Get Off Your Knees and Pray
Nehemiah 1:4-11
Introduction
In every area of life, but especially in trying to live the Christian life, people tend to extremes. It is either all this way or all that way. As we have been looking at prayer, this can be seen here as well. There are those who believe that everything is done by prayer. That sounds rather spiritual, but how does that look? If you take it to the extreme, there would be no need to share your faith. Just pray for them and let God do the work. Have a neighbour in need? Suffering financially and unable to feed their family? Don’t bother bringing a grocery hamper, just pray for them. What about your own needs? Why bother getting a job? Just stay in prayer and let God pay the bills. Do you see the problem? Then there is the other extreme. There are those who say God helps those who help themselves. There is a grain of truth in that but what most people mean by that is that it is up to us to make things happen. There is no point to pray. Things happen only by determination, effort, work and human ability. God might watch us make things happen but that is as far as his involvement goes. How do we get beyond these extremes of either leaving everything to God or leaving everything to us? One of the best examples is that of Nehemiah. It is important to have some background. Judah had been conquered by Babylon and many of the Jews had been exiled. The Persians conquered the Babylonians and they had a different policy. The Persians ended the official exile and allowed all Jews who wanted to, to return, to go back to their homeland. One might think that was all that was needed. However, the return was not going well. There was no real infrastructure in Judah and there were hostile people around. The walls of Jerusalem had been torn down and the Temple was destroyed. The joy of the end of the exile had turned into despair at the horrible conditions facing the returning Jews. Nehemiah, who served in the court of the Persian king, prayed about this desperate situation.
First Stage
How do we pray in such situations? There are two stages. The first is to actually pray. As we look at Nehemiah’s prayer, we can see many of the same things we have seen in Hezekiah’s prayer and Daniel’s prayer. Nehemiah does not just say “Dear God, this is what I want.” Biblical prayers spend some time describing the character of God. This is not about “buttering up” God, that is saying enough nice things that he will be more likely to respond. Rather, it is a way of reminding us who we are praying to. God is not just a generic force. God is a being with a personality and characteristics. We pray to him, aware of what he has done in the past and how he has revealed himself. This should strengthen our faith as we pray. Nehemiah also confesses the sins of the people, including himself in this. There is no hint that Nehemiah was a bad person or that he was personally responsible for the exile. But like Daniel, when he intercedes for his people, he stands with them in repentance. Nehemiah also requests that God act in favor of his people. Nehemiah is not praying just because he wants to sound spiritual. He has something specific in mind and he actually expects God to respond in some way. That is Nehemiah’s prayer. A good reminder but not really that different from what we have seen before.
Second Stage
My favorite part of this prayer is what happens immediately after the prayer. As soon as Nehemiah ends his prayer, he says “I was cupbearer to the king.” This is really interesting. First of all, you must realize that the chapters and verses did not originate with the biblical authors. At some point, someone thought this phrase belonged, not only in the same chapter, but in the same verse as the end of this prayer. I think they were right. The reason for this is that every prayer is prayed in a life context. When we pray, we do not pray floating in a vacuum. We pray in a community, in a family situation, in an economic state, within a work situation and so on. We cannot divorce our prayer from this life situation. So here we have Nehemiah. Nehemiah says his “amen” and gets off his knees. That is not to say that prayer time is done. It just shifts gears and forms. Nehemiah both prayed and was cupbearer to the king. As cupbearer, Nehemiah had an important role. The king trusted Nehemiah with his life. Nehemiah had an important connection. He had the opportunity to explain to the king the situation of the Jews in Jerusalem. The king asked Nehemiah what we would like, knowing that his people were suffering. Nehemiah could have said “Don’t worry, I just had some nice prayer time and I am sure God will take care of things. Your assistance is not required.” That is not what Nehemiah did. We find in Nehemiah 2:4, that Nehemiah responds by praying. It does not give us the content of his prayer, but I suspect it went something like this: “Hello God? Is this you? Is this your way of answering my prayer?” Confident that this was indeed God, Nehemiah went on to give a bold request to the Persian king as to what he needed to relieve the plight of his people.
What is the lesson for us? We need to pray. There are situations that are beyond our power or resources. We need God to perform some miracle to help us or help those we care about. So we get on our knees and pray. But things do not end when we get off our knees. What are we supposed to do? Look around and see the context in which you have prayed. You know there is a need, the question is: can God use you to help meet that need? You know there is a grieving widow or widower. You pray for them. But perhaps you could visit them as well. We have a burden for people overseas who have not heard the Gospel. We pray for the missionaries, but perhaps we could send money or go on a short-term mission trip ourselves. You need a job. Who among your friends might have connections that God could use? I want to make things clear. I am not saying after you pray, the pressure is on you to answer your own prayer. What I am saying is that we need to look and see who are we a cupbearer to. That is, what is there within our own context that God could be using to already answer our prayer? We want revival in our church? It might not be by praying some new person or group into our church, it could be seeing in a new light the resources we already have.
Conclusion
Pray. Pray on your knees. Pray off your knees. We dare not fall into the extremes of prayer. It is not about being completely passive, dumping our problems onto God and letting him deal with it. It is not about taking care of things ourselves, forgetting about God. We need to pray to God, trusting that he will be there for us, that he will intervene in some sort of way. But when we open our eyes, we need to look around. Perhaps God is already at work to answer our prayer. Perhaps someone or something around us is the key to the answer. Perhaps we are the key to the answer. Watch for what God is doing and join with him. Get off your knees and pray.
