This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Winter Springs, Florida. We're Reverend Kevin Labby as our senior pastor. This message is taken from Nehemiah chapter 1 verses 4-11 and is titled, praying for change. Now here's Kevin with today's message. Let's pray. Our great God and King, we thank you this day for your mercy and forgiveness in our lives as Jeff prayed just moments ago and we along with him. We confess to you our need of your grace for we know that as the church we are forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ, but we have a struggle day in and day out to say no to the flesh and yes to the spirit. And Father, as we contend with our flesh and seek to see in our lives the holiness that is now ours in Christ, Lord reassure us by your grace as we confess our sins that you are faithful and just to forgive us through the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Father, restore peace to our conscience and joy in the spirit, assure us of your love so that we can leave this place ready to serve you in our homes, in our schools, in our workplace, Father, in every area of life. Father, help us acknowledge the Lordship of your Son Jesus because he is our Savior. And we love because in him you first loved us. We pray for your glory in Jesus name. Amen. If you have your Bibles, would you open up in them to the book of Nehemiah chapter 1? We're going to be looking at verses 4 down through verse 11 this morning. Nehemiah 4, Nehemiah 1, rather, verses 4 through 11. Let me read to you these words. This is the word of God. As soon as I heard these words, I sat down in wept and mourned for days. And I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. And I said, O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive in 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 your servant Moses. Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, if you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen to make my name dwell there. They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name and give success to your servant today and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. Now I was cup-bearer to the king. Father, we thank you for these words. They are your word, inspired, infallible, and an errands powerful, and never returning to you void. Father, we pray this morning that they would be living and active in our hearts and in our minds together and as individuals that we might be transformed by the good news of the gospel of Jesus and set free to live a new kind of life and abundant life for your glory and the good of your people which is your glory. We pray it in Jesus name, amen. Well, it's been said that if you want to make a Christian lie, ask them about their prayer life. Do you find yourself struggling to stay focused in prayer to have a diligent day in and day out morning, noon, and night prayer life? If so, you are not alone. I am right there with you. Sometimes I feel like my prayer life is somewhat akin to an over-caffeinated monkey. I don't have the attention span. I'm always looking around. Sometimes my prayers begin with the noblest of intentions, veer off course, and only an hour or two later do I realize that I began a prayer and never finished. Sometimes I'll pray for the Lord to meet the needs of my family to help us to have the provision of daily food, for instance. And as I'm praying for food, I'll start to think about food. I'll start to think to myself, wow, Lord, it would be great if you not only provided food, but maybe a Papa John's pizza. And then I remember a commercial that was on for a special. And then I think to myself, you know, I better call now so that I can have it warm and ready by four o'clock when I go home. And then an hour or two later I realize, wow, I am so pathetic at prayer. Now, if you're judging me this morning for that, be careful. Because I think all of us probably struggle with those sorts of things. Prayer does not come easily to me as though it is something that's effortless. I have to strive to pray. And how sad that is. It should be the natural outgrowth of my love for the Lord, but so often times is very deficient. But God, he's good, isn't he? He always has a way of getting our attention. This isn't in the manuscript this morning because I added it about 15 minutes prior to the first service. As I was driving here, I don't even think my wife knows this yet. As I was driving here, I was praying for you, praying like an over caffeinated monkey. I started praying for you and then I was distracted. I started to think about other things. And then the Lord is grace snapped me back to reality and let me tell you how. Remember the Lord and His wise providence controls everything. Not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of God. Not a hair on your head falls without the will of God. So everything that happens is within the providence of Almighty God. And this morning God awakened me in my prayer life to providence because as I was driving down Tuscawilla, I realized that the hood to my car wasn't fully latched. And actually as I was distracted and prayerless, the hood flew open. Came back on the windshield, cracked the windshield of the car. And I got to tell you I was snapped right back into prayer within seconds. I cried out to God for His mercy and God was gracious. I was able to pull over and now pray for me now because my wife is a quizzical look interface. Are you serious? Did that really happen? It did. God is gracious toward our prayerlessness. He snaps us back toward reality sometimes through great discipline. Sometimes in gentleness. In every way the Lord's desire is that we would acknowledge Him, our dependence upon Him, and He is inviting us daily to love Him a little bit more every day as He loves us. When you think about how great it is that the Lord in His sovereign mercy, the Lord of heaven and earth has not only adopted you into His family by grace, but told you that you have His ear. That from your smallest care to your greatest concern, you can go before His throne in the heavenlies and you can whisper in His ear as a child whispers into the ear of His Father. And knows His Father will not only listen, but the heart of His Father is inclined toward His child and He will respond in love and grace. Now God is gracious to offer to us prayer, and as we'll see in the passage this morning He is also gracious to snap us back into reality when we are tempted to be prayerless. Several years ago there was a man right here in the state of Florida that I read about in the news. He was driving down an interstate without his seatbelt on. He may have been pulled over for a speeding ticket, but he found himself having another ticket for not wearing his seatbelt. And he was irate toward the state trooper. He tore into the state trooper and said, I have not won a seatbelt for 40 years. I find it uncomfortable, I find it confining. I don't want to wear a seatbelt. Who are you to tell me I have to wear one? Now we can leave that aside, but for the purpose of this morning I went to draw your attention to the fact that the man was not happy that he was being required to wear seatbelt. And the state trooper said, I don't care if you like it, it's for your own good. And even if it's for the good of your bank account, you should wear your seatbelt. He was charged a great fine, and then in the weeks after he decided to avoid another fine, not out of obedience to the law, not out of joyfully receiving the correction, but out of fear of punishment, he wore a seatbelt. It was only a couple of weeks later that the man was hit by another car, a horrible car accident that he only survived because he was wearing his seatbelt. Now the reason this made the news was because the man went public and actually sought out the state trooper to personally thank him for correcting him, disciplining him, and bringing him back within constraints that were designed ultimately for his good, not for evil. And so it is with God, God gives us commandments, does he not? God gives us commandments, and in we, in our sinful nature, we don't want to live inside those constraints, we want to defy those constraints because we think outside of them, we're going to find something that is good that the Lord is depriving us of. But time and time again, the Lord shows us when we move outside of those constraints, there's nothing good to find. In fact, somebody after the nine o'clock service shared with me that they like to teach their children, those entrusted their care, that principle by likening it to a fish within water. We are created to live within the water of God's love, his holiness, his commandments, and sometimes we tempt ourselves into thinking that by jumping out of the water of God's love, we'll find some sort of new life. Well, just as it's true, that only death and destruction will follow any fish that explores that option, so it is true with us. And so it is true of us down throughout history. You remember that Nehemiah was cup bearer to King Arthur Xerxes. He lived in a foreign land, though he was one of God's people, because prior to his birth and prior to his life, or rather prior to his ministry there, let me say this, God allowed his people to taste discipline. For centuries, they had ignored God's commandments. They had wandered outside of the protective confines God provided, and God told them there's nothing good to find outside those confines. The minute you go out there, if you will continue in them, you'll see the destruction, because I'll let you taste it. Not to the point of your ultimate destruction, but just enough to show you that there's nothing to find out there. And then I will gather you and bring you back when you've learned, through repentance that I've given you these commands and this fellowship for your good, not for evil. Nehemiah lived in that foreign land because foreign nations had descended upon God's people, destroyed their temple, destroyed the walls surrounding their great city, and carried them off into exile. And now for years, God's people were spiritually dry and desolate. They were demoralized and hurting. They had chosen to live outside of God's constraints and tasted the destruction that comes from it. And now in Nehemiah's life, he's faced with a question. And the question faces us today. How do we move beyond spiritual dryness and desolation to new lives of vitality and spiritual vibrancy? How do we see the rivers of God's love and grace again unleashed into our lives so that we might be filled to overflowing in those waters, escape our lives and flow out into every sphere of life that we touch? How do we see times of dryness and desolation come to an end? Well, what we're going to see in Nehemiah is a pattern, a pattern of God's grace. We're going to see that God has ends for our lives, things that He desires for us, but that He has means for those ends. It's not enough merely to desire God's blessings, we need to avail ourselves to the means that God has provided for us to take hold of those blessings. Every end of God, purpose and plan in our lives has an appointed means. And as we return to the means of God's grace, so we can expect to see God's grace lavished into our lives. So the first thing we see in verse four is that Nehemiah availed Himself to one of the principal means of God's grace in our lives and that is prayer. So often times we deprive ourselves of many blessings because we don't ask for them as we'll see. And Nehemiah, unlike so many of his contemporaries, returns to the Lord in prayer. Now, we said the situation in Nehemiah's day was bleak. The church was ravished on every side. It was taken apart into various nations. And when we look around the church in America today and in the West in Europe, we see a church in many ways similar. The circumstances different, but the symptoms much the same. A church that's dry and desolate, a church that is ministering oftentimes in many quarters without any sense of purpose or vibrancy. As Nehemiah returns to the Lord in prayer, perhaps God is showing us a pattern that should we follow in obedience, might become for us a channel of His blessing. Nehemiah prayed, he mourned, he cried, he fasted, and he prayed. Martin Luther once said this, listen to this quote, Martin Luther, you remember a father of the Protestant Reformation so many centuries ago. He said audacious prayer, which perseveres unflinchingly. And cease is not through fear, is well pleasing unto God. As a shoemaker makes a shoe, or a tailor makes a coat, so ought a Christian to pray. Prayer is the daily business of a Christian. Now for many of us as Christians, we know that. We know that we should pray, and we feel no small amount of guilt when we don't pray. We know the obligation is there, we know the commandment is there, and we try to struggle in our wills to summon the courage and the discipline to pray. But what we see in the Bible is that prayer among God's most vibrant servants, among those who are filled and consumed with the love of God, prayer is not a chore. It's not an obligation, it's not merely something summoned through the power of the will, it's a natural outgrowth of affection for God. You remember that King David set prayers to music. Those prayers are now in the book of Psalms in the Bible. We remember that Elijah prayed to God in the wilderness, and his darkest, most depressed time, he turned to the Lord in prayer, seeking an intimate communion with the Lord and an enjoyment of his fellowship. You remember that Daniel prayed three times a day facing east toward Jerusalem, looking for the restoration of God's people, believing in the hope of the gospel message. You remember that Jesus, in love for his father, quietly withdrew from the crowds, sought solitary places, and he prayed. You remember that Paul says he strove in prayer for those to whom he minister. Martin Luther, I mentioned before, rose to pray early in the morning. He prayed oftentimes for hours. He prayed diligently throughout the day and even into the night. So pervasive was prayer in his life and why. Not out of obligation, not out of an exercise of the will, for Martin Luther came to that glorious truth of the gospel that we cannot make ourselves more secure before the throne of God through our efforts. But we can enjoy the grace of God more through our efforts. The gospel is not opposed to our efforts. The gospel frees us in our striving to take hold of what we now have in Christ. And Nehemiah was no different. In fact, he's a premier example. He loved the Lord so much he was drawn to him in prayer. By comparison, how little do we in the 21st century church oftentimes pray? How little do we as those who claim to love our father in heaven so oftentimes seek his ear? And should we expect a different kind of church? And if we never ask the Lord for it, should we expect vibrant lives of spiritual vitality if we don't take the time to petition our father who invited us to enter into his throne room of grace, ask for these things, and then promise us if we would pray anything according to his will, we would receive it. Should we expect anything else? Many times I think we don't pray because we wrongly confuse prayer within activity. We're a nation of doers, aren't we? We're people who have, we have a mantra, get her done. We want to get things done. And when we see something needful in the church, we want to spring into action. We think that prayer is perhaps a waste of time. We don't see in prayer an action so much as a restful resignation. But that's not how the Bible describes prayer. Colossians 4, verse 12, Paul is speaking to the church at Colossi and he mentions one of his fellow servants for the gospel, a man named Apaphris. And listen to how Paul describes the prayer life of Apaphris. Apaphris, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, listen carefully, since greetings, he is always wrestling in prayer for you. Wrestling. Now the translation there is kind of a dynamic equivalence. It's seeking to capture the nuance of the Greek word used there. But the Greek word used there is actually a word from which we get our English word, agony. A striving to the point of agony in prayer for the church at Colossi. Prayer in the scriptures is not described as inactivity. It's actually described as perhaps the height of spiritual warfare. When the children of God approach the throne of God, the gates of hell tremble. When the people of God come together in prayer and petition their father according to his revealed will, the gates of hell know that the father will answer according to his will. When the church is slumbering, dry and desolate, and the people of God feel the quickening love of God in their heart and express that in love and prayer, we can look to the future with renewed hope. But a prayerless church is a dry and desolate church. A prayerless Christian is a dry and desolate Christian. So Nehemiah recognizes the problem and knows that the end of God, the plan and purpose of God is not for a church that looks so scattered, so destroyed, so desolate. He knows that the plan and purpose of God, the will of God, is a church that is vibrant, and so he avails himself to one of the principal means of God's grace, prayer. But notice it's not only that Nehemiah prays. It's the manner of his prayer. We can do something outwardly and not really do it inwardly, is it true? Remember Jesus recounted the Pharisees? They were very good at prayer. They prayed morning, noon, and night. In their prayers were a stench in the nostrils of God. They were an annoyance in his ears, and Jesus wasted no time to let the Pharisees know. Oh, forget it. He's not listening. These prayers are awful. They're rooted in self-righteousness. They're rooted in show-iness and superficial religion. These are prayers that flow from the heart. They're prayers that flow from self-interest and self-promotion. Not love of God. Nehemiah's prayer can be contrasted against that. Can it not? Verse 5. Then I said, O Lord, God of heaven, listen, the great and awesome God. Nehemiah prays, but he prays first with reverence. He knows with whom he's speaking, because he's taken the time to remember the awesomeness of his God. Who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commandments, let your ear be attentive in your eyes open to hear the prayer. Your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. Nehemiah reflects on God's love for his covenant people. And as John said in the New Testament, we love because he first loved us. He responds in love. He reflects with reverence upon his great God and approaches him with reverence. And says to the Lord, hear my prayer. Hear my prayer, O great and awesome God. His motivation is not self-centered. His motivation is God-centered. He is so filled with the glory of God and a love for God, a passion for God and a compassion for God's people that he desires only what God would have. Remember what James said, James chapter 4 verse 3. He said this of our prayer lives. He said when you ask, you don't receive why? Because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. The self-centered prayer life is not pleasing to God and God in his love will not indulge it. The Christ-centered prayer life. The reverent prayer life is that to which God is calling us. Because only then does it really evidence within our hearts and minds that we understand the grace that we've received. And God in his mercy will bring us to that realization sometimes by not indulging other kinds of prayers. It was for that reason that the prophet Isaiah was inspired of God to critique God's people during his age and their prayerfulness. The Lord spoke through him and said these words, Isaiah 11-17. The multitude of your sacrifices. What are they to me, says the Lord? I have more than enough burn offerings of rams, of fat and calves and animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who's asked this of you? This trampling of my courts. Stop bringing meaningless offerings. Your incense is detestable to me. New moons, Sabbaths and convocations. I can't bear your evil assemblies. Your new moon festivals, your appointed feast, my soul hates. They've become a burden to me. I'm weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the Fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. God is no fool. It's not enough to pray. By grace, we must be brought to reverence. We must stand in the awe of God's majesty and love in forgiving us. And then approaching in him in humility, God will lift us up. Remember what the Bible said? God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Nehemiah has looked at the destruction, wrought into the lives of God's people through their prayerlessness, through their self-reliance. And he's brought to a position of reverence and humble submission. And so we see that Nehemiah is not only brought to pray with reverence. He's brought to pray with remorse. He says, I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you. We've acted very wickedly toward you. We've not obeyed the commands, decrees, and laws. You gave your servant Moses. Nehemiah is brought to a place of contrition before God. He sees the destruction in his own life and in the lives of God's people. And he knows the cause. Does not rest with the Lord, it rests with them. And then almost is though laying on the ground, exposing his jugular toward the Lord a position of absolute dependence and surrender. He says that they have acted very wickedly. They deserve nothing from the Lord except his wrath. But for grace he pleads. Now the Bible tells us the same of us as we look to the church in America and in the west as we look at our own lives so oftentimes dry and desolate, that if we would confess to the Lord our sin he will forgive. If we will confess to the Lord that we have deprived ourselves of the means of his grace and for that reason we're so dry and desolate he will open the floodgates of heaven and pour back into our lives what we have deprived ourselves of for so long. Listen to these words John was inspired to say so many centuries ago. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we would confess the Lord will forgive and with growing remorse born of reverence the brokenness that is in our lives the dryness the desolation will by God's grace be healed. The church will grow to new life in vibrancy for God has pledged it. So Nehemiah knows God's great pledge and he calls to the Lord's attention through remembrance that great pledge. Verse 8 remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses saying if you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the nations. Verse 9. But if you return to me and obey my commands then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my name. They are your servants and your people whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. We are the people of God. The church today is so oftentimes dry and desolate because we have wandered from the Lord. We have not desired to use the means that he is appointed to achieve his ends but if we would confess he will forgive. And though we be scattered, though we be dry and desolate he will gather and he will refresh because our God is a gracious God. The writer of Hebrews declared this of Jesus, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. But we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are yet without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. There is deep remorse here, there is deep regret, there is reverence, there is remembrance but there is no fear. Nehemiah approaches to confess the sins of his house and his people boldly because he knows with whom he speaks and in whom he trusts. And we know the same. But I want you to notice finally that Nehemiah is not trifling with the Lord in these words. He is sincere, he is serious and he is ready to act. So must we be as we approach the Lord in prayer. Remember what the Bible says, when we pray we should not be double-minded, we should be of singular mind. And Jesus said that the kingdom is not fit for those who would put their hand to the plow and look back. We must be singularly minded and focused. We must set our face toward the new Jerusalem just as Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem to accomplish the will of God for us in his life. So verse 11 shows us that Nehemiah is ready to act. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this year's servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man, that is King Art of Xerxes, I was cup bearer to the King. Nehemiah is praying not merely for the Lord to pour out the blessing of grace into his life. Nehemiah is praying that the grace poured into his life would be an enabling grace to bring the grace of God into the lives of those around him. Through a faith not merely of belief but of action. These are prayers of reverence, remembrance and repentance. And if we so captivated by love's grace, or God's love and grace would offer those prayers, we have every confidence that the Lord will answer. And that's my encouragement for us together. A point of application for us as Willow Creek Presbyterian Church is we together need to go before the throne of our God in heaven and plead in stand between a church that is dry and desolate in America and in the West and plead before the throne of our father in heaven and ask him to pour out the grace that we have deprived ourselves of. Through our lack of obedience, our trust in self over trust and savior. I want to encourage you to pray this day in coming weeks, not out of guilt for you have none in Christ, not out of fear because perfect love drives out fear. But to pray out of love and affection for the God who loves you enough to say, if you ask anything in my name, I will answer it according to my will. And you know what the will of God is because He's told you it's not that you be dry and desolate, it's that you would be filled to overflowing with the Spirit and if you're not, and if I'm not, it is not because God has failed. It's because we have not availed ourselves to the means of God's grace through which He pours that grace into our lives. As a first step, let's pray together. Our great God and King, we thank you for your mercy this morning. And we thank you, Father, that your grace, like treasure, is stored up for us in heaven and Father, to avail ourselves to those, to those mercies only requires that we avail ourselves to the grace of prayer. As we meditate upon your Word and join together in fellowship, taking hold of prayer, Lord, the ordinary means of your grace come into our lives and you breathe new life into your church. And Father, we pray for our nation, even as darkness and evil seems to prevail in so many ways, Father, we pray that your church would be quickened to new affection for you. And Lord, loving you, we would love one another and loving one another, we would love our neighbors as ourselves and Lord the healing power of the gospel would come to bear in our culture in a fresh and new way. And Father, we pray that as we look back upon your rich and lavish mercy in our lives, we would see how you were faithful to answer the prayers of your people. And Lord, that we would pray, help us in our unbelief to pray to you in faith, we pray it in Jesus' name, Amen. Willow Creek Church is associated with the Presbyterian Church in America, our website is www.willowcreekchurch.org and our phone number is 407-699-82-11.