereign, overabounding will in your life because God is working all things out for you.The final phrase I want you to look at is in chapter two and verse eight. The bottom says, “And the king granted them.”  He had asked for all kinds of things.  He granted him everything he asked and it says, “according to the good hand of my God upon me.”Oh, my goodness, do I love that little passage? “According to the good hand of my God upon me.”He said, “You know, I asked the king, but it really wasn’t the king.  It was because I asked my God and God’s hand was on me and therefore he moved the king.  God’s hand was on me.”There are two groups of people in the world. There is that group of people in the world that has God’s hand on them. And then there is another group of people in this world that has God’s hand opposed to them. There is that group that has God’s hand on them and he is moving them and helping them. And then there is that group in the world that has God’s hand opposed to them.The Bible says in Proverbs that, “God is angry with the wicked every day.”Really?  Yeah.  That’s what it says.The Bible says that God’s hand was on him.There is a wonderful group of people here this morning. You are not perfect and neither am I.  But you know who ultimately is in charge. And you know who, at the end of the day, who you need to trust and who your faith is in. You may mess up. You may put your hand in. You may be impatient. You may do all these things and we need to work on that.We need to do just the things I was talking about this morning.  But you are here and you know that your soul is safe.  You know that you put everything into God’s hands and that you are depending upon him for your eternity in heaven and for your life here on this earth.  You have put it all in God’s hands.Well, let me tell you something.  God’s good hand is upon you.But there is another group of people here this morning. None of this applies.You say, “Really?”No, it doesn’t apply to you.You say, “Why doesn’t it apply to me?”Because if you are not the child of God, part of the family of God, then the Bibles says very clearly his hand is not on you.  He is calling out to you. He is reaching down with his hands of love for you to come and be part of his family. He sent his Son with a demonstration of love like the world has never seen, dying on the cross for your sins, but I have got news for you.  Until you believe on him with all of your heart and say, “Lord, save me,” he doesn’t put his hand on you for all of these things that we have been talking about this morning.Nehemiah 2:1-10 (New International Version)Nehemiah 2:2Nehemiah 2:1Psalm 62:1-2Psalm 62:5Nehemiah 2:2Jeremiah 33:3 (King James Version)Nehemiah 2:4John 15:5Nehemiah 2:6Ibid.Nehemiah 2:8Ibid.Ibid.Proverbs 7:11Page  PAGE 1 of  NUMPAGES 23