Faith begins when man’s power ends. Faith only comes by hearing the Word of God. How blessed we are to be able to open up our Bibles and read the Word! I believe God’s Spirit gives us complete instructions in the Word on how to pray when we find ourselves stuck in the middle of a bad situation. Today we’re going to look at the book of Nehemiah to see how he prayed in the midst of his crisis. Nehemiah was the cup bearer for the king, a very prestigious position. To make sure the king’s food and drink were not poisonous; they were consumed first by the cup bearer. Here is Nehemiah’s crisis…
Despite the fact that the returned exiles had been in Jerusalem for many years, the walls of the city remained unrepaired, leaving its people defenseless and vulnerable. It was extremely important for a city to have a wall surrounding it. The wall represented power, protection, and beauty. A wall also was desperately needed to protect the Temple from attack and to ensure the continuity of worship. So I can imagine how disgraceful the people in Jerusalem felt… they were probably thinking, “Why would our God allow us to be so disgraced and humiliated by not having a wall around our city?”
When Nehemiah learned of this… he wept, fasted, and prayed. As he was praying, Nehemiah strongly felt God’s call to be the one to organize the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s wall. But a major problem stood in the way of him getting the job done… he was employed by the king of Persia, and why would a pagan king care about rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem? How was he going to go? How was he going to get the resources he needed to pull this off? It seemed like an impossible situation. Can anybody reading this relate? The Spirit of God recorded his prayer, most importantly – the process of Nehemiah’s prayer. Romans 15:4 says…
“Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us. And the Scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled.”
The more we know about what God has done in years past, the greater the confidence we have about what He will do in the days ahead. We need to diligently read our Bibles so we will have a non-shakable confidence in God. We will look closer at Nehemiah’s prayer next time – stay tuned!
