I Prayed to God, & Said to the King | Sunday, May 29, 2022

The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah... 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. (Nehemiah 1:1–4)

When God moves His people to pray, He moves to act on their behalf—but the praying must come first.

Evil Is Real, and Prayer Is the First Response

Over the last few weeks, and especially this past Tuesday, we have been given repeated reminders that evil is real. We live in a truly broken world filled with sorrow, suffering, and pain. What happened in Texas was shocking—an unexpected punch to the gut. When we are shocked by things like this shooting, or the one in Buffalo, I believe the only right response is grief-stricken prayer to God.

That is exactly what we saw from Nehemiah in chapter 1. Nehemiah was filled with grief because of the state of his homeland, and he was moved to call out to the God of heaven. We read near the end of chapter 1:

O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant... 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. (Nehemiah 1:11)

You Cannot Do More Than Pray Until You Have Prayed

This past Tuesday afternoon, I realized something bad had happened in Texas when I went on Twitter and saw a flood of posts saying, "Pray for Texas." I checked the news, and like many of you, my heart sank. I was moved to pray. But as the day went on, I saw comments underneath those calls to prayer that said things like, "Stop your praying—we need to do something now."

I understand the sentiment. People feel a compulsion to act when something horrible happens. But a quote from John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, came to mind: "You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed." He goes on: "Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan."

Unfortunately, prayer is too often our last or next-to-last response, not our first. Consider that in the book of Ezra—which is really one book with Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible—prayer isn't even mentioned until the eighth chapter, and the book is only ten chapters long. There are far too many "eighth chapter prayers" in my life, prayers that come near the end of the story. I wonder if the circumstances that weigh on us might be much shorter if our prayers began much sooner.

God Moves Mightily When His People Pray

There was much work that needed to be done in Jerusalem, but it had to start with prayer. The fixes Jerusalem needed hadn't come to pass in almost a century. For nearly a hundred years they tried all kinds of things to fix the city, and none of it proved successful. They delayed in coming to God in prayer.

We cannot forget God's word to Solomon at the dedication of the first temple:

If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)

We should be slow to apply these words to ourselves, because we are not Israel. But they were applicable to Nehemiah in a big way. He humbled himself, fasted, sought the Lord, confessed and repented of his people's sin as his own, and did it many days, day and night. James reminds us:

The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. (James 5:16)

James then points us to Elijah, a man with a nature like ours, who prayed earnestly and shut up the heavens for three and a half years, then prayed again and the rain returned. When God's people are moved to pray, God is moved to act on behalf of His people. As D. L. Moody said, "Where prayer is focused, power falls."

Your Privileged Position with God

You may not feel you have a privileged position in this world. Maybe your sphere of influence feels very small. But as a child of God, you have a privileged position with the God of heaven—and that is huge. You may not have many connections in this world, but if you are a Christian, you have a connection to God. No amount of earthly privilege is worth anything without ultimately receiving God's empowering mercy and grace.

Nehemiah was in a privileged position as cupbearer to the king of the world's greatest empire, but he didn't recognize it as such—at least concerning his people in Jerusalem—until he began to pray. The pressing circumstances moved him to pray, and his persistence in prayer caused him to recognize his special place. You have no idea what privilege you actually have until you begin to see your situation on the other side of persistent prayer.

Persistent prayer changes us. It changes our perception. It makes us aware of things we weren't aware of before. It helps us gain a right perspective of ourselves, of our situations, and of our problems. But here is the key: it helps us gain a right perspective of God. When we see ourselves in light of our problems, our problems always seem bigger than we are. But when we see our problems in light of God, everything changes dramatically.

Four Months of Persistent Prayer

And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before. Therefore the king said to me, "Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart." So I became dreadfully afraid. (Nehemiah 2:1–2)

Chapter 1 opened in the month of Kislev—around our November–December. Now in chapter 2 we are in the month of Nisan—around our March–April. Some four months, about 120 days, have passed since Nehemiah received word about Jerusalem. When chapter 1 says he wept and mourned "for many days," we can put a number on it: four months of prayer and fasting before God, day and night, mourning, confessing, calling on God for mercy and grace.

God may not move quickly, but He moves mightily when moved by our persistent prayers. Let's face it—we are impatient people. We get antsy when a text isn't answered in two minutes, frustrated when the Amazon truck is still eight stops away, and we drive past Starbucks when there are four cars in the drive-through. But Jesus taught His followers to persist.

The Lessons of Persistence

In Luke 11, Jesus tells of a friend who comes at midnight asking for bread:

Because of his persistence he will rise and give him as much as he needs. 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. (Luke 11:8–9)

In Luke 18, Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge, "that men always ought to pray and not lose heart." The judge grants her request because she keeps coming. Then the Lord says:

Hear what the unjust judge said. And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him...? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. (Luke 18:6–8)

Jesus is teaching that God is moved by our persistent prayers. As E. M. Bounds wrote in The Necessity of Prayer, "There can be no question but that importunate prayer moves God and heightens human character."

For four months Nehemiah prayed day and night to the God of heaven. He spent four months before the King of kings in heaven, all in preparation for one moment before the king of Persia. It makes me wonder how many opportunities on earth we have missed because of our dispassionate prayerlessness.

"So I Prayed to the God of Heaven, and I Said to the King"

The cupbearer in the Persian empire was essentially the king's food taster. Assassination attempts often came through poisoning, so the cupbearer was a trusted man—and it was crucial that he never appear sad before the king.

Some teachers suggest Nehemiah purposely changed his appearance to manipulate an opportunity. I don't think that's likely. The four months of prayer had shifted his focus from the task right in front of him to Jerusalem, a far journey away in what is now modern-day Iran. You've experienced this—your mind so focused on a pressing issue that the task immediately before you becomes a distant thought. That he became "dreadfully afraid" when the king noticed tells me this was no calculated manipulation. He was simply so absorbed with Jerusalem that he had little concern for what was in front of him.

Then the king said to me, "What do you request?" So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king, "If it pleases the king... I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' tombs, that I may rebuild it." (Nehemiah 2:4–5)

I love those two lines: "So I prayed to the God of heaven" and "I said to the king." They expose an important reality—we live our lives between two worlds. Nearly all the time we are focused on the world we can touch, see, taste, hear, and smell. But prayer attunes us to another world, and fasting helps us disengage from being absorbed with this one. Prayer disconnects us from the earthly and connects us to the heavenly.

It has been said that some are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good. But in 2022 it is far more likely that we will be so earthly focused that we have nearly zero awareness of heaven. This is why Paul wrote, "Set your mind on things above, and not on the things of the earth" (Colossians 3:2). Four months of focused prayer prepared Nehemiah for a conversation that took perhaps a minute and a half. As one author put it, "Quick prayers are possible and valid if one has prayed sufficiently beforehand." Nehemiah had prayed for months, but he knew he was completely dependent on God's work in the king's heart at that moment.

When God Moves Us to Pray, He Moves Us to Act

It isn't stated in the text, but my view is that when Nehemiah first began praying four months earlier, he probably didn't imagine himself as the one to rebuild Jerusalem. Yet often, when God moves us to pray, He also moves us to act in accordance with our prayers. Many times the answer to our prayer is that God will use us to be the answer to our prayer.

One of my favorite examples is in Matthew 9. Jesus, seeing the multitudes, was moved with compassion because they were like sheep without a shepherd. He told His disciples:

The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. (Matthew 9:37–38)

The very next words, in Matthew 10, say He called His twelve disciples and sent them out to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." He commanded them to pray for workers, and then commissioned those very praying disciples to go. When God moves you to pray, be prepared to be moved to action.

A Prepared Plan—and Provided Provision

Then the king said to me (the queen also sitting beside him), "How long will your journey be? And when will you return?" So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time. (Nehemiah 2:6)

The investment of our time in prayer always pays dividends. Nehemiah then asks for letters to the governors and to Asaph, keeper of the king's forest, for timber to build the gates, the wall, and the house he would occupy.

And the king granted them to me according to the good hand of my God upon me. (Nehemiah 2:8)

The four months in prayer not only prepared the opportunity and prepared Nehemiah for it—they also prepared in him a proper plan of action. He was a smart man in a privileged position, but not necessarily an administrator, governor, builder, or architect. Yet over four months God moved him to plan, so that when the door opened he was ready.

I experienced the same. In August of 2002, at only 22 years old with very little ministry experience, I began to have a stirring in my heart that one day I would be the pastor of this church. That seemed illogical—youthful, presumptuous audacity. But that stirring moved me to pray, and I prayed about it from August 2002 until December 2007. Then, in early December 2007, my pastor asked me, "Miles, do you think God has called you to be the pastor of this church?" Essentially, I prayed to the God of heaven in that moment and said to my pastor, "Yes." Those five and a half years prepared me and prepared a plan in my heart for the day the door would open. When God moves you to action, seek and rely on Him for the strategy and the plan.

When God Moves Us to Act, Expect Opposition

Then I went to the governors... When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard of it, they were deeply disturbed that a man had come to seek the well-being of the children of Israel. (Nehemiah 2:9–10)

This is the moment for the ominous "dun, dun, dun." Remember these names. And remember this: when God moves us to act, there will always be opposition. Paul wrote to Corinth, "A great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries."

For years I heard it said that "where God guides, He provides," and I believe that. But it does not always mean smooth sailing. Paul was beaten, robbed, shipwrecked, bitten by a snake, hungry, imprisoned, and ultimately martyred. Yet he wrote:

We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. (2 Corinthians 4:8–9)

When God moves you to pray and to act, expect opposition—and when it comes, persist in prayer, and God will continue to move mightily in and through you. This is the story of Nehemiah, the story of Paul, and the story of God's people throughout church history. This is why Paul says in Ephesians 6 to put on the whole armor of God, take the sword of the Spirit, and pray always. The culture we live in desperately needs God to move mightily through His church—and that will only happen as His people are moved to pray and then ready to act.

Closing Prayer

God, would You work in us, driving us to the place where we are calling out to You persistently, continually, in prayer? Maybe it will take four months, 120 days; it might take four years or fifteen years—we have no idea. But Lord, would You drive us to the place where we call out to You in consistent, persistent, continual prayer, praying always. Help us to do that.

And Lord, would You move mightily through Your people? You have strategically placed each of us in this culture—on the school campus, in the office building, on the construction site, in the neighborhood, within the family. Wherever You've placed us, You have placed us there for such a time as this. Help us to recognize that, and to step into those things even when we are opposed. The enemy will come against us, but greater are You who is in us than any enemy we will face. Help us to have the eyes of faith to see it and to walk trusting You. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.