“And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” – (Ephesians 6:18)
This Sunday we look at one of the building blocks of how we grow as Christians: Prayer.
Learn by Example
Over these few weeks we are going to be looking at the basics of Christian growth. Last week, Beth spoke about the Bible, after Remembrance Sunday, we are going to talk about the church and evangelism, but today we are going to look at prayer.
How do we grow in our prayer life? Well one way is to look at the masters. The Bible is full of prayers, but today we are going to focus on the prayer of Nehemiah. It is a master class in how to pray. Not so much because it tells us about what words or technique to use in prayer, but because it reveals the important attitudes we need when we pray.
Nehemiah
Nehemiah was a Jew living in the 5th century BC. This was the time of the Persian Empire. Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Babylonians over a hundred years earlier and many of the people exiled. However, when the Babylonian empire had been conquered by the Persians, Cyrus the Great, allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. But many of the Jews remained away from Jerusalem and scattered around the Persian empire and Jerusalem itself remained in a pretty terrible state.
Nehemiah was one of those still living in exile. In fact, he lived and worked for Artaxerxes, one of the Persian kings in Susa, which is nearly 1,000 miles from Jerusalem by road. But Susa was the winter residence of the Persian king, and Nehemiah had a very important role in the king’s court, he was the cup bearer to the king.
This was a great job, Nehemiah would have been well off comfortable, secure and had a high status. His life was cushy!
But when he heard of the state of Jerusalem, the central home of his people, he began to pray that God might use him to do something about it. Then when he had the chance, he asked Artaxerxes for permission to go and rebuild Jerusalem and amazingly Artaxerxes agreed and funded the project. So much for Nehemiah’s cushy life!
This is the story of chapters 1 and 2 of Nehemiah, but at the heart of it is Nehemiah’s prayer. It is a master class in prayer, so let’s see what we can learn from it. Remember we are not looking to learn the words or techniques, but to take on the right attitudes for prayer.
To help us I am going to break it down to 4 attitudes beginning with ‘C.’
Care about the need (vs. 2-4)
The first attitude is that Nehemiah cared. When he heard about the terrible state Jerusalem was in, even though it was nearly 1,000 miles away he cared deeply. It says, he wept, he mourned and he fasted. This was a deeply emotional and passionate response to the news, that showed a deep concern about the situation. It was because Nehemiah cared that he prayed.
If we don’t care, we won’t pray. At least not with any real meaning. When we care about something deeply, prayer becomes more natural.
If you are in a plane and it is in danger of crashing, even an atheist who claims not to believe in God is likely to start praying! If your child has a terrible illness, then again you are more likely to start praying, because you are concerned for your child. Caring leads to praying.
Jesus even links praying for others and loving others, in the sermon on the mount when he says:
“But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44)
As Christians it is the most natural thing in the world, if you love people to pray for them.
Nehemiah cared about the state of Jerusalem and the people of God, so he prayed, that he would get help from the king – and he did.
I remember a long time ago, when I was a teacher, there was a child in one of my classes, who had a very difficult background. He was a refugee from Eritrea and separated from his parents. Yet, despite his difficulties he was one of the nicest and hard working students I had. Then one day he fell out of a tree and banged his head badly and was left in a coma. I found this deeply upsetting and remember that evening sitting in a local park, pleading with God for the child, with an intensity which was much greater than my prayers normally are. Amazingly, within a couple of days the boy was fully recovered and back at school. It was a wonderful answer to prayer, but a prayer that arose out of deep concern.
Real care leads to real prayer.
Call to mind God’s character and promises (vs. 5, 8-9)
Another crucial attitude for prayer is to call to mind who it is we are praying to. If you are a speaker, it is important to know your audience and adjust the way you speak according to who you are speaking to. If you are speaking to a child, then you will want to use simple easy to understand language, whereas if you are arguing a case in court, you will want to sound intelligent and knowledgeable.
Our attitude in prayer will be formed by how we see God. Indeed, this is what makes Christian prayer distinctive. After all, people pray in all religions, and even people without a religion pray. But as Christians we know who we are praying to, the God revealed in the Scriptures and especially in the person of Jesus Christ. He is a God who is both Creator of all, but also a God who loves us so much that he sent his Son, Jesus, to die for us on the cross.
Much of Nehemiah’s prayer, focusses not on the need, but on the character and promises of God. In verse 5, he calls to mind first of all the power of God:
“LORD, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God…” (vs. 5a)
Prayer is powerful, not because of the person praying, but because of the one we pray to.
But prayer is also full of hope, when we pray in line with God’s promises. Nehemiah goes on to say,
“…who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands,” (vs. 5b)
Nehemiah was asking for something really big. To turn around 150 years of devastation in Jerusalem. To be given funding by a Persian king for a tiny unimportant backwater in an enormous empire. How could that be possible? Because the person Nehemiah as approaching in prayer, was the God of heaven. God was powerful, but also because Nehemiah was asking in line with God’s promises. God had said that if Israel returned to him, he would return them to the promised land. Nehemiah’s prayer lines up with God’s promise and miracles happen.
I remember in 1980s, people were praying for an end of communism in Eastern Europe. It seemed impossible, here was an entrenched system of government that had been in place for over forty years, brutally oppressing all opposition. Yet, quite suddenly and spectacularly, the prayers were answered and like dominoes the communist regimes of Eastern Europe collapsed. God is more powerful than even the most powerful governments. When we call to mind who it is we are praying to, we remember what prayer can achieve.
Confess our sin (vs. 6-7)
One of God’s promises to us as Christians is that if we confess our sins, God will forgive us. John states this very clearly in 1 John 1:9:
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. ” (1 John 1:9)
And confession is the third attitude that Nehemiah’s prayer teaches us. One of the striking things about Nehemiah’s prayer is that he spends more time in confession than he does in asking God for anything. It is a broad confession not just of his own sins, but of his people’s sins, a corporate confession:
“I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s house, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.” (Nehemiah 1:6b-7)
Why is he so concerned to do this as part of a prayer for the restoration of Jerusalem?
The Old Testament is clear that the reason for the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile, was Israel’s sin, their failure to live according to God’s ways. If sin caused destruction, then the sin needed to be dealt with in order for restoration to begin.
But the bigger picture of the Bible from Genesis 3 onwards, is that it is sin that separates us from God and his blessings, but, Jesus came to die for our sins, and to bring us forgiveness. Jesus has done everything to make forgiveness possible, but we still need to confess. Indeed, it is only by acknowledging our sin, that we can find righteousness with God.
Jesus tells a parable to make this point. There is a tax-collector and a Pharisee that come to the temple to pray. The Pharisee boasts before God about how good he is, whilst the tax-collector beats his chest and calls on God for mercy for his sins. Jesus says, it is the tax-collector who goes away right with God.
As Christians today, we may pray for and long for revival in our church, but are we willing to acknowledge our failure to live fully as God calls us to. Our failure to be wholehearted for God, to be generous towards him, our conformity with the culture of the day, our failure to hunger and thirst for righteousness that is the problem. Perhaps it is our failure to be honest about our own and communal sin that is blocking the revival in the church.
Carry on (1:1; 2:1)
The fourth and final attitude that we can learn from Nehemiah’s prayer is to carry on. In 1:1, we are told Nehemiah started praying in the month of Kislev, which is roughly equivalent to December. In 2:1, we are told that the answer didn’t come until the month of Nisan, which is roughly equivalent to March.
The implication is that Nehemiah carried on praying about this for four months.
Jesus told another parable, just before the one about the Pharisee and the tax-collector, about a woman who had faced some injustice and a judge who didn’t really care. The woman, however, kept badgering the judge until the judge had had another and gave her what she wanted just to get her off his back. Jesus says, we should be like the annoying woman when we pray. We need to keep on at God, to persevere in prayer and not give up.
In England in the sixth century AD, the country was a basically pagan country ruled by a number of different kings. One of the more powerful kings in England at the time was Ethelbert, King of Kent. He married Bertha, a Christian princess from Tours, in what is now France. The marriage was only allowed if Bertha was allowed to continue to practice her Christianity. So, Bertha arrived in Canterbury with a chaplain, and a chapel was set up for her at St. Martin’s in Canterbury. Bertha prayed in that chapel for 19 years, until finally Augustine along with a group of monks arrived in Kent and with the permission of Ethelbert, began to tell people about Jesus. In time, many people became Christians including Ethelbert himself and so began the conversion of England from Paganism to Christianity. Bertha carried on praying and in time God worked a miracle of transformation that brought Christianity to England.
Learn by example, learn by practice
Nehemiah’s prayer gives us a great example of prayer. Those four attitudes,
- caring about what is needed,
- calling to mind the character of God
- confessing our sins
- carrying-on
are great attitudes to take into our prayer lives, if we are to grow as Christians. But, examples are not enough. We need to put what we learn into practice.
So, let’s make prayer with these attitudes a regular and constant part of our lives.
