First Step | Pastor Chris Kouba

All right, grab your Bibles.

Nehemiah chapter one.

Nehemiah chapter one is where we're going to be today and over the course of the next six next six weeks.

Want to encourage you to make sure that you get familiar with being able to find the book of Nehemiah as not only we walk through it the next six weeks, but hopefully it could be something that in your own time with the Lord, if you're looking for something that you want to read, this is a great book for you to get ahead and to begin to walk with us as we walk this journey together over the course of the next six weeks and just really excited to see how God is going to move.

I want to take the opportunity to welcome all the men and women at our correctional facilities, those that are joining us online.

Let's give them a hand, all those on the other side of the camera.

And we so are grateful for you and the opportunity to be able to be here.

Whether you like it or not, in Northeast Houston, summer is over.

Like it's over.

I know it doesn't feel like it's over.

It feels like it we're in the middle of it.

I mean, it is brutally hot outside.

This is kind of that about six-week stretch where it's just not fun to live in Houston, but it is what it is, all right?

We we deal with it because we know on the backside of it it's gonna be nice.

But I'm telling you, this is kind of in the middle of that stretch.

But here's the crazy thing.

They no one asked us.

I don't remember when I agreed to the change that has been put in place, but school starts Wednesday.

Like it's already back.

Do you remember when we used to start school like after Labor Day?

Like it felt like it was forever ago.

And it's just inched, moved up.

No one's told us about it.

And now, some of you are probably, you know, maybe if you're a student, you may not be super excited.

Some of your parents are like, I've been waiting for this day for 60 days.

Like I've been wanting this moment.

For some of you teachers, maybe you're a little more reluctant.

I don't know what your story is, but there's no question about it.

There is something though, even if you may not love school, there's an excitement about the start of a school year.

It kind of just represents a freshness, a fresh start.

In our house, we've already been having the whole conversation about the schedules and who you got classes with and all of those types of things.

Uh, maybe your situation is you're either going to a new grade, but also a new school.

You're gonna be able to have new classmates, you're gonna be able to have a new team.

There's a lot of freshness and newness that comes with the start of the fall.

The Texans have already had a football game, and so therefore, like NFL seems to kind of be starting.

Like, there's all these things that point to this.

Maybe for you are like, look, I work every day.

I don't even know what summer is, I don't even think about that kind of stuff.

That is not on my radar.

Maybe you don't have kids, and so you didn't know school was going to be starting.

I promise you, those that you're around, they know very much so that this is the case.

And kind of with that, there always comes along this excitement and this kind of new clothes idea of making sure that I get some fresh threads to be able to go off to school and to be able to have that experience, right?

You're all this excitement that goes into this.

Maybe at the office, there's new initiatives that you guys are gonna finally roll out that maybe you had planned all year long, but you haven't got to.

And so now in these last two quarters, the idea is that I'm gonna be able to go and to get these things accomplished.

We don't know what all the things are, but we do know this.

There's something about the fall that just represents a fresh start.

And today what we want to talk about is how you can start off well when you get a fresh start.

We're gonna be looking at the book of Nehemiah, and we're gonna be looking at this for the next six weeks, and I want to encourage you to do everything in your power to prioritize your attendance over the course of the next six weeks.

We do this once a year where we get all of our groups all on the same page, and we all go and do what we're doing here in the main service.

And so I just want to encourage you to help join with us in this journey.

Last year, we actually walked through the same kind of idea in a series called The Journey through looking at the character of Joshua.

And we talked about the importance of being a leader.

And this year we're gonna do the very same thing in the book of Nehemiah.

In fact, I want to ask, hopefully, whenever you came, you uh show me your journals.

Hopefully, you had them in your seats.

Awesome.

Hey, David, I'm getting a ton of feedback up here if I if you can help me on that.

Uh let me see your journals.

This is awesome.

So here's what I want to ask you to do, okay?

I want to ask you to open them up to page five.

And uh on page five, if you would do us a favor and just get ready to take some notes.

Because here's the idea.

We want to make sure that throughout this series that you take notes so that you can be prepared when you go to your group, which, by the way, a little plug for group, if you're not in a group, this is a perfect opportunity for you to jump into a group.

Like it's a perfect time for you to do that because all of us are gonna be going through the book of Nehemiah.

And so I want to encourage you to bring this every week.

Our goal is not to give you a new journal every single week, all right?

Our goal is instead that you would bring this with you and that you would use it in your own personal reflection time with the Lord this week to begin to think about some of the things that we've talked about, but also in order for you to take notes.

I'm gonna prompt you on some things as you take notes in the message series today.

So make sure you get your journals out and that you are ready to go.

We're gonna talk to you today, and this whole series is about leadership.

We're in desperate need of leaders, leaders in our culture.

We need leaders in our workplaces, we need leaders in our schools, we need leaders in our communities, we need leaders in our churches, we need leaders in our homes.

And whether you realize it or not, you are a leader.

If you have influence over others, you're a leader.

If you have responsibility over other people, you are a leader.

Maybe you're a leader at work, maybe you're a leader at school, maybe you're a leader in the community.

Some of you, the hardest part of this series is going to be coming to this realization that regardless of whether you have leadership abilities or a leadership position where you can clearly point to these are the people that I'm responsible for, or these are the people that I have influence for, here's one thing I know to be true.

You have the ability to have responsibility and influence over your own life.

And because of that, even if it's only you leading yourself, you are a leader.

In fact, I'm gonna ask you to get your journals out, and I want you to write there on the very first line of the notes section this very important phrase.

I am a leader.

I am a leader.

For some of you, you're like, oh yeah, I eat leadership for breakfast.

I've read 15 leadership books already this year.

I love leadership.

I go to continuing education courses in my office in order to help grow as a leader.

I'm always seeking leadership positions, and that's great.

For some of you, the very fact that you just wrote that down, the biggest step over the course of the next six weeks is that you would believe it.

It's that you would actually embrace it.

It's that you would actually see that God desires to use people to do things that he can easily do without you.

But he does it because he desires to invite us into a journey of leadership.

For the next six weeks, we want to talk to you about how to build something as a leader.

Have you ever wanted to build something or rebuild something?

We are in the middle of building projects here at United City Church.

You probably noticed that whenever you came in.

If you're a guest with us, this is not usually how we set up our worship center with all the bad sight lines and all the things.

We're in the middle of a construction project where we are adding stadium seating to our worship center.

It's incredible.

If you were to see behind the wall just what's in place already, you kind of notice as you walked in, you kind of get a little bit of an idea of what those are gonna be hallways, basically, as you walk in now that are gonna have seats over it.

It's pretty incredible to think about this.

Once this is gonna be complete, we'll open this up, and then we're gonna build two walls in the corners of our worship center, and we're gonna build those over there.

So it's gonna be a constant building project.

We're hoping to be done uh by Thanksgiving, Christmas sometime around there.

Uh on the north side, you may have noticed we're in the middle of a construction project over there.

We've ripped up all of the concrete and we've ripped up the street and we've ripped up the entrance, and I mean, it's kind of all things are going on there where we're gonna be adding 20,000 square feet of turf to basically extend our commons area outside of this building, out over there, and allow us to have more body life opportunities as a church to be together.

It's very, very exciting.

But all of that is also something that requires a lot of thought, a lot of planning, and a lot of execution.

Think about this.

School starts this coming week, and we know that teams are gonna start building their chemistry.

They're gonna start being around each other, they're gonna start practicing, they're gonna kind of kind of see uh who left and who's gonna be back and what that's gonna look like.

You're gonna have students that are gonna start building their resume, students that are gonna start building their GPA with those first quizzes and those first tests.

Maybe you're in the middle of trying to build or rebuild a marriage, or build or rebuild a relationship.

Maybe you're at an interesting point in your career where you are now faced with a situation where maybe you've done something for a certain while, but you want to do something different.

How do you get from here to over there?

You are building your career, you are rebuilding that career.

Maybe you're trying to build or you're trying to rebuild a ministry that you're either a part of or that you feel God's leading you to start.

Throughout this series, we're gonna explore and look at leadership and show you from the book of Nehemiah how you can build something.

We're gonna see the necessary steps to take things that are broken and in ruins and actually make them into something great.

This morning we're gonna look at the first step that's needed in that process.

Take out your journals.

Underneath that next line, I want you to write down this phrase.

I want to build blank.

Or maybe for you, the answer is I want to rebuild blank.

I don't want you to overanalyze this.

I don't want you to necessarily spend a ton of time getting locked up on it, but I do, we're gonna talk to you a little bit about how you come to a vision that God was gonna give you.

But I want to want you to do is just the first immediate thing that comes to your mind.

I want to build what?

I want to rebuild what?

What's your blank?

Is it your marriage?

Is it your finances?

Is it your career?

Maybe you want to build a relationship with the Lord.

You you know him, you've you you've got a ro you you've you've you've given your life to Jesus, but you don't really have any kind of walk with Jesus.

Maybe you want to rebuild your house.

Literally.

Like your house a couple of weeks ago had some damage to it, and so therefore, the last thing, the only thing you're thinking about when it comes to building is contractors and getting them at the house as quick as they possibly can so that you can get that ball rolled.

Maybe some of you you want to rebuild your reputation.

Maybe you want to build your credibility.

Maybe some of you want to build your family time.

You just don't like how it all plays out right now, and you would love to see it different.

Maybe for some of you, you want to build your basketball game, whatever sport you may be playing.

Whatever the answer is, what I want you to do is I want you to write down what is it that I feel like I want to build?

What is it that I want to rebuild?

Because the principles that I plan to share with you are gonna be very generic.

But my prayer is that the application that you would take away from it will be very specific.

That what you wrote down would be something that you could see, okay, God either desires to do this and he's gonna do it like I've asked them to, or God desires to change this and give me something better if I knew better to ask in the first place.

Regardless, he wants us to consider how he wants to use us as we go forward.

We're gonna look and learn from one of the great builders of all time, the man named Nehemiah.

Before we jump in, let me give you some context and some history to know what we're talking about.

God had a chosen group of people named the Israelites, who he had given a land, he had given blessing, he had given favor, and he told them that through the nation of Israel, his chosen people, all the other nations would be blessed.

When he told them this promise that he had given to them, he didn't just do it without any conditions.

He instead gave it to them with some very clear conditions, which was you needed to follow after me, you needed to serve me and me only, and if you do so, then I will continue to allow you to be my chosen people, blessed by God in order to bless other people.

And if you don't, and if you rebel, then I will bring judgment upon you and the people.

Things seemed to be going really, really well whenever King Solomon was in charge and he builds this amazing temple, and this temple was designed to offer up sacrifices and offer up uh offerings up to the Lord, and things seemingly were going really, really well as the people were following after God.

The problem was King Solomon, and instead of just building the temple, he also began to date foreign wives, something he was explicitly told not to do, because ultimately those relationships meant that he would eventually fall prey to some of the foreign pagan gods that those foreign wives served.

And so now what you see is King Solomon bringing this beautiful temple, but he also brings in all of these other gods, and he begins to say, Hey, you can worship these other gods, and you can worship uh Israel, uh the God of Israel at the temple, but the problem was God says you can't do that.

And so, in light of that, he ended up bringing the judgment upon the kingdom.

He did that by ultimately splitting the kingdom into two, and now the kingdom, instead of being in Jerusalem, in the land, with the temple, with the sacrifices, find themselves in pagan nations, and all of a sudden all of their customs and ideas begin to get morphed into the pagan cultures.

586 BC was kind of a hallmark of all of this judgment, and that took place whenever the nation of Babylon comes into Jerusalem and destroys the temple, bringing it into ruins and exiles the people, takes them out of their land and into the land of Babylon.

We see that there are some Jews that were left, a remnant is what it says, in the city of Jerusalem.

But these remnant, they were not trying to restore the temple, they were not trying to restore the sacrifices, they were not trying to restore the land.

They instead were doing the exact same things that got their people exiled in the first place.

In every conceivable way, Jerusalem is politically, socially, and spiritually in ruins.

This is the backdrop of the book of Nehemiah.

Let's begin reading Nehemiah chapter 1, beginning in verse 1.

Nehemiah 1 · chapter mention

It says the words of Nehemiah, the son of Hakaliah.

Now it happened in the month of Kislev in the 20th year, as I was in Susa, the capital, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah.

And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem.

And they said to me, The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame.

The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and the gates, its gates are destroyed by fire.

Situation is bad.

Skip down to verse 11.

Specifically the last verse, last sentence of verse 11.

It says, Now I was cupbearer to the king.

Situation is a mess, but Nehemiah finds himself in an influential position to do something about it.

It says that he was the cupbearer to the king.

Let me explain to you what that means.

That means that whenever they had a meal that would be brought before the king, Nehemiah would drink of the wine and he would eat of the food.

And if he lived, then the king knew it wasn't poison, and so he could eat.

And if he died, that meant that it was poison and then the king wouldn't eat it.

Sounds like a pretty interesting job, isn't it?

All right.

Not exactly something that you on the surface would think, man, how do I get that job?

Like that's career goals right there.

I want to build up to that.

What I want you to know though is it was actually at the time a very admirable position because of the access that it gave someone to the king.

Basically, he's like his chief of staff.

He's around all the time, he's near him all the time.

So, therefore, naturally, there was an opportunity to ask advice, and it was naturally an opportunity to have influence and have the ear of the king.

And so ultimately, Nehemiah has to choose.

Is he gonna leverage his influence as a leader for the cause of his people who have their homeland in ruins and there is no one following after God?

In this case, I think it's interesting.

It's not just a building project, it's a rebuilding project.

I've done both.

I've built a house from scratch, and then I've also had an opportunity to rebuild a house.

And I would tell you, I feel like personally, rebuilding something is way harder than building something brand new.

Uh building something brand new is exciting.

You get to be able to see uh something come out of nothing.

When you rebuild something, one of the things you have to do is you actually have to take away things that are there in order to build something else up in its place.

This past week was kind of an interesting uh time frame as we were kind of going through this whole project.

If you've kind of noticed, we've got this beautiful stone that we actually installed five years ago on the corners over here as you kind of leave.

And we had to rip all of it up.

There's nothing wrong with it, but it was gonna need to be out of the way so that we could put in new things.

And it was just looking at this whole thing, thinking, like, ah, you're just you're taking something that's really, really nice and really, really good, and you're just kind of tearing it all down.

On the other hand, at the beginning of this project, when you notice the walls that are basically kind of exposed and ripped out, we began to do some of the demo work on there, and we found some things behind the wall that we did not know was there, that we needed to know was there.

We had to get on it and get it fixed really quickly.

It costs money and it costs time and all the things that normally go along with the rebuilding project.

What I want you to see is this as you begin to think through what you're building, and as you begin to think through what you're rebuilding, be prepared to go two steps forward and one step back.

You need to just give your heads up.

You're gonna, along the way, have to take away good things in order to get a great thing.

Along the way, what you're also gonna discover is there's some things that you have kept quiet and you have kept hidden.

You wanted no one to see, that get exposed and get brought out to the light, and those things are the things that must also be dealt with.

Let's talk about though how do you get a good fret, a start when you're building or rebuilding something.

Look at what it says in Nehemiah chapter 1, verse 4.

Nehemiah 1:4

As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days.

And I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

The little bubble that is there in your journal, the main point, main takeaway that I want you to write down today is this leaders lead from their needs.

Leaders lead from their need.

Can I give you a little heads up?

You actually could ignore this and still be successful as a leader.

Like straight up.

If you just skip this all together, you probably could build something that you could be proud of.

You might have a career that makes some money.

You might have a marriage that stays together.

You might have a family that is fine to be with each other in certain settings.

But what I want you to see is this the goal of the next six weeks is not to give you business management principles that you can read in some secular book or get with some continuing education class that you're off.

But my desire is that we actually hear from God and do what he wants to do.

Because spiritual leadership is something, if you look at the very front of your journal, is something that will last.

It's something that's gonna go far beyond fixing your immediate circumstances and your situation.

In fact, what you may discover is the thing that you wrote down is what you want God to build or you want to rebuild is gonna be so short-sighted compared to what God actually wants to do and what God actually desires.

And so I want to tell you, I'm not trying to suggest that you can't be successful at the office unless you start leading from your knees.

But what I will tell you is you're only gonna get as far as you can go.

And eventually you're gonna see that ain't that far.

But if you want to see what we sang about at the very first song, heaven here on earth, the Lord's Prayer, what does it say?

It says, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We are inviting the God of heaven to come into our situation to either bless what he looks at and says is good, or for him to change what he knows is best, but ultimately what we're doing is we're leading out of a power source where God is the one who gets the glory and the honor in our lives and in our situations.

Not just that we're savvy business leaders.

You gotta hear me, folks.

Some of you are crazy good business people, and you still may go to hell.

Some of you are savvy, really sharp ability to manage and lead people, but at the end of the day, you're not gonna be right before your God.

And what I long for you to experience is not just how to make sure that you can fire people and how you can hire people with success.

But instead, that you would be led by God in every area of your life.

This isn't just a leadership series so that we can have better leaders at the church.

We think that'll be a side benefit.

The main reason that we do this is so that we can have better leaders than Chevron and better leaders at Shell, and better leaders at the hospital, and better leaders at the school, where they realize God has placed me sovereignly in those places for the purposes that are far greater than a paycheck or an identity.

But instead, God wants to use me mightily.

What does this look like then for us to do this?

Because a lot of times when it comes to prayer and fasting, we usually reserve those for the oh no moment.

You know, I'm talking about whenever you've done all that you can, you've exhausted all your knowledge, all of your resources, you've tried all the methods, you've tried all the plans that you've come up with, they've stalled, they've failed, they've been wildly unsuccessful, and then you come and say, God help me.

Please hear me.

If you're there today and you're there right now, that's okay.

You should pray that prayer.

But don't stay there.

Instead, allow the next thing you do to be one where you begin, not end with coming before the Lord in prayer.

Our goal in the next six weeks is that no matter what you have going on, no matter what leadership crisis or opportunity arises, no matter what new adventure or challenges uh comes along, the very first step that you would have would be to lead from your knees.

So what do you pray for?

You pray for traveling mercies and for success, pray for protection, pray for that hedge of protection, whatever that hedge is, we pray for that.

Do we pray for uh just blessings and provision?

What I want to show you in the prayer of Nehemiah is what should be the content of your prayers when you lead from your knees.

Let's begin reading again in verse 4.

As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and 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 covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments.

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 statues, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.

Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, If you were unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples.

But I but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though you dispersed be under though your dispersed be under the farthest skies, I will gather them from there 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.

First thing I want you to notice, whenever you're leading from your knees, pray with urgence.

Pray with urgence.

When you have a need, when you have a dream, when you have a desire, when you want to see something that isn't become something that is, when you want to see something become even better, you need to have an urgence and a passion and an intensity to what you were doing.

Notice the first thing Nehemiah did is what is not what I would have done, which is to gather a group of people together, call a meeting, get to work.

He instead mourned and fasted and prayed to God.

And his prayer wasn't just immediately, God, if you can help, it would be really good if you could get around to it.

God, if you think you could work it in, it would be really helpful if you could take this situation at work, which is totally stressful, which is totally overwhelming me.

And if you could maybe do some things in that, but I promise you, I don't want to be too pushy.

If you're able to, that'd be awesome.

God, I'm on this team and I don't like where I am, and I want to be in a different spot on the team, and I want to have greater influence, and I want to be able to have greater uh abilities.

And so, God, if you don't mind, if you could just do something in the background in the coach, that would be kind of nice.

Folks, I think sometimes we pray prayers that act like God somehow can't do it.

And instead, look at what he says.

He says, God, I'm praying to the one who can actually do something about my situation.

Look at what the words are.

Oh God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps the covenant and step festly.

He's praying, realizing the guy I'm praying to, he can actually do something about this.

I want you to write this down.

You can do more than pray after you have prayed.

But you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.

You can do more than pray after you have prayed.

But you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.

I wonder if part of our problem why this isn't a first response is that we don't actually believe that it works.

We instead think we gotta have the right team, we instead think we gotta have the right people, we instead think we gotta have the right knowledge of the problems, we instead we gotta know all the different situations.

But instead, what Nehemiah shows us is that starting with God reminds us of the fact that God can and is able to intervene in our lives.

In fact, in verses 8 and 9, Nehemiah reminds God of his promises.

It's almost like he's saying, I'm claiming that.

Like I'm leaning on that, I'm remembering that.

This is what prayer does.

It's the spiritual preparation before the battle even begins.

It's not just the practice for the real game, it is the actual game in and of itself.

The rest of it is just detail.

So, in fact, what God is calling you to do is to invite him in fully to what he has laid on your heart.

Jeremiah 32, verse 17, O Lord God, it is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm.

Jeremiah 32:17

Nothing is too hard for you.

Isaiah chapter 40, verse 28 through 31, have you not known?

Isaiah 40:28–31

Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not grow faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might to increase his strength.

Even youth shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

If I'm serious about building or rebuilding anything, then I must be serious.

About connecting and aligning and sitting under the builder who doesn't grow tired and doesn't grow weary.

Second thing, not only pray with urgency, number two, pray with honesty.

Pray with honesty.

When you're thinking about building or rebuilding a marriage, it's common to think, man, I just gotta fix my spouse.

When you're building or rebuilding a business, it's easy to think, man, I just gotta fix my staff.

I gotta fix my processes.

When you're building or rebuilding a career or building a resume, you just need to fix and remove all of the obstacles along the way.

Here's what Nehemiah does.

Instead of fixing everything and everyone else, he starts with being honest about where he and the people are part of the problem.

He doesn't say, God, here are the marching orders, change them, change this.

He instead says, God, here's where I know that I failed.

Here's where I take ownership in this.

Here's my part, and I seek your forgiveness.

Folks, prayer has a way of changing you while you're busy trying to get God to change everything else.

And so often when we lead with our knees, what we will do is be protected from our own selves, acting impulsively or irrationally, or in not acting at all because of a passive response when all along God just wants us to show, hey, you got to own this part of it.

I got some things going on right now in my family that I'm I wrote down on my list that I want to see God build.

I want to see God do some changes.

And in the midst of this process, in the midst of studying for this, God hit me right between the eyes and said, Well, then you need to change.

You you got some things that you need to own.

Instead of you just asking me to fix what's frustrating for you, you instead need to own what you're doing to cause that very frustration.

Folks, let me tell you something.

Whenever you lead with your knees, a lot of times, it isn't like God just all of a sudden gives this massive plan and now I know what to do.

What he actually does, the Bible says in his kindness is he leads us to a place of repentance, of conviction, of showing us.

Hey, I I want to chip off some of those rough edges of that in you.

The mark of a leader isn't his ability to point out everything that's wrong in others.

The mark of a leader is one who is willing to get before his God and admit where he was wrong.

Finally, pray with initiative.

Pray with urgency, pray with honesty.

Number three, pray with initiative.

Verse 11 shows Nehemiah wasn't just giving God the problem and saying, Hey, could you do something about it?

He was instead asking for favor and blessing as he was going to meet with the king.

As a leader, it doesn't mean that you don't plan and strategize and think and talk through what you do.

You just do so ultimately knowing this.

God, I here are my plans, here are my thoughts, here's what I think I'm supposed to do, but I lay them all before you.

And if you want to change any or all of them, it's up, it's just up to you.

I'll do it.

The last song that we just sang is one that it sounds really, really easy and catchy to sing, but man, it's super, super hard to actually live, which basically says, I want to make room for you to do whatever you want to.

I don't know if we really mean that.

We mean I want to make room for you to do what I've already decided.

What he's inviting us to, though, is to say, God, I want to make room for you to do whatever you want.

Proverbs 16, verse 9 says, The heart of man plans his ways, but the Lord establishes his steps.

Proverbs 16:9

Nehemiah wasn't just saying, God, here's the problem, I need you to fix it.

The walls are down, the morale is bad, the people are low, everyone's losing hope.

He instead says, God, I know you can do something about this.

I confess my part and how we got here, and I own that.

And I am asking you to do something, and I am also at the same time volunteering to be the answer to the prayer if you choose to use me.

What does this mean for you?

If you're asking God to build a strong team, you need to be a strong teammate.

If you're asking God to build a great marriage, then you need to be a great spouse.

If you pray and ask God to save your family members and your friends, then you need to be the answer to that prayer by sharing the gospel with them.

Leaders lead from their knees before anything else.

But that time on their knees gives them the fuel and the power and the direction to begin to use their hands and to begin to use their feet.

Let me ask you, what is God leading you to build or to rebuild?

I want to ask you to close your eyes and to bow your heads if you would, please.

Grab your journals if you would and keep them there on that page five where you wrote down your answer.

And I want to just ask if it's if you're physically able to do this, would you just actually go to your knees?

If you're physically able, I'm gonna ask everybody, if you can, to just go to your knees.

If not, that's fine, but grab your journals and keep them close to you.

There's something very humbling about the posture of being on our knees.

It's not comfortable.

I think that's part of the reminder to us.

God desires that we come to Him.

A place of humility, there's something humble about getting on your knees.

I want you to take your journals out.

I want you to look and see.

What did you write down?

Lord, I want to build.

Say, Lord, would you do it?

Remind him of his promises that he's given.

I want you to pray like God can actually do it.

You may look at your thing and you may think, man, I'm embarrassed about what I wrote down.

That's fine.

God knows your heart, he knows you, and he cares.

He cares about it.

I want you to look at your thing, and I want to ask, what do you need to own?

What do you need to confess?

God need to change you.

Circumstances and the situations that are around you is gonna cause you to be uncomfortable, cause you to sacrifice.

It's gonna be an invitation for you to perhaps be pushed out of your comfort zone.

Would you right now just say, God, I'll do it?

You don't have to physically raise your hand, but I want you just to raise your hand, if you will, and just kind of be able to say, I'll do it.

I'll make room for you to do whatever you want to do.

Father in heaven, we give these things to you.

Father, we know that not one single thing and all things combined are too big for you.

Father, I pray that in the midst of the next six weeks that you would allow us to have a vision for your glory that is far beyond anything we could have ever imagined.

May we see that in the biggest things that take place, in the intimate details of our week.

Father, I pray that the next six weeks would be marked by confession of sin.

I pray, God, that you would break us so that we could begin to see where we need to own things that you desire to forgive.

Father, it is your kindness that leads us to repentance.

So, Lord, may we live lives where we are not in the way of what you want to do in us.

Father, would you open up our hearts and our eyes to see blind spots?

Would you keep us from being so quick to pour out the log in other people's eyes, specks in other people's eyes when there is a log in our own.

Father, I pray you'd use us to do whatever, whatever you want to do.

Pray God, you would abundantly bless the request that we have listed here on these journals.

Lord, I pray God though, if you desire to radically change everything on it, because we didn't know better to ask for that, that you would do that to.

But in the midst of whatever it is, we follow you, be led by you, walk with you.

It's in the name of Jesus that I pray.

Amen.