Good morning.
Welcome to Church of the Advent.
My name is Tommy.
I'm the rector here and delighted to be together this morning.
We are continuing to look this week at the book of Nehemiah, and the text is printed
in your bulletin if you'd like to follow along.
We started a series last week in the book of Nehemiah.
Now, looking at this man that God has called to do quite an amazing thing, God has called
Nehemiah to do two things at the same time, to physically lead in the rebuilding of God's
city and to also lead in the spiritual rebuilding of God's people.
Both are in need of renovation.
And we find ourselves in a similar place in the life of our church here at Church of the
Advent.
We are physically renovating a building at 5th and Q Northwest so that it can become
a home for us, a home for worship and spiritual formation and ministry to the wider community.
And at the same time, this is a year of spiritual renovation and renewal.
We as a community are preparing for this next season of life.
We've been through a lot of challenges over this past couple of years as a church, and
we are in transition and change is hard.
It's always hard.
And we're looking ahead and asking what kind of, not only what kind of building do we hope
to inhabit, but what kind of people will we be when we inhabit that building?
And will that be good news for the community?
So this is a year for us to reflect on all of that.
So we're seeing what we can learn from Nehemiah.
And here's the thing that we're going to look at this week.
Nehemiah is often celebrated as an example of effective leadership.
And to some extent that's true, although as we will see, he is by no means perfect.
People often overlook what I believe is the most important quality in Nehemiah, which is
not his leadership style.
It's his prayer life.
It's the fact that Nehemiah was a man of prayer above everything else.
In fact, we have nine recorded prayers from Nehemiah in this book.
And so we're going to be looking at that first prayer that he prays in the opening verses
this morning.
But let me ask you this question as we dive into this.
How would you answer someone if they were to ask you, how is your prayer life?
What would come to mind?
What would you say?
What would you feel if somebody were to ask you, how is your prayer life?
I love the writer Anne Lamott.
I love her honesty.
And she has a saying.
She says, the two best prayers I know are help me, help me, help me, and thank you, thank
you, thank you.
And I think probably for many of us, that would encapsulate our prayer life, right?
You get to a point where you're sort of desperate and all else has failed.
And so you're crying out to God, help me, help me, help me do something.
And then times when you feel like God comes through, you say, thank you, thank you, thank
you, you know.
Not so with Nehemiah.
Nehemiah has a rich prayer life.
And we see here in chapter one that the way Nehemiah prays has a distinct shape to it.
There are distinct elements to his prayer that, as I reflect on my own prayer life, I think
are often missing from my spontaneous prayers when I pray to the Lord.
And this is the same general shape that we see in the Lord's prayer that Jesus explicitly
gives to us as his disciples to teach us how to pray.
This is essentially going to be prayer 101.
This is spring training for prayer.
But if you're anything like me, this is something that I constantly need to come back to again
and again and again.
And what we're going to see in the shape of Nehemiah's prayer is a pattern that the people
use different ways of remembering this.
Often you come across this when people use the acronym ACTS, A-C-T-S.
That as we look at Nehemiah's prayer, we see four distinct elements.
Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and then finally supplication.
A-C-T-S.
And so we're going to look at this.
And I want to say right off the bat, this is not a magic formula.
This is not something that we have to follow rigidly.
On the other hand, if we regularly include all of these elements in our prayer life,
our prayer will not only have the potential to change the world, but it will actually have
the power to change us.
So let's look at this.
And we're going to ask God to help us as we open His Word together.
Lord, we come to You in prayer knowing that You desire and You delight to converse with us.
Lord, that You have spoken through Your Word and Spirit, and You invite us to respond to You,
Lord.
And You delight when we come to You.
You delight when we listen to You.
You delight when we bring our supplications to You, Lord.
And so even as we pray, we know that You're a God who above all desires a relationship with us.
And we pray that this morning we would learn more of what it means to have a relationship
with You, Lord, to belong to You as we do.
And we pray that if there are people here who have never prayed in their lives,
they've never even thought about praying, they don't think they knew how to pray,
we pray that this morning You would encourage those of us to maybe tentatively reach out to
You for the first time.
And we ask that You would respond, Lord.
We are here to encounter You, and it's in the name of Your Son, Jesus, that we pray.
Amen.
So first of all, as we look at Nehemiah, we see that just the context of this is that
Nehemiah has just heard devastating news.
He's just heard news that God's city lies in ruins.
He's just heard that God's people are destitute.
And it breaks his heart.
And it breaks his heart so much that it says he falls to the ground and he weeps.
And the first thing he does is to pray.
I mean, it's worth noting that for Nehemiah, prayer is a reflex.
It's a natural instinct.
He falls to the ground and he weeps, and what comes out of his mouth is prayer.
Now look at where he begins when he prays.
If something this bad happened in my life, if I got the kind of news that made me immediately
collapse to the ground and start weeping, my first impulse, to be totally honest, would
probably be to say to God, how could you?
How dare you?
Where were you?
Why me?
Why this?
Why now?
Those are the kinds of prayers that would reflexively come out of my mouth, along with a whole lot
of other stuff.
Nehemiah pauses long enough to shift his attention away from the crisis, away from the pressing
issues, away from himself, away from his needs, which are very real, and he shifts his attention
for a moment just to focus on God himself.
He begins by praising God for his character.
He's just heard horrible news, and yet he begins by praising God for his character and
his faithfulness.
He says in verse 5, O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant
and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments.
See, this is so important because it immediately grounds prayer in what is true and real.
Nehemiah is beginning, he's grounding his prayer in what is true and real.
By pausing to reflect on who God is, what that does when we do that is by pausing to reflect
on who God is, it immediately reminds us that God is God and I am not.
I'm immediately saying, you're God and I'm not God.
You're the great one, not me.
You're the awesome one, not me.
You're the one who keeps your promises.
I don't always keep my promises.
You're the one whose love remains constant and steadfast.
My love can be fickle and conditional.
It reminds us that we're not the ones here to judge what can happen or should happen.
It reminds us that we're entirely dependent on him.
It immediately grounds his prayer in what is true and real.
It reminds us of something that is extremely important to remember when we face crisis.
And that is that we can't always understand God's motives.
We will not always be able to understand God's motives.
But we can always trust God's character.
We're not always going to understand God's motives, but we can always trust his character.
And a relationship with God based on faith doesn't ultimately depend on our ability to understand a God whose ways are higher than our ways.
It hinges on whether or not we trust him, even when we don't understand the why.
And Nehemiah, that's where he starts his prayer.
And I've often found that when I'm feeling anxious about something, if I'm sort of getting worked up and anxious and I'm feeling stressed,
if I just spend a few minutes simply praising God for his attributes, that will immediately start to bring my anxiety down.
Because a lot of our anxiety is simply the result of us trying to control things that we can't control.
And we're trying to get a grip or a grasp.
We're trying to manage this thing.
And we can't.
And it causes anxiety.
And by pausing to remember who God is, it reminds us, oh, I don't have control over that.
But God does.
And I trust his character.
But even if there were no tangible benefits to this, the more you grow in your faith, the more you grow in maturity,
the more you realize that the point of prayer is not whether it benefits us or not.
The point of prayer is connection with God.
And what Nehemiah does is he begins in a place of praising God partly because he knows that God alone is worthy of our praise.
God alone is worthy of our adoration.
And if we were to do nothing in our lives but praise God and praise his attributes,
we would only be giving God what he is owed.
So this is the first element of Nehemiah's prayer.
He pauses long enough to praise God for his character.
And then what we see is this.
After you spend time reflecting on God's character, that naturally then turns your attention to seeing your own character by contrast.
Right?
So Nehemiah's attention then turns to himself.
And this is a principle that we come back to again and again and again in the Christian life.
The more clearly we see God, the more clearly we are then able to see ourselves.
That's why prayer is really one of the only entryways we have into true self-knowledge.
Because prayer leads us into a kind of self-knowledge that is rooted in something objective and real.
When we see who God is, we can then begin to see ourselves more clearly by contrast.
So Nehemiah praises God for his faithfulness, and then he immediately becomes conscious of his own unfaithfulness and that of God's people.
He says in verse 6,
Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel, your servants,
confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you.
Even I and my father's house have sinned.
We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded by your servant Moses.
Now what's striking about this, what's striking about his confession is that it is not only personal,
I and my father's house have sinned, but it's also corporate.
It's a corporate confession.
He confesses on behalf of the sins of Israel.
Now this is a concept that's been debated a lot recently because of the conversations around racial injustice in our country
and to what extent do white Americans bear collective responsibility for the injustice that has been committed in our past and present.
And what we've seen is that Western people in general have little to no concept of corporate evil.
Western people, some actively oppose the idea of corporate evil.
This is something that makes immediate sense in other cultures that are more communal.
But we tend to be so individualistic in the West that we have a hard time with the notion that we might actually be held accountable for things that we didn't personally do wrong.
The thing is though, this idea shows up again and again and again in Scripture.
So it's something that we can't get around.
We have to figure out how to make sense of it.
In Joshua chapter 7, Achan sins by stealing things that don't belong to him.
But his whole family is held responsible.
In Daniel chapter 9, it goes further.
Just like Nehemiah, Daniel repents not only on behalf of himself or even his family, but on behalf of his entire race,
on behalf of the nation of Israel, his ancestors.
In Romans chapter 5, Paul goes a step further.
Paul goes way beyond the idea that you're responsible for what other members of your family have done.
And he goes beyond the idea that you're responsible for your culture or ethnicity or your ancestors.
The Apostle Paul says that we are responsible and we are condemned for what our first ancestors did.
Adam and Eve.
He says we're responsible and guilty because of their sin.
By virtue, in other words, by virtue of being a member of the human race,
we are responsible for things that we didn't individually do.
And the point is, there's a couple points here.
Number one, we are not simply the product of our individual choices made in a vacuum.
As much as we would like to think that we are that independent,
to a large degree, you and I, we are shaped by our family.
We are shaped by our ethnicity.
We are shaped by our ancestors.
I just dug up an Ancestry kit, Ancestry.com kit,
that somebody gave me, I don't know, like two years ago.
And I just, I lost it.
And I didn't think about it again.
And we were doing some cleaning before the start of the fall.
And found it, came across it.
And so I just sent it in.
And I'm waiting on the results.
And as I'm waiting on the results,
I started trying to fill out my family history.
Something that my mom has always been into,
but I've never really had much interest in until now.
And I've started kind of tracing these lines of lineage back to the 14 and 1500s.
And I'm seeing all kinds of things, all kinds of people.
And it's had me really reflecting on to what extent do I not know it,
but to what extent am I a product of things that have happened over time
in all of these families, dynamics, right?
The places they occupied in society
and how that impacted their children and their children and their children, right?
And it's got me reflecting a lot on that.
We are the product of our families and our ancestors to a great degree.
We're a product of the culture that we live in
and the place that we occupy within that culture.
But we have to go beyond that.
When we look at what the apostle Paul is really saying,
he's saying, listen, we all live inside systems,
within systems, within systems that are all corrupted by sin.
And beyond family and culture,
we are all guilty by virtue of being a part of the human race.
We've inherited sin.
We've inherited culpability for sin that on our own we can't deal with.
And here's why this matters for our prayer life.
If you spend time reflecting on that,
it will deepen and it will intensify your confession of sin.
Because, again, this is just me,
but I think you're probably maybe at least able to resonate with this.
If I sit down and I confess,
say I confess during daily prayer
or during the Sunday worship service,
during that time of confession,
I am very tempted to only think of the things
that I know I did wrong over the last maybe 24-hour period.
And I will confess those things.
But if I'm only confessing the things that I know I've done wrong,
then that makes it much easier
for me to continue believing what my heart wants to believe,
which is that I'm mostly a good person,
but I occasionally mess up.
That's what I want to think.
That's what I want you to think about me.
But God knows better.
Right?
Corporate confession reminds me
that sin is inescapable apart from Jesus.
It is hardwired into me on a genetic level
in a way that I cannot escape.
It touches and it corrupts every aspect of my life,
even when I think I'm at my best
and my most altruistic, selfless, loving version of myself.
Sin is warping that to some extent.
That's the kind of confession we need.
Because the good news is this.
Not only is there such a thing as corporate sin,
there's such a thing as corporate salvation.
See, not only are we held responsible for sin
we didn't personally commit,
we are also saved by righteousness
that we didn't personally earn.
And when it comes to that,
our only hope is to allow somebody to represent us.
Right?
Not only in sin, but also in salvation.
We're saved simply by being associated with Jesus Christ.
His righteousness is transferred to us.
It's not a result of anything that we personally did,
but we are beneficiaries of it regardless.
Right?
So here's how it works.
The more seriously we take sin in our lives,
the more powerfully we will experience grace and forgiveness.
And there are a lot of people
who are sort of sleepy Christians,
sleepy, nominal, half-awake Christians,
who it's been a very long time
since they've experienced any real sense of God's grace or love,
and that's because it's been a really long time
since they've ever really reflected on the sin in their lives.
And if you want to experience this in your own life,
if you want to experience spiritual revival,
one of the first things you can do
is to spend time in confession.
Really confessing.
Right?
This is why,
if you look at all the great revivals throughout history,
if you look at all the great revivals,
they all have lots of things that are very unique to them.
Like, each revival is kind of different and unique in a lot of ways.
One thing they all share in common,
they all were preceded
by a great spirit-driven movement of repentance.
They're all preceded by God's people being heartbroken over their sin
and crying out to God for mercy.
And then the Holy Spirit floods in and revival happens.
So that's confession.
So we have adoration, we have confession.
Then we see Nehemiah move to thanksgiving,
clinging to God's promises.
So just to remind you, here's where we are.
There is a crisis in Jerusalem.
Nehemiah is heartbroken and he's weeping.
And yet he has not even mentioned it in his prayer.
After taking time to praise God
and then to confess his own sin
and the sin of his people,
he then turns his attention
to give thanks for God's deliverance
and to give thanks for God's promises.
He's saying, God, remember these wonderful promises
that you've given your people.
And this may seem counterintuitive.
You know, when you're facing a crisis,
the first thing you do is to turn to God and say thank you.
But it's exactly what we need in times of crisis.
Because a lot of us, when we are facing stress,
when things are getting hard,
we're facing hardship and adversity,
most of us instinctively shift
into what we can think of as a scarcity mindset.
You know, you're stressed out and you're overwhelmed
and you immediately circle the wagons
and you immediately pull in your resources
and you immediately hunker down
and you shift into a scarcity mindset.
What does that mean?
It means you start to become more and more preoccupied
with the things that you perceive that you lack.
So you start focusing on not having enough time,
not having enough money,
not having enough resources.
You know, so you start thinking a scarcity mindset.
You're thinking, you know, I don't have enough time
to do my job well and to be a good parent.
And I'm failing at both.
You know, I just don't have enough time in the day.
And so I'm failing in my job and I'm failing as a parent.
Or you focus on, you know,
I don't have enough money to even make a dent in this debt.
So what's the point of even trying to pay it down?
Or I'm not capable enough to do what's being asked of me,
so why even try?
There's no way I would ever be able to succeed at that,
so why even put my name in the hat, right?
And of course, the more we think this way,
the worse we feel, right?
We begin thinking in hopeless, trapped ways,
and that leads to feelings of hopelessness,
feelings of being trapped.
And then we act out of those feelings
and we do things that reinforce it, right?
And people who get stuck in a scarcity mindset,
they tend to be people who compare themselves
constantly to other people.
People who they perceive have more than them
in these various ways.
They tend to feel threatened when their friends
or people around them, their peers, are successful.
They're threatened by that
because it highlights their scarcity.
They tend to be very stingy with their money
and with their time
because they don't feel like they have enough of it.
They tend to struggle with feelings of anxiety
and depression caused by these loops of thinking, right?
This defeatist way of thinking.
And you ask again,
well, what does this have to do with prayer?
Well, the single number one best way
to break out of a scarcity mindset
is gratitude.
It's gratitude.
It's taking a moment
to look at all of the things in your life
that represent God's blessing
and God's provision for you.
The fact that you woke up this morning.
The fact that you have breath in your lungs.
The last meal that you ate.
The people closest to you in your life.
You know, there was a study done recently
in which people were asked to spend one week,
just one week,
where over the course of that week,
they would take five minutes a day
to write down three things they're thankful for.
So just one week, five minutes a day,
write down three things you're thankful for.
They didn't have to be big things.
They didn't have to be epic things.
They just had to be concrete and specific.
So I'm thankful for the delicious Thai takeout
I had last night.
You know, I'm thankful that my daughter gave me a hug.
I'm thankful that my boss actually noticed
and complimented my work.
You know, whatever it may be.
The point is it had to be three specific things
each day for one week.
A month later after this was concluded,
the researchers followed up
and they found that those who practiced gratitude
were significantly happier
and less depressed than the control group.
Incredibly, after six months,
those effects remained.
So six months later,
after just spending one week,
five minutes a day doing that,
six months later,
the effects remained.
And the researchers had to explain this
and the simplest explanation is this,
that the simple practice of giving thanks each day
over the course of a week
primed their minds
to focus on the good things they have
rather than on the things they think they lack.
It got them out of the scarcity mindset.
It just, it refocused their attention
away from the lack and the scarcity
and it refocused their attention
toward the things that they have.
So they just started noticing
the blessings and provision
rather than the absences.
That's the only difference.
So this is just five minutes a day for one week.
Imagine how different our lives would be.
Imagine how different your outlook would be
if we did this every time we prayed.
If we simply took some time to thank God
for the things that He has given us.
And again, it's wonderful that this is beneficial.
But even if it weren't beneficial,
even if there were no psychological
or emotional benefits at all,
the truth is,
we should be thanking God
every single day continually
because everything that we have comes from Him.
Right?
This is all His.
He's entrusted things to us as stewards,
but it belongs to Him.
So we have adoration.
We have confession.
We have thanksgiving.
Now finally we come to Nehemiah's request.
Supplication.
Which simply means bringing our needs
and requests before the Lord.
Now I want you to do an experiment.
You don't have to do it right now.
Sometime over the next few days,
here's what I want you to do.
The next time you sit down to pray,
and if you've never prayed before,
try sitting down to pray.
The next time you pray,
before you pray,
right?
And this works especially well
if you know what you're praying for.
Maybe there's a test coming up
or a big presentation you have to give
or something that you're waiting on, right?
And you want to pray about it.
Before you pray,
take out a little piece of paper
and write down all of the things
that you're going to ask God for.
All your supplications.
Write that out first.
Then put that to the side.
And then spend some time
adoring and praising God
for His character,
confessing your sin
on as deep a level as you can,
and then thanking God
for all the ways
that He has blessed
and provided for you.
And then come back
to supplication.
And see if there isn't a shift
between what you would have said,
what you would have asked God for,
if you just went right into it,
versus where your heart is now.
You will be surprised
how often what you end up
asking God for
changes significantly
if you take time
to do these other things.
And I think maybe
that's why Nehemiah prays
such a massive, bold prayer.
Nehemiah asks God
to give him favor
with this pagan king
who could have him tortured
and killed like that.
And he asks God
to give him favor
so that this pagan king
will let Nehemiah
leave the court,
take Persian money
and resources,
and go lead
in the rebuilding
of the city of Jerusalem,
which represents a nation
that the Persians dominate.
He's saying,
God, make it possible
that this king
will simply hear this request
and say,
sounds good,
instead of having him
flayed and killed.
To even suggest such a thing
puts Nehemiah's life in danger.
We're going to look more
at that next week.
But here's the thing I think.
I think Nehemiah knows
that our God
is someone to whom
we can bring
any and every supplication
no matter how big or small.
Right?
Sometimes you will spend time
adoring, confessing,
thanking God,
and then you realize,
I don't actually need
to ask God for anything
because all I needed
was to be reminded
of who God is.
And now that I remember
that I trust Him,
I don't even need
to ask for anything.
Other times it might
be the opposite though.
Other times you might do that
and you might say,
the thing that I was going
to ask God for
is way too small.
Why do I think God
is so limited
in what He can do?
Now that I've reflected
on who He is
and all that He's done
in history,
my prayers need to get
a whole lot bigger.
And I think that's what
happens here with Nehemiah.
And Nehemiah realizes
you can bring any prayer
to God,
any supplication,
no matter how big or small.
Because when you pray
to the God of the Bible,
you're not asking God
to do something for you
on the basis of your merit.
You're asking God
to do something for you
on the basis of His mercy.
And there is a vast difference.
And this is something
we need to be reminded of
again and again and again
because I think a lot of times
we default into an approach
to God that assumes
it's based on our merit.
So maybe you come to God
and you say,
God,
I've done all these things
for you.
I've gone to church faithfully.
I serve at the homeless shelter.
I give 10% of my money
away to mission and ministry.
I pray every day.
The least you could do
for me is this.
I've done all these things
for you, God.
The least you could do.
Can you please just give me this one?
I've never asked you
for anything, God.
This is the only thing
I'll ever ask you for
and I've done all this for you.
Give it to me.
That's coming to God
on the basis of merit.
Or we might also say,
God, I know I've been
a horrible Christian
and I know you're really
fed up with me.
And I know I don't go to church.
I don't pray.
I don't do any of that.
If you do this thing,
I'm so sorry
and if you do this thing for me,
I promise that from now on
I'll go to church every week.
I'll pray.
I'll give my money away.
That's also a merit-based request, right?
God, on the basis of my merit,
on the basis of my goodness,
please give me X, Y, Z.
But our God, unlike other religions,
doesn't deal with us
according to our merit.
I mean, if He did,
we wouldn't have any hope.
God deals with us
on the basis of mercy.
And here's the difference, right?
Merit, and this is how
virtually all other religions work,
ancient or modern.
Merit-based prayer says this.
God, give me what I deserve
because of my goodness.
Give me what I deserve
because of my goodness.
Give me what I'm owed.
Mercy-based prayer says,
God, give me what I don't deserve
because of Your goodness.
It's completely opposite.
And God's goodness has no limits.
If I'm asking on the basis
of what I've done,
I don't have a right to ask.
If I'm asking God
on the basis of His goodness,
there's no limit to what I can ask.
There's no limit
because His goodness is limitless.
So there's no request
that is too small.
God, help me find a parking place.
I do pray for that.
You live in D.C.?
I do pray for that.
And I will tell you,
the most consistent answer
of prayer in my life
is probably parking spots.
I experience God goodness
every day on the streets of D.C.
But there's no request too big.
You know, I love that.
I love that phrase
that comes out of the
Harvard Business Review
or something.
You know, I can't remember
who first coined it.
Y'all probably do.
Big, hairy, audacious goals, right?
That we should always set
these big, hairy, audacious goals
for our businesses, right?
I love the idea
of a big, hairy, audacious prayer.
Just the biggest, craziest prayer
you could possibly think to pray.
Why not?
God's goodness is limitless.
It doesn't mean
He's going to give it to you.
God doesn't give us
everything that we ask for.
He gives us the things
we would ask for
if we knew everything He knows.
But here's the thing.
Every time you come to God
with your supplications
because you know He's good,
you honor Him.
You honor His goodness.
It glorifies His name
when you come to Him
with your supplications.
Every single time.
It delights Him.
And how much more
are these things true
for those of us
who know Jesus Christ?
We have access to God
in a way that Nehemiah
never could have imagined.
Jesus says,
because of what He's done,
when we come to God,
we can say,
oh Lord, oh awesome one,
that's great,
but Jesus says,
no, call Him Father.
Every time you pray,
you're crawling
into the arms of your Father.
and He delights,
He delights in that.
When we confess our sin
to this God
because of Jesus,
we're confessing to a God
who has already forgiven that sin.
He's already paid the price for it.
He's already dealt with it.
When we give thanks,
we're giving thanks
not only for the blessing
and provision we see in our lives,
but we're looking back
and we're giving thanks
for the cross,
which secures our safety,
secures our belongingness to God,
secures our future.
And ultimately,
when we bring our supplications,
we're bringing our supplications
to a God
who has already secured
our eternal inheritance,
who's already told us
how the story's gonna end.
So we have an access to God
that Nehemiah
could never even imagine.
I thought it was extremely important
for us to talk about prayer
and I'm so delighted
that Nehemiah chapter one
brings us immediately
into one of his prayers
to help us do that
because this year,
above all else,
my hope and my prayer
is that this is a year
of prayer for us.
Prayer is always an emphasis
in our church,
as it should be,
but this year,
we're going to be calling
all of you to join together
to make this a year of prayer.
First of all,
just as a direct ask,
I wanna ask that
if you're a regular part
of this church,
that you would commit
to praying every day
and that part of your prayer
would be praying
for this community
and praying for where we are
and where we're going,
that we would just be praying
together every day.
In addition to that,
I'm gonna invite you
if you would like,
Nehemiah prays
and he fasts
and we didn't have time
to get into fasting,
but we are gonna be sending out
some resources
on fasting this week.
The clergy,
the pastoral team,
we have been already,
because it's been
a challenging year
and because we feel like
there's a lot
of spiritual warfare,
we actually committed
some time ago
to fasting on Fridays
from either lunch
or breakfast and lunch
or the whole day,
but to fasting together
on Fridays
and to using that time
to intercede
for our church.
So every Friday
we fast and we pray.
And so I would just like
to extend the invitation
to you,
if you would like
to start practicing
a weekly fast
and you wanna do that
on Fridays with us,
please join in.
If that day doesn't work,
but you wanna pick another day,
that's great too.
You don't have to do it,
but we would like
to call our church
to fast and pray
throughout this year,
this year of preparation.
And then there,
in addition to that,
there's gonna be
monthly opportunities
to do prayer walks
in the Shaw neighborhood.
So every month
there'll be an opportunity
to go and to walk
not only around the building,
but around the neighborhood
and just praying
for what God might do,
praying for what God
is already doing.
And then we're gonna be
sending out a prayer guide,
sort of a prayer
and devotional guide
that's based on Nehemiah,
that's gonna help us
take some of these themes
and pray through them together
as a church community.
So I hope,
this is an encouragement to you,
and I hope you know
how much I've been praying
for you.
And I would,
and last thing I'll say,
I would really greatly appreciate it
if you would pray for me
and pray for our team
because we feel it
and we need it
and we are grateful for it.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you
for your word
and we thank you
for this example of Nehemiah
and we thank you
ultimately for Jesus,
the true and better Nehemiah.
Lord, and we pray
that even as this city
and this people,
they were rebuilt
through prayer.
Lord, we pray
that we would be rebuilt
and reconstituted
through prayer,
that you would meet us
in our prayers,
that in our times of prayer,
we would encounter you
in powerful,
maybe new ways.
We pray for your Holy Spirit
to bring a fresh life
and vitality
to our community.
We pray that in our prayers,
we would come to see you
more clearly,
come to see ourselves
more clearly.
Lord, that we would be convicted,
but that also we would be
washed clean
with your grace
in ways that maybe go beyond
what we've ever experienced before.
We pray that this would be
a praying community,
that this would be something
that we're known for, Lord,
that we are on our knees
interceding.
Lord, we pray that this would be
a work of your Spirit
and something that ultimately
glorifies you
and recognizes that you are the one
upon whom we depend
for all things.
We pray this in your Son's
holy name.
Amen.