Good News for Our Neighbors Distribution Instructions

The purpose of our Good News for the Neighbors project is to share both a free meal and the Good News of the Gospel via a free Bible with our neighbors. To accomplish this, we are providing one canvas Hy-Vee bag to each of our neighbors containing a copy of the New Living Translation of the Bible, a coupon to Hy-Vee where they can receive free of charge all the items necessary for a Spaghetti dinner, and a card inviting each neighbor to a freebreakfast here at the church on Sunday, Sept. 27.Here are the instructions for delivering your Good News for the Neighbors bags:

1. ** Important: before heading out to deliver your card, take a moment and ask the Lord to use this gift of kindness to soften hearts and open eyes to the truth of the gospel. Pray for the families that will receive your gift bags and pray that ultimately men and women, boys and girls will be saved as a result of the Bible they are receiving. As you walkthrough the neighborhood, pray over the homes and the families living in these homes.
2. All bags need to be delivered by Thursday, Sept.24.
3. We have printed a card with a single address onit for each residence in our neighborhood. Take one card for each bag you take; deliver one bag to each residence.
4. Take the bag to the residence on your card, knock on the door and simply present the bag to our neighbor and say, “Hi, we’re from Grace Church, and we would like to present this gift to you as our way of saying ‘thanks for being our neighbor.’ Inside there’s a coupon you can take to the E. Euclid Hy-Vee and receive all the groceries necessary for a complete meal. It’s all free. Thanks, again, for being our neighbor.” Hand them the bag and move on.
5. What if no one is home? Use your discretion. If you can place the bag inside a storm door, do so. If there is no place to leave the bag, you can try again later or do not deliver a bag at this residence.
6. You need to honor “No Soliciting” signs. If a residence displays a No Soliciting sign, do not deliver a bag to thatresidence.
7. Don’t be surprised if some refuse the bag. That’s OK. Simply wish them well and move on.
8. If you cannot deliver all of the bags to the residences you have on your cards, you can try delivering them to residences outside of the designated area. This would include any of the residences in Norwoodville north of Broadway or any of the residences in Des Moines south of Euclid. Try to deliver your bags within the general vicinity of Grace Church. The bottom line is that we want to deliver all the bags. They will do no good sitting at the church.

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

Website:  HYPERLINK "http://www.gracehome.com" http://www.gracehome.com

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

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

The First Step to Repairing A Broken Down Life

Sermon Transcript

“THE FIRST STEP TO REPAIRING A BROKEN DOWN LIFE”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 1:1-4; Lamentations 3:48-54 (KJV)

September 9, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  HYPERLINK "http://www.gracehome.com" http://www.gracehome.com

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You know, I mentioned that we are really going to emphasize prayer and I want to say that again that we are going to emphasize praying for our homes, our families, our own lives, our church, our nation, our culture.  Every great revival in history, world wide, has always started through prayer.  A lot of us like to think they start through preaching, but they don’t.  They start through prayer when some of God’s people get concerned.And what I am talking about as we get into this series is, is we are talking about the revival of individual Christians that will result in a revival of evangelism in the world and I want to say that very loud and clear that the evangelism of the world doesn’t depend on only going to out to evangelize.  It depends on Christians getting their own hearts right with God so that their light is bright enough and their influence is strong enough to make a difference in the world.I said something about prayer.  I’ve got to tell you a little story, share a story from my part of the country, from down South.  A fellow that I’m going to call Bubba—which that name fits most of us down South—a fellow we’ll call Bubba went to a revival meeting and listened to the preacher.  After a while the preacher asked that anyone had any need please come forward and let him pray over them.So, as their custom was, they made a line.  Bubba got in line.  And when it was his turn the preacher said, “Hey, Bubba, what do you want me to pray about with you today?”And Bubba said, “Preacher, I need you to pray for my hearing.”And so the preacher put one finger in one of Bubba’s ears.  He put the other hand on top of his head and he can tickle the angel’s feet.  He just really prayed for Bubba for a few minutes.  And finally he removed his finger.  He removed his hand and he said, “Bubba, how is your hearing now?”And Bubba said, “Well, I don’t know, preacher.  My hearing is not until next week.”So we are going to pray. I hope it will be more than that kind of prayer.  I’m not going to be teaching you now how to pray. I’m going to be giving you an opportunity to pray and challenging you to pray for your own self, your own family, your own needs or your church or your city, state and for your culture.Turn in your Bibles if you would, please, to the book of Nehemiah chapter one.Let’s try that again.  What are we going to do?  We open the Bible.  “Amen, Amen.”You say, “What’s that all about?”Well, if you haven’t been here, we have started doing this in relation to this series because, number one, they did it in the book of Nehemiah.  Number two, the word “Amen” means “so be it.”  It means “let it be done. That’s what I believe.”  And so we open up God’s Word and we say, “Amen,” to it because we want to be in obedience before we ever find out what it says.Stand to your feet.  I’m going to read you four verses from the book of Nehemiah.You say, “Pastor, we’re not going to make very much progress at four verses a week.”Well, I’m not going preach every verse in the book of Nehemiah though I encourage you to read every verse.  I want to talk to you this morning about the first four verses, set the stage about what it’s all going to be about. Nehemiah chapter one, verse one.The 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.Let me read that third and fourth verse to you again.  Here is what he saw. Here is how he reacted.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 speaking of prayer, let’s go to the Lord right now.Father, I ask you even at this moment of the outset of these studies that we are going to look at now about how to repair a broken down life and how to build for a successful life, Lord, I pray that you would just be with us and help us to understand the ministry of prayer and how important it is that we would pray sincerely from the heart like Nehemiah did whenever his eye affected his heart, whenever what he saw and what he understood and the reality he faced made all the difference in the world to him.Father, let reality sink in to each and every one of us today.  We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.  Would you be seated?In Nehemiah chapter one we start off a book that is a journal.  It is the journal of one of God’s servants.  Now, this man, I must say at the first, Nehemiah, is not a preacher.  He is not a prophet.  He is not a priest. He is not an official, vocational preacher or teacher of the Word of God.Last week I spoke from the book of Ezra.  And, folks, I very, very, very seldom do this, but if you were out of town for some reason and you did not hear the sermon last week from the book of Ezra I want to encourage you.  You can go online and listen at grachome.com to that sermon.  If not you can buy a copy of the sermon for a dollar right out here on the other side of this wall there at the desk you can pick it up.You say, “You think it was a great sermon?”Nope. I think it was an unbelievably true sermon.  And I think you need to hear the truth that I shared from this pulpit last week.  Besides that, it’s the foundation on which we are building this series that we are into right now.Now, the Jews take the book of Ezra and Nehemiah as just one book.  Let me say that again so you get it straight.  The Jews, even today, take the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.  In fact, 1 and 2 Chronicles are just one book.  It’s the Chronicles.  In fact, 1 Samuel through 2 Kings are one book. They are all included, but they just look at them as one book.  This book—Ezra, Nehemiah—to them was one book.  It has three major players, three very important individuals.The first one is a man by the name of Zerubbabel. He was sort of a builder.  He went back. He was a builder and a rallying sort of person that went back and built the temple back.  A little bit later a man by the name of Ezra came along. He was a scribe, a priest.  He went there and he rededicated the temple and started the worship.The man we are going to study and we are going to learn from is this man Nehemiah.  Nehemiah, as I said, was not a prophet, a preacher.  He had no religious vocation.  He was a regular civic individual.  He was a citizen.  He was a child of the kingdom of Israel living in a foreign place and God used him mightily.In 586 BC—you need to know this in order to understand the story—In 586 BC the city and the walls of the city of Jerusalem were destroyed exactly as the prophets had predicted at the Word of the Lord.  As well, God promised that after 70 years of captivity in Babylon, the Jews would begin to return.  They did exactly as he said.  Just as the Lord promised, they began returning in about 70 years, Jeremiah 25:8-11 tells the story.First a few came back and began building the temple. That was finished in 516 BC.  Fifty years later in 458 BC Ezra the scribe showed up.  He rededicated the temple.  They began to establish some worship, but in spite of it all there were very few and not very dedicated worshippers.  Lots of problems and opposition was everywhere. This glorious City of David where God had promised to make his abode among the people and from where he would bless the world was in total ruins.Sadly, the people of Jerusalem and Judah—listen to this—had become indifferent to the conditions of the city.  They were simply stepping around, stepping over the rubble of broken down walls and they just went right on living.  They were discouraged.  They were disheartened and they were disinterested.God’s answer to rebuild the walls and restore the glory was to revive the people and to bring in a man named Nehemiah to do exactly that.  And God always starts a revival and he always starts spiritual activity in the lives of individuals.  In this case he chose a man by the name of Nehemiah.Now, folks, don’t go to sleep on me as we get into this study.You say, “Temple?  Old Testament?  Rebuild walls?  What does that have to do with me? I’m trying to pay a mortgage.  I’m trying to keep my kids in school.  I’m trying to keep the wolf away from the door. I’m trying to keep a marriage together.  I’m trying to rear some children in a pagan society.  Why are you talking to me about broken down walls and temples?”Well, here’s what we need to understand this morning and that is, that is that God is not in the business today of building physical temples and rebuilding physical walls, though all of those are...the carpentry and the masonry business are very legitimate businesses.  But God is not dwelling in temples made with hands.  Let me say that to you again.  God is not interested in inhabiting physical temples.This, that we sit in today and enjoy, this blessing of a physical location and building where we can sit on padded pews with air condition or heat according to the season, with lighting and sound and all of these things, it is a wonderful tool, but it is not the treasure of this church, neither is it the temple, the place of the dwelling of God.This building is not a temple, but it is where the temple of God comes to meet because you are the temple of God.  Understand that.  This is not a temple. This is not a treasure.  This is a tool.Say it with me.  “This is not a temple. This is not a treasure. This is a tool.”  And you are the temple.  If you know, Jesus as your personal Savior, if the Holy Spirit of God lives in you then I am here to tell you that you are the temple, the dwelling place where God lives.Listen to 2 Corinthians 6:16.  It says that you and I are the temple of the living God.  Ephesians chapter two, verse 22 says you and I are being built up together and fashioned by God to be a dwelling place for God’s Spirit.  In a very real sense, you as individual, are the location of where God lives.  In a very real sense we are being formed and fashioned together as a body of believers so that the activity of the Holy Spirit will be more powerful and the influence more strong because we work together.  We go farther together than we go separate.And so just like Jerusalem was in a mess and the temple was unattended, today our lives are in a mess and our hearts are out of touch.Without going into it again, our culture is in a mess because our churches are full of people who have lost focus about what God really wants in our lives.We have judges doing what Robert Hanson did last week because we have Christians who have forgotten what it is all about.  We have stopped being leaders in the world. We have stopped showing our influence.And I want to say to you that God intends for his people to lead, to show the way, to give the light, to indicate the way that it should be.You say, “Are we supposed to take over government?”No.  But we are certainly supposed to, as citizens, stand up and be counted, let our voice be heard, tell the truth, shine the light and, sadly, as I said last week, our lives have become so dimmed and we have become so darkened.  The Christian light and witness of our lives have become so unusable to the Lord because of sin and because of getting into this world and because we are in love with the same things that the world is that the light has been dimmed.  And God intends for us to show leadership.And if you say, “Well, what is leadership?”Leadership is influence.  Folks, after many years in the pastorate I have to tell you that what happens is instead of influencing the world, the world spends a lot of time influencing us and we are beginning to look too much and act too much like the world.God wants us to live holy, sacrificial, loving lives that honor him and point people to Jesus.  But there is a lot of junk and trash in the average Christian life and the hope of light and direction from us is very, very dismal.  But that’s where we start.We are setting out in Nehemiah on this 52 day journey to stop the despair and to start the repairs.  And I want to help you grow.  I have been praying about this and preparing for this for months. I have it in my heart.  I want you to...if you are a believer in Jesus—and I invite you, if you are not a believer today, you can get on board.  You can trust Christ to be your Lord and Savior.  You can have your eternal destiny settled here and now.  You can become the child of God by putting your faith and trust in Jesus.  But I want to say to you that our believers...and you ought to...you want to be like Jesus?  You want to be useful to the Lord in this world?   Well, I want to say to you that’s exactly what I have been praying for and how I have been trying to prepare to help you.I pray all the time.  “Father, please let the people of Grace Church be like trees planted by the rivers of water that bring forth their fruit in their season.”  That’s Psalms chapter one.  I pray for you people. I pray for you to be fruitful.  It is one thing to be faithful. That’s good.  It’s an even better thing to be fruitful.Do you know that’s what God wants of us?  The Bible says it is required of stewards that we be faithful, faithful in our homes, faithful with our children, faithful with our marriages.  But beyond that John 15 says that we are to be fruitful.  “I have chosen you that you go forth and bear fruit, more fruit and much fruit.”  God has chosen us to be faithful and fruitful. And I am praying for you that your roots will go down deep by the rivers of the Word of God and by the river of his love and by the river of his grace so that your lives become strong.I am telling you. The winds of our world, the culture around us, the things that are being pumped into us and told to us are wearing down our witness.Well, I’m praying for you. And I want to teach you and help you through this series to be strong and to be ready to rebuild and just to lay claim and stake to your own life and to your own family.I want you to write on your Scripture sheet there, you’ve got a place to write it down.  Here is something I want you to think about as we launch.  A clear vision of the state of our lives and homes will make us see what is, what could be and what should be and what we will be if we will but seek and obey God.Here is the way we are going to do this series. Every week I am going to come in and we are going to add another building block to our wall.  This is going to be, when we get done with it, it is going to be a great big wall. And right now the very first building block that I want to talk to you about...this is what I want you to know.When you leave here today you say, “Well, what did pastor Phil want us to know when we left?”I want you to know that step one, the very first thing that has got to happen at taking a look at your life, your family, your city, nation, your state and your culture, the very first thing we have to do is face reality.  There are a lot of us that like to just go on thinking that things are not as bad.  These things that were stated up here on the platform that are actual stories from the news right off the television, right over the radio and through the press, these are true stories.  But we had this eternal optimistic point of view.“Oh, it’s not all that bad, not my problem. It will all turn out.  I can’t do anything about it.  I just got to go on with my life.”And you know what?  We need to face reality.  The truth is that just as there are disasters going on in our culture, there are disasters going on in our own personal lives.I am praying for the Church of Jesus Christ called Grace.  I am praying for our church to grow. I am praying for our witness to become strong. I am praying for God to make us what he wants us to be.The first step, right it down.  Change begins when we take an honest look at our problems.  Will you write that down?  Change begins when we take an honest look at our problems.I heard about a guy that lived at the foot of Pike’s Peak for 50 years.  A traveler came along who got lost.  And when he got lost he was looking for his way.  He saw an old cabin up there and he came to see the old man that had lived there all these years.  He said, “Hey, I’m lost. I’m looking for how to get where I’m going. And, by the way, that sure is a big mountain.”And the old guy spit some tobacco and said, “What mountain?”He had gotten used to it.Change happens when we take a fresh look, an honest look at what is going on in our lives, in our culture.We can do several things.  Here is what we do.  We do one of several things with the things that...the problems that wreck our lives and thwart God’s plan. The first thing we can do is we can ignore a problem. Like a lady I heard about that had a mole on her back that started to become irritated.  She thought that she was just rubbing it with her clothing and that it would be ok.Her husband said, “Go to the doctor.”She wouldn’t.  Six months later it was a melanoma. It killed her in three weeks.We can just ignore problems.  We can be indifferent to problems.The people of Jerusalem had gotten used to the rubble.  They had gotten to the place where they could just walk around it.  They didn’t see it anymore. You know, it was just...you know, they were there.  They were living there.  It was the mundane life, every day just going through the...you know...up in the morning, go to work, step around the junk.  You know, some of us have got garages like that.“I need to clean that garage.  I need to clean that garage. I need garage.  I need to clean...”And ,boy, it’s been going on that way for 15 years and you’re still just stepping right around it.  You don’t even see it anymore.You say, “What about that mess out there?”You say, “What mess?  What’s she talking about?”We get used to it.  We get indifferent to it.  We become accustomed to it.  Just like we become accustomed to the anger in our lives.  We become accustomed to the envy. We become accustomed to the lust.  We become accustomed to the culture.  We become accustomed to what we see around us because, “Well, it’s just been that way.  I can’t do anything about it.  I’m just one person.  What am I going to do?”We get used to what is going on in our own life, our own house, our own neighborhood.  We just get used to it and we say, “What can we do?”Change begins when we take an honest look at our problems.  You know, in verse three Nehemiah got a report and he let it affect him.  Obviously the people who were living in Jerusalem were affected when they first got there, when they first looked at it. They tried for a little while, but they couldn’t seem to get anything done.  Nobody could work together.  They didn’t get it done.  They didn’t get the city going again.  And so they became indifferent to their problems.There is a little city called Chosica in Peru, real close to where we used to live. And going up the mountains we would go through there and in 1970 there was an earthquake there that was much larger than the one that was just down there a few weeks ago.  In 1970 on May 31^st at 3:30 in the afternoon an earthquake came that just simply rocked that entire nation, killed 75,000 to 80,000.  They can’t even determine the number.  But it was an unbelievable earthquake.Well, one of the little cites that was affected was a city called Chosica.  And this city, some great big boulders came down, crashed through houses, landed in the middle of streets and they just...these boulders, giant, enormous rocks, as big as houses, you know.  And it just broke up all of their communications and all of their water systems and everything.Well, they stood around waiting on the federal government to fix it, waited on foreign governments to come fix it. They got on TV shows and told how bad it was. They all just decided, “Well, I guess nobody is going to do it.”  They weren’t going to do anything themselves.  And so what did they do?  They just went on living their lives.In fact, you can to go to Chosica in the department of Hunin right now in Peru.  You can go to Chosica and you can find houses, shacks and businesses built next to, around and on top of the rocks that fell in 1970.Why?  They got used to it.You know what?  People are building their lives on junk just like that.  Some of us here this morning are trying to build our lives on faulty foundations because it is the junk of our lives.  You see, we’ve gotten used to the fact, “Well, I get angry. I get mad and I just...I get all...I just get all bent out of shape and that’s just the way I am and she’s just going to have to get used to it or my kids are just going to have to get used to it.  I can’t do anything about it.  I’m an angry man.”Or, “I’m a drunkard.” Or “I’m this or I’m that.  My grandfather was a drunk and my great grandfather was a drunk.  They are all drunks.  We drink.”And we just say, “That’s the way it is.” And just...we have to look at our problems.You know what?  We can ignore a problem. We can be indifferent to a problem. We can be insensitive to the problem. We can get to the place where we have just given up and we don’t feel the pain anymore.  We can’t see how it is hurting us.  Lots of times self destructive habits like anger, rage, addictions to substances because the normal way of life and we don’t even notice it.  We’re not honest.  We can’t tell the truth. We’re addicted to things that are just ruining us and we don’t feel it anymore.  We don’t worry about it.  The next thing is we can’t see how it is hurting our family either, our relationships, our church, our culture.  We don’t see how we are hurting anybody.  We just think we can do anything we want to.  We think we’re...you know, even though we do what Achan did that cost his whole family, we can do what we want to and, hey, it’s nobody’s business but mine.Boy, there’s no such thing as that.Here is where Nehemiah was so impressive.  He actually lived...he was far removed from the location of the problem, around 1000 miles away.  Folks, 1000 miles then, that was quite a trip.  That was quite a journey.  It wasn’t like going across the street. There were not busses, no cars, no trains, no airplanes.  He was going to get there on a camel if he got there and he was going to cross very dangerous territory to do it.He was far removed from the location of the problem, but he still felt it.  He was sensitive to it.Even though you might not be suffering with the weight of a problem, the ones you are supposed to love and care about are suffering with you and your problems.  Do you know that?The person that throws up his hands and says, “Oh, I’m just the way I am.  You know, it’s my business.  It doesn’t matter. People ought to just leave me alone, do their thing.  I’ll do my thing.”You know what?  We suffer with each other.I’ve said this before.  Man’s law nor God’s law will make you address your own problems, but love will.No wonder Paul said that the greatest of all the gifts is love.  He said, “Faith, hope and love. The greatest of these is love.  It lasts.”Jesus said to love one another.John wrote an epistle, the first epistle of John.  John, that little book there toward the end of the Bible has five chapters in it, the greatest treatise on love you will ever read.  He said in that book, “Don’t love in world only, but love in deed.”  Do something about your love.  Do it in deed and in truth.Jesus said to love one another and that’s where we begin this series.  As we begin it we talk about addressing our real problems in our lives, I want to tell you that love will motivate you to take action.  Love will motivate you when duty will not.  People that are in love with God will serve God far longer and with far greater dedication that people than are only serving out of duty.Now, if you are a husband today your duty is to love, to cherish, to take care of and protect and provide for your family, your wife.  If you are a mother, you are a wife, it is your duty to love your husband and your children.  If you are a child, it is your duty to be the person, to be a young obedient child. That is your duty.But I am going to tell you that duty runs short, but love never does.  If you are in love with God and you are in love with him and you are in love with your family and you are in love with those that are around you and if love overrides everything else, then you will do what you are supposed to do for their benefit and for your own.The second thing is, change comes when we take personal responsibility for our problems.  That’s the second thing.  Change comes when we take personal responsibility for our problems.You see, Nehemiah was a long way from the situation.  He could have thought, “Wow, that’s bad news about the people in Jerusalem, but what can I do about it.  I wasn’t there.  I didn’t do it.  Not my problem.”Think about it.“If I was there I would do something. I’m not there. You know, I can’t...it’s just not my problem.”He could go on and we could say, “Not...my anger doesn’t bother me. I can drink if I want to.  So what?  I like to gamble.  Big deal.  It doesn’t hurt anybody else.”Really?I was in this town when they were trying to decide whether they were going to put Prairie Meadows out there.  He said, “Pastor, are you a friend of Prairie Meadows?  Is Prairie Meadows a friend of the family?”I was here when they were trying to get that going and I heard Tom Coates and others, he was the guy with consumer credit and many others that stood up there and gave a warning.  They said, “You know, the day right now in the state of Iowa, Iowa is number three in the nation on personal individual savings.  This is a saving state.  People in the state of Iowa save for the future.  They put away a little bit for a rainy day.  They save for the future. We fear that if Prairie Meadows and the places like that come in we are no longer going to be a saving state.  We are going to be an indebted state, a bankrupt state.”Would you like to know?  We were number three in the nation in savings.  Would you like to know where we are in this year, 2007?  Number 47.“Well, gambling, it doesn’t...”Listen. I just want to say to you:  When you make choices and you choose things it does make a difference.  We have to take responsibility for our lives and for what is going on.“I wasn’t there.  I didn’t do it.  Not my problem.”We have to take responsibility.  You see, he was responsible because he was associated.  He was part of the situation.  He was a Jew.  Right now he is living...you know where he was?  He was sitting next to the king of the world.  Artaxerxes was the king of the world. And here is this man, a cup bearer. He was an attaché, if you put it that way today, of the king of the world, highly trusted, had a plush job.  He didn’t even have to work all the time.  All he did was he tasted the wine for the king.  He protected the king.  He had the king’s interest.Now, I want you to listen to me for a moment.  He lived in a foreign nation.  He was serving in a foreign nation.  But he was concerned about where he really belonged.Let me go to the next point.  Write this down.  Change comes when we take time to recognize the failures that led to the problems, the failures that led to the problems.Now, it wasn’t so much a failure in the personal life of this individual.  It was the failure of the people, the Jews.I want you read verse one and you will see what I am talking about.   “The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev,” roughly November, “in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the citadel.”Now he is in Shushan the citadel which is in modern day Iran.  At that time Iraq and Iran were combined and they made up, largely, what was Babylon.  Today it’s interesting today.  All of the land where we are dealing with and the things, all the news is coming...this is...we’re talking about old Babylon, old Persian empire. That’s what we’re talking about right now today, all of these events, the same...it’s amazing. We’re still dealing with the same thing.“I was in Shushan the citadel.”You say, “Big deal.  So he was in Shushan.  What’s  that got do with?”Well, it has a lot to do with the fact that these people, he and all of his people had been carried away into captivity.  They were not in Jerusalem. They were not in Israel, the land that God had given to them, in order to be a light and in order to point people to God, in order to give the example of the great God and tell who God was.No. They had failed miserably at what God’s calling was for them. And where were they?  They found themselves in another kingdom. They found themselves completely away. And what were the reasons? What were the failures?Well, the failures were and the reason they had been carried away into captivity was that they forgot the Lord, they forgot his law and they forgot to live out their purpose.You say, “How do you know that?”Well, because Deuteronomy chapter 11 made this warning.  Right before...they are on the plains of Moab. They are getting ready to go in and take Canaan. This is way back when they are just now going into Canaan for the first time.  They have come up out of Egypt.  They don’t have anything except the things that they brought with them from Egypt and here is what God says to them very clearly.  He says, “Joshua, you tell these people, you tell them, ‘Do not forget the Lord your God.’  He says, ‘When you go into Canaan and you move into houses that you didn’t build and you take over lands that you did not purchase and I give you all of these fruitful places and your flocks begin to increase and your herds begin to increase and when you become very, very affluent and when you have lots of goods and all of your bank accounts begin to grow and when you become very affluent here is the danger.  You are going to forget your Lord.  You are going to forget his law and you are going to forget the purpose of your life.’”Do you know where we are today?  We have forgotten the Lord.  We have forgotten his law.  We have forgotten the purpose for our lives.  That is exactly where we are in the United States of America and we wonder why our culture is crumbling.I said this last week that if Satan is the god of this world then his sign, his symbol is the dollar sign. And Christians are just as guilty of falling down at the altar of the dollar bill. That’s the bottom line on everything.  I make all my choices on the basis of the dollar bill, where I’ll live, where I’ll go, what I’ll do.  And because of that we’re in a culture that cannot tell the difference between a male and a female, cannot tell the difference between a fetus and a baby, cannot tell the difference between life and death.  Folks, we can’t tell the difference between right and wrong.You say, “Well, what have we done?”We have done exactly what they did.  We have gotten wealthy.  We have gotten affluent.Oh, you say, “Well, I just wish I was part of that wealthy...”Listen to me. If you got here any other way but walking on your two legs this morning you are wealthy compared to 95% of the rest of the world.  If you had your own bed last night you’re wealthy.  If you know what you are having for dinner today you are wealthy compared to a great part of this world.“You are going to become wealthy. Your flocks, your herds are going to increase. And when you get there you are going to be tempted to indulge.  You are going to forget about your Lord.  You are going to forget about his law.  You are going to forget about the purpose for your life.”He warned them.  They did it.  And they go carried away into captivity.You know, what’s interesting about this whole story—and I have just got to finish—what is interesting about this whole story is that Nehemiah was faced with this whole issue of sitting next to the king of the world in a plush, comfy job. And the problems were a long way away form him.You know, we are like that. There is stuff going on in New York, stuff in foreign countries and all that and wow. And this is just terrible.  But I’m fine.  You know, I’m doing ok.Nehemiah was sitting next to the king of the world with one of the best jobs in that entire kingdom, but here is the whole point: We, as Christians, are doing everything we can to become comfortable in a kingdom to which we do not belong.  We do not belong to this world.  We do not...listen. If you are a child of God this world is not your home. You are only passing through.  Your treasure is laid up up there beyond the blue.Do you see what I’m saying?  Our home is in heaven. We are ambassadors for another kingdom. We are not here to set up ourselves in this kingdom. We are ambassadors for that kingdom. We are not here to see how well we can ride from the cradle to the grave. We are not here just for comfort and convenience. We are not here to pile it up, stack it away. That’s not why we are here.We are here in this world because this world needs a witness.  The lost people of this world need to see that somebody knows the truth.“Pastor, are you against personal ownership of property?”Of course not.“Are you against stuff, things?”No.  I’ve got a house. I’ve got a car.  But it’s all God’s.  It’s for him, whatever he wants to use it for.I can give you illustrations.Let me finish by just reading this last thing.  Write it down on your sheet there.  Here is the last one:  Change comes when we take all of our problems to God in humble faith.Whenever we are ready to lay down this first block, foundational block of the wall, facing reality, when we say, “Ok, I know that I don’t have the privilege of comparing myself to other people, I have to compare myself to Jesus.  I know that I have fallen short of the glory of God because I am a sinner.  Therefore I know that I need to change. I need to get serious about God and his Word and living this life and loving my fellow man and serving my generation according to the will of God.  I need to understand my purpose.  God put me here for his pleasure.  God put me here for his purpose.  God put me here for his glory.  God put me here to fellowship with him.  That is what I am here for and to point others in that direction.”Now, when we understand that then what do we do?  Well, we take our anger, our addictions, our broken lives, our misdirected steps, all of the problems that we...we take all of that stuff and we go to God in prayer.Look at your verse number four. “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.”Notice what he did.  He wept.  He mourned.  He prayed.  He fasted.  It’s real simple, isn’t it?  He wept. He mourned.  He prayed.  He fasted.  He didn’t say, “Now, I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  And if I day before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take.  God bless you and mom and dad and brothers and sisters and amen.  Let’s have a great day tomorrow.”  No, no.That’s great for little children. But that’s not who we are.Oh, have you taken a real good look at your life?  Have you taken a good look at your family?You say, “Well, my family is doing really good.”Well how about your culture?  How about your brother’s family?  Have you looked?  Have you paid attention to what is going on?  Do you know what they are teaching in your schools? Are you aware that they don’t... that education is not the point anymore?  It’s indoctrination.  Do you understand?I’m tired of it. I don’t know about you.  I am tired of education being put on the shelf and indoctrination to a world view becoming the most important thing that they think they are supposed to teach at the public school and the state schools and the private schools and everywhere else.It’s not about indoctrination into the point of view which is diversity. That is the biggest word in the world today, did you know that?  Diversity, tolerant. We have got to be diverse.  We have got to be tolerant. We have got to accept, just accept the pedophiles. Accept murder. Accept rape.  Accept incest.  Just accept it. Don’t just accept it, give your confirmation.Folks, I don’t want to do that.  God doesn’t want us to do that.  God wants us to tell the truth.  Be right. Live the light.  And tell the world what’s going on.Well, how is it going to...it’s not going to...we are not going to change anything, not in our own heart.  We are not going to change anything in our own heart by making a proclamation.  We are not going to change anything in our culture by getting a sign and marching down at the state house.  That’s not going to change it.What is going to change it? It is going to change when Christians get serious, diagnose their situation, weep, mourn, pray and fast.Keith Harrison is a friend of mine. He is a pastor in Illinois now, but back about 20 years when we were both trying to go to the mission field he became sick with Chrohn’s disease.  Keith is a gypsy. I mean, literally born of a gypsy family that has roots in Romania and in places like that in southern France. And was literally born to a gypsy family.He had many relatives that were hanged.  He had relatives that had the guillotine used on them way back to a time. He could tell you all these stories.Keith Harrison, as a young teenage boy played basketball at a gymnasium one night, was approached by a young fellow that invited him to church.  He went to church with him, took him out afterwards, bought him an ice cream and told him about Jesus.Keith didn’t believe immediately, but within three of four weeks he could never get away from that witness.  He went and found that young man, asked him could he go to his church.  He went to his church.  Keith got saved.  He loved the thought.  He couldn’t believe that God could save anybody, even a person born to a gypsy family that had murderers and homicidal maniacs in their history and he just couldn’t believe it.  But he got saved.And then he found out that God could actually use him and so he gave his heart to the Lord to do anything he wanted.  He decided,  “All right.  You want me to be a missionary?  I will.”He married a girl. They had some children. We were in the deputation mode at the same time.  He was going to Argentina and we were going to Peru.  And I will never forget.  Word comes that Keith Harrison is sick now. He is in the hospital. He is weighed at 83 pounds.  He is in the hospital. He is near death.  Keith had been there for weeks and weeks and he couldn’t do anything. And there he lay.People were trying to encourage him.  Visitors would come to see him.  Pastors had prayed over him. All the things that you would like to do and nothing seemed to just get him going. They just couldn’t get him over the hump of this disease.Many of you here know of it.  We have people in our church that have it to a lesser degree.Keith said, “I was laying there in my bed.” And he says, “I looked up from that hole. I looked up from that pit.  I looked up from that pit that I was and it looked like that there was no hope. I was in despair.  I wasn’t going to be able to fulfill the calling of God in my life and I said to my God, laying there looking up, ‘God, the only place I can look is up.  You are the only hope.  You called me to be your missionary, to be your emissary. And God I know you didn’t save me just to let me die like this.’”And so Keith called on the Lord to heal him.  “And, God, if you heal me I will be your missionary. I will be your man.  God, if you can bring me up out of this hole of despair, this place where I know that I...if you can do that, God, then I am going to live this life for you.”God raised Keith up off of that bed. He and his wife, two years later, did go to Argentina. They served there for 13 years. He is pastoring in Burbenay, Illinois as I stand here this morning preaching the gospel. And I am here to tell you that there is no hole of despair, there is no situation that is so bleak, there is no culture that is so corrupted, there is no family that is so disintegrated, there is no marriage that has gone so far...I’m telling you there is no situation that God is not interested in helping if we will do one thing.What does it say?  Face reality.What is it I want you to remember when you leave today?  I want you to remember one thing.  Face reality.Say it with me, “Face reality.”Take a good look at your life, a good look at your family, a good look at your children, your home and your culture.  Take a good look at it.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?The last conclusion statement is: Change never happens until we admit there is a problem.  Is there a problem?  Let me pray for you.Father, I want to pray as we begin this Nehemiah series, Lord, that we would just be honest with ourselves.  Lord, help us not to hide, not to pretend, not to step over and around the situations of our lives.  Help us not shift the blame. Help us not try to get somebody else to just be responsible for us, but, Lord, help us to look ourselves square in the eye and look our problems square in the eye and help us, Lord, to face them.  Lord, I pray that you would work in our hearts.Nehemiah 1:1-4 (All Scripture references are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise indicated).Nehemiah 1:3,4Nehemiah 1:1Ibid.Nehemiah 1:4Sermon Transcript – September 9, 2007 Page  PAGE   * MERGEFORMAT 1 of 17 

Giving Letter (8/2007)

August 14, 2007

Dear Family of Friends,

Today is August 14, 2007. I can’t believe that we are already more than halfway through the calendar year! The State Fair is in progress and school starts for many next week. I hope you had a wonderful summer, but I have to admit I love it when the crowds are back and the schedule is full at Grace Church. I really take this ministry of life building very seriously, and it’s just a simple fact that we do a better job when everyone is here!

God is good to us. He is good to us all the time. Salvations of young and old, a continual stream of guests, and faithful ministry of the Word of God are the standard expectations of all of us here at Grace. God is very faithful to bless us with growing believers and new converts all the time. At the same time we are participating in the ministries of both “home grown” and “adopted” missionaries all across the globe. God is faithful to use us to send forth the Word of God through our missionary endeavors.

The key word is faithful. In 2 Corinthians 4:2 the Bible says,“Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.” Each of us is a steward of all that God has invested in us. That includes our time, talent and treasure as wells as our influence, our families and our homes. God asks us to give to Him first of all from these areas. We have included a record of your giving for your benefit so you will know just where you are in giving this year. I can tell you how God has led Bonnie and me to give. I simply look at the gross amount I anticipate earning this year and divide by ten. That is the total amount I plan to give as a tithe to my local New Testament church in the year 2007. It is easy to divide that number by 52 and see what my weekly giving should be. To see if I am up to date through June I simply divide the total amount I plan to give by two.  I may give other special offerings like “One Month for the Master,” in addition to that. I am committed to planning my personal budget around giving to God first. It is amazing how much more diligent I am in budgeting when I put God first. Also, It is wonderful how to see how much further the 90% goes when I give God what is His.

I believe in the ministry of Grace Church. I believe that you and I can both give with confidence knowing that God’s word will go forth as a result. Please examine your record. If we have made a mistake, please call Pastor Paul and we’ll get it fixed asap. Also examine your heart; Jesus said where your treasure is there will your heart be also.

God bless you, dear friend; I believe this fall and the “52 day Journey to Building a Healthy Life,” is going to be the best ever. Don’t miss a single week.

Don’t forget what we are about here at Grace:

• Bring people into God’s family through evangelism
• Build people up in God family through discipleship
• Prepare people for service in God’s Family ministry training
• Send people out from God’s family to go public with their faith
• And we do all for the Glory of God.

In Christ,

Pastor Phil

Membership Interview Questionnaire

Grace Church

Membership Interview Checklist

Interviewer: __________________________ Date: _____________Prospective Member: ____________________ Spouse: ____________________Interview Process: (check boxes as you proceed through interview) 1) Salvation Testimony – Ask the prospective member (and spouse) to tell you about their salvation experience. To the best of your knowledge, are they saved based on their testimony?

Prospective Member

Yes (If yes, go to step 2.) No (If no, go to next bullet.)

Spouse

Yes (If yes, go to step 2.) No (If no, go to next bullet.)

Share the plan of salvation. Did they accept Jesus Christ as their Savior?

Prospective Member

Yes (If yes, go to step 2.) No*

Spouse

Yes (If yes, go to step 2.) No*

* If the prospective member (or spouse) answers no, explain that membership starts with joining God’s family, answer their questions, set up a follow-up appointment, and close the interview with prayer. 2) Discipleship – Ask the prospective member (and spouse) if/when they were discipled as a believer. You may need to define discipleship.

Have they been discipled?Prospective Member

Yes (If yes, go to step 3.) No (If no, go to next bullet.)

Spouse

Yes (If yes, go to step 3.) No (If no, go to next bullet.)

Explain discipleship and our 5-week program; Class-of-One.

 Are they interested in being involved in Class-of-One?

Prospective Member

Yes (If yes, go to next bullet.)

No (If no, go to step 3.)

Spouse

Yes (If yes, go to next bullet.)

No (If no, go to step 3.)

 Forward their name to Pastor Paul for Class-of-One follow-up. FOLLOW-UP: Notify Pastor Paul of their interest in discipleship.

 3) Baptism – Ask the prospective member (and spouse) if/when they have been baptized as a believer by immersion.

Have they been baptized as a believer by immersion?

Prospective Member

Yes (If yes, go to step 4.)No (If no, go to the next bullet.)

Spouse

Yes (If yes, go to step 4.)No (If no, go to the next bullet.)

 Explain the importance of baptism (see brochure) and explain the requirement for believer’s baptism by immersion for membership.

Would they like to be baptized?Prospective Member

Yes (If yes, go to next bullet.)

No*

Spouse

Yes (If yes, go to next bullet.)No*

* If the prospective member (or spouse) answers no, explain that baptism by immersion as a believer is an act of obedience to Christ and a requirement for membership to Grace Church, set up a follow-up appointment or phone call, and close the interview with prayer.Set up a date and time to be baptized. Forward their name to Pastor Shawn Kinnison for follow-up. Explain the procedures and preparation for baptism.

2007 Baptismal Services (check one)1/8 4/23 7/15 2/12 5/21 8/26 3/12 6/3 9/23

10/28 11/25 12/23

Service Time8:30am 10:30am

 4) Membership Application & Covenant – Review the application and covenant form with the prospective member (and spouse).Have they read the “Who We Are” and “How We Operate” sections of the Grace 101 book? (verify they have filled out the application)

Prospective Member

Yes (If yes, go to next bullet.)

No*

Spouse

Yes (If yes, go to next bullet.)

No*

* If the prospective member (or spouse) answers no, ask them to read through these sections in the next few weeks, set up a follow-up appointment or phone call, and close the interview with prayer.Are they in agreement with our doctrine, values, ministry structure, government, and financial policies? (verify they have signed the covenant)

Prospective Member

Yes (If yes, go to step 5.)

No*

Spouse

Yes (If yes, go to step 5.)

No*

* If the prospective member (or spouse) answers no, tell them of the importance we place on unity within our church body. Answer any questions they may have, but if they will not agree, welcome them to continue attending our church and close the interview with prayer.

 5) Misc. Membership Items – Review items with the prospective member (and spouse) that relate to their acceptance as members.

•   Have we taken their picture for the membership announcement? Yes (If yes, go to next bullet.)No** If the prospective member (or spouse) answers no, set up an appointment on a Sunday morning between the services (10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.) at the Guest Reception area, and go on to the next bullet.FOLLOW-UP: Notify Chris Eller of the picture appointment on ____.
•   Are they interested in finding/joining a small group?Yes*No (If no, go to next bullet.)Already in a group (If already in a group, go to next bullet.)* If the prospective member (or spouse) answers yes, provide them with a Sunday and/or small group brochure and forward their name and general small group needs/wants to Pastor Paul Dykstra.FOLLOW-UP: Notify Pastor Paul Dykstra of their interest in a small group.
•   Are they interested in attending other core courses?

Prospective Member

Grace 201: Growing/Maturity

Grace 301: Serving/Ministry

Grace 401: Sharing/Mission

Spouse

Grace 201: Growing/Maturity

Grace 301: Serving/Ministry

Grace 401: Sharing/Mission

FOLLOW-UP: Notify Pastor Paul of their interest in any core courses.Give them offering envelopes.FOLLOW-UP: Notify Bev Baker of their envelope number (# ____). How will they be joining our church?

Prospective Member

Baptism

Letter

Profession

Restoration

Spouse

BaptismLetterProfessionRestoration

Baptism = Indicates they are already saved and joining by water baptism.Letter = Indicates they are joining by commendation of another like-minded church. Profession = Indicates they are believers by their testimony.Restoration = Indicates they have repented of sin and want to join the church again.

•   Set up a date to announce their membership on Sunday morning (see baptismal dates). Notify Pastor Shawn Kinnison of the date chosen.
•   Welcome them into our church family, and close the interview in prayer.

Interview Follow-up:

1. Notes – Write down anything that the pastoral staff should know about this interview, the person/people interviewed, or special needs/requests related to the membership application/announcement.________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________
2. Follow-up – Make note of those who need to be followed-up with regarding this interview.

Pastor Shawn Kinnison:Prospective MemberNeeds baptized on _____ @ _____ Needs a small groupMember announcement on ______Pastor Paul:Prospective MemberInterested in discipleship Grace 201: Growing/Maturity Grace 301: Serving/Ministry Grace 401: Sharing/MissionChris Eller:Needs picture taken on ______Bev Baker:Took offering envelope # ______

SpouseNeeds baptized on _____ @ _____ Needs a small groupMember announcement on ______SpouseInterested in discipleship Grace 201: Growing/Maturity Grace 301: Serving/Ministry Grace 401: Sharing/Mission

 3) Hand in Paperwork – Once all follow-up is completed, turn in this form to Pastor Shawn Kinnison or Bev Baker.

  Updated 6/20/2007