Re-Build - Everything We Need by Steve Craig

Father God, thank you.

Thank you for adopting us as your children.

Thank you for loving us, each of us, exactly where we are.

And we just uh praise you for that.

Holy Spirit, thank you for being our teacher and guide.

And so teach us this morning, even translate what I say and and just speak right into each one of our hearts so that we would know that uh that we get something from you this morning that we can apply and take into our lives.

Jesus, thank you for showing us what our fathers really like.

Thank you for making um it all possible.

And we uh we love you and we trust you, and it's in your name we pray.

Amen.

So last week we started looking at an autobiography.

It was written 2,500 uh years ago.

It's in the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament.

At the time that this book was written, uh Persia was the world power.

Um Artaxerxes was king.

Nehemiah lives in the capital city of Persia, which was a city called Susa, which is now in uh modern-day Iran.

It's about 800 miles away from Jerusalem.

So as the story starts, uh Nehemiah's brother uh and some of his friends come, they make the long trip from Jerusalem to Susa, and they tell him about the terrible conditions uh that exist in Jerusalem.

And in Nehemiah 1, it says that they said to me, Things are not going well for those who return to the province of Judah.

They are in great trouble and disgrace.

The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down, and the gates have been destroyed by fire.

When I heard this, I sat down and wept.

In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven.

This wall thing was a super big deal.

It was critical to the the safety of any uh of any city.

The Jewish people lived in dangerous times.

The Jewish people have always had um intense enemies, and they had their share at this time.

So Persia had let these people go back to the city, but they weren't going to provide them uh protection.

They were on their own.

And this wall that had just been completely destroyed, the city had been burnt, everything good had been taken out of it, the people had been taken um out of it.

Um the wall was completely gone, a four and a half mile long wall surrounding the city of Jerusalem, 20 feet high, 16 feet wide, lay just in uh in crumbles.

And without that wall, uh the people of Jerusalem, they didn't they didn't have anything.

They didn't have a moment of peace.

They were constantly under attack, they had no joy, they had no excitement about their future.

Um we'll see as we kind of go along in the story that they're constantly mocked, they're harassed, um, they're the butt of all the uh the jokes in the area.

As Nehemiah's brother said, that they are in great trouble and disgrace.

And so Nehemiah decides to do something about it, and he asks God for his help.

And what Nehemiah doesn't know is he's sitting on the floor weeping about the situation in Jerusalem, is that six months from that day, he is gonna be in one of the biggest parties of his life.

There's gonna be a huge celebration going on because in six months that entire wall will have been rebuilt.

Four and a half miles long, twenty feet tall, in six months.

He and the people there in Jerusalem and God will have done it.

They weren't even builders, these people.

I mean, they were retailers, they were jewelers, they were perfume makers.

Uh they were uh it talks about um grandfathers working alongside their grand their grandsons and daughters working alongside their fathers and men and women all working together, working together to uh to build this wall.

And so through this autobiography, the Nehemiah writes, God gives us some great principles on how we can build, how we can build something amazing with God.

And whether we need to build or whether we need to rebuild, we can do it with God.

It might be our families, it might be our finances, it might be our marriages, it can be this church that we're building together.

Nehemiah has given us a how-to plan, how to build with God.

The first thing that Nehemiah does is he talks to God.

The specific help he asks is very interesting.

He says, please grant me success today by making the king favorable to me.

Put it into his heart to be kind to me.

He asks God to supernaturally put it into the king's heart to be kind to him.

It's one of the things that we can ask God for.

We talked about this last week, and I'm just kind of trying to get us all up to speed this week because we had so many people traveling on fall break last week.

But this is one of the things that we can ask God for.

For him to put it into people's hearts to be kind to us.

Um if you weren't here last week, I'd encourage you to get the podcast.

It's uh it's free.

You can go on the website and just link right to it.

We've got CDs of each message and the source.

There are a couple bucks.

Um, but uh it's just a life-changing um type of truth about how we as God's children interact um with our Father and the types of things that he is not just able, but that he's willing to do on our behalf.

And one of the things that we're gonna see this morning is how God answered that prayer of Nehemiah.

The last sentence in the first chapter of Nehemiah's memoir gives us a pretty important piece of information.

He says that in those days I was the king's cupbearer.

See, Nehemiah was the wine steward to the king.

He was the psami, if I said that right.

He was the uh he was the cupbearer for the king.

I mean it was an important role.

He not only chose the wine and he had all those things, but but he had a bigger part, security role.

Um the kings were always worried about being uh um killed and being poisoned, and so uh that was his responsibility to make sure that the wine was safe, to taste it himself before the king or the king's uh family drank any of the wine.

It was an important um role that he had.

He had great trust, he had great responsible, I mean great responsibility, and he had daily direct access to the king.

And so when Nehemiah's brother tells um Nehemiah about the situation, Nehemiah cares, he decides to do something about it, and God has him in a unique position to do something about it.

And that's the thing, is that he has put us all in a unique position to build and rebuild our lives.

He has providentially got us all in the right position to do something about it.

Whether it's our families, our careers, our marriages, our finances, our very relationship with God, it might feel like it's our whole life that needs rebuilt.

We are the ones in a unique position to do something about it.

And we can do something about it, and we can do it quicker than we could possibly imagine.

We're only gonna look at eight verses this morning, or I guess nine verses this morning.

Nehemiah 2, 1 through 9.

It's about a one-minute conversation that he has with the king.

But we're gonna see some things that Nehemiah does that we can emulate and we can apply in our lives.

He does some difficult things.

Throughout this story, Nehemiah is gonna do some incredibly difficult things.

Uh, he does the most difficult thing first.

It says, early the following spring in the month of Nisan, during the 20th year of King Artaxerxes' reign, I was serving the king his wine.

I had never before appeared sad in his presence.

So the king asked me, Why are you looking so sad?

You don't look sick to me.

You must be deeply troubled.

See, the most difficult thing that Nehemiah is going to do in this whole process is wait.

He waits for God's perfect timing.

It says uh early in the following spring in the month of Nisan.

Um he had asked for God's help in the month of Kisla.

It's like December and April.

It's almost four months apart.

But that's what Nehemiah did.

He waited.

He waited for God's perfect timing.

In only six months, that entire wall will be rebuilt.

Four of the six months just happened.

In that one verse.

Four of the six months just happened.

Nehemiah waited on God.

It's so easy to get too far out in front of God.

You know, I've done it a bunch of different times uh in my life.

But part of trusting God, part of praying for God's help, is waiting for that time when that help arrives.

You might remember King Saul.

He's supposed to wait for Samuel to uh to make a uh a sacrifice on the altar before they got went into war.

And so the the enemies are getting close, and Saul kind of freaks out, and he decides that he better do the sacrifice himself, although God had told him to wait.

And so Saul makes the sacrifice, and uh, as soon as he is done, who comes walking around the corner?

It's Samuel.

And that one thing, that one attitude of Saul's really cost him the whole kingdom.

Is he couldn't trust God enough to wait on him.

David was just the opposite.

One of the best things that David did was wait.

You might remember that when David was anointed king, he was just a young man, a boy, really.

He wouldn't be made king until he was a grown man.

And that whole time his friends are like, you know, you're God already said this.

You need to just take it.

You need to just take it.

And David's like, no, I'm gonna wait.

I'm gonna wait for God to do it.

I'm gonna wait for God's timing.

David's called a man after God's own heart.

He knew how to wait for God.

I wish there was a formula to apply, but there isn't.

You know, because sometimes in life uh what we need is swift action.

And uh there's other times what we need is to wait.

A lot of times we can tell by what is difficult.

If it's difficult to take action, then that's probably a time we need swift action.

If it's difficult to wait, that's probably a time that we need God's help to wait.

But we especially need to wait when we're asking God to do something in somebody's hearts.

See, that was the crux of Nehemiah's prayer, is he was asking God to put something into this king's heart.

And change in hearts doesn't happen overnight.

It takes time.

It was important that uh that he waited till just the right time.

God waits.

God waits till the perfect time.

In Galatians 4 says, but when the right time came, God sent his son, born of a woman, subject to the law.

God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that he could adopt us as his very own children.

When did he do that?

When the right time came.

One translation says, at the fullness of time, at the perfect time, just the right time, God moves and accomplishes big things.

Even Jesus had the perfect time in mind.

You know, constantly through Jesus' ministry, he was telling people, no, it's not the right time.

It's not my time yet, it's not the right time.

Jesus was waiting on God's perfect time, and the same is true for us.

God can put something big on our hearts.

It doesn't mean we have to do it in 24 hours.

You know, we can pray and we can wait and we can ask God what is the right time.

We can spend months sometimes, even years, of energy and frustration asking God, why are you doing this?

Where are you?

Because we get too far out ahead of God.

Nehemiah is a uh such a great example.

He cares, he's weeping, it matters.

But he waits.

He waits four months until he knows it's the perfect time.

The cupbearer to the king, it sounds sort of like a lowly position, I guess, and it is a serving position, like almost all of our roles in life are serving positions.

Um, but it's a very important, high-profile position in the government of Persia.

He had the complete trust of the king, he would have daily access to the king, he would personally ensure that the wine was safe for him and his family to drink, and there was a way that Nehemiah conducted himself at work that if we copy can change uh the way we work, and we can grow in trust and responsibility like Nehemiah had.

Nehemiah says, I was serving the king his wine.

I had never before appeared sad in his presence.

One thing we're gonna see about Nehemiah is he is so purposeful when he writes.

I mean, there's like unusual things he leaves out, there's some unusual things he waits till just the right time to tell us.

There's some details he includes because he thinks it's important.

And I'd say he's purposeful as a person, but when he writes, you can just see how purposeful he is when he writes.

This is important to Nehemiah as he's writing his autobiography.

I was serving the king his wine.

I had never before appeared sad in his presence.

Now you know Nehemiah had things going on in his life.

You know, in the last four months, he's weeping and fasting, he's brokenhearted.

Before that, the years he had known the king, he had to have stuff going on in his life tragedy and worries and problems and those types of things.

He had never been sad before in the presence of the king.

See, the Bible gives us what we need, gives us uh what we need to have a deep relationship with God, which is most important, and it gives us what we need to have a successful life.

Um, a lot of what it God gives us is principles that we have to apply.

You know, he teaches us, and then we walk him out.

Um, the right now Nehemiah is talking about his job.

Why did the king trust him?

Why did he have such a good job?

The fact that Nehemiah had always been cheerful at work was not a random thought.

It was not a random thought.

It was important enough for him to include in his autobiography.

He had never been sad before in front of the king.

You know, as Jesus' followers, we have such an advantage at work.

We have such an advantage.

We have the Holy Spirit who gives us supernatural wisdom and shows us how to do things and how to how to uh uh interact with people.

We have one advantage that's hard to compete with our attitudes.

You just can't compete with a great attitude.

And for us, the joy of the Lord is our strength.

You know, we're upbeat.

We see the best in situations, we see the best in people.

We're not always stressed out and freaked out because we know that God's gonna make it all work out for our good.

And so we can be in the workplace with great attitudes.

Paul said uh in Philippians 4, summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious.

The best, not the worst, the beautiful, not the ugly, things to praise, not things to curse.

Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized.

Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

God wants us to focus on the good.

See things to praise, not to curse.

And see what what happens, I think, is that we ask God to bless our finances.

We ask God to bless our our careers.

And sometimes he does that in a supernatural way.

He'll give us favor with people and he'll change people's hearts, and he'll do those types of things.

But one of the big things that God does is he teaches us.

He teaches us.

He's not sprinkling magic dust on our careers.

He's teaching us how to be successful at what we do.

And there's a big thing that Nehemiah teaches us here, and that is that there is nothing like a great attitude.

How much drama do you think Nehemiah had in his life?

How much of that had he ever brought to work?

No, when he was there, he was focused on the king.

And he was cheerful and he was upbeat, and he had a great attitude.

It's tough to compete with a great attitude.

When we sold our company, we had 50 people on the team.

At that time, we were the top producing uh company in our industry.

Uh of the the company right below us, the second producing company, had 240 employees.

And we outproduced them uh in revenue and sales and in every way with 50.

Now I tell you that, and some of those people are here, some of the 50, um, I tell you that, because of the 50 people on the team, we only hired one that was in our industry.

See, we could teach industry, and we could teach skills.

We hired for attitude.

Great attitudes.

You get 50 people with great attitudes, and you can do anything in any industry, in any company, and it made us a successful company and a great place to work.

All those positive uh people.

We usually don't hire the people around us, and so we can't always control their attitudes, but we can control ours.

And when we do that, we affect theirs.

How we look at things, how we are at uh at work.

Now Nehemiah is talking about his employer.

And so this, I mean, with the the application that we're making is the specific application.

He is talking about he and his boss at work.

That's what he's talking about.

Is how did he do so well at work?

The king had never, ever seen him sad before.

I mean it and it's true in our jobs.

The uh I'm just trying to think of some way to explain that in a way that um um that helps.

Because uh I do want we I do want you to have the most successful life possible.

I do want you to do really well at your work and at your careers.

And I promise you, there is not one thing you can do more important than just deciding I'm gonna be cheerful and positive and look for the best.

And then watch when you apply God's principle how everybody reacts to that.

And we can think, you know, I'm just not wired that way.

That's not me.

And and the truth is we're all wired different ways.

Um but I do think God pre-wires us to be positive, to see the best.

It's just we get it just beaten out of us through life, you know?

And we get hurt and we build up defenses and and we don't want to be disappointed anymore and all those all those types of things.

So we start taking pride in being a realist.

I'm just a realist, that's all I am.

Everybody else can be all rah-rah.

I'm just I'm gonna be a realist.

You know, but um, sometimes we need to walk by faith and not by sight and see things how God sees things.

And God does see the best in people.

God does see the situation.

When God looks at a hurdle, he sees how we're gonna overcome it.

And we can adopt those same attitudes.

And we can be for the people next to us at work, and we can be for our bosses and the business owners, and we can be for our customers.

And God will use that and help us to be successful in.

Everything we do.

And it's not just work, it's true at home.

You know, if if we see the best in our families, if we see the best in our spouses, if we see the best in our kids, things to praise, not to curse.

You know, we don't have to always be like Pollyanna and giggly and naive or any of that kind of stuff.

We just see the best.

We hope for the best.

We've got a God that loves us.

And we know that He's for you, too.

It's a good place to be in.

And it affects everything we do by just having a great attitude, doing what Paul says, doing what God says, doing what Nehemiah did.

Just living our lives with a positive attitude.

And it's a difficult thing to change.

And so, you know, David used to pray, search my heart, oh God.

Just show me.

Show me.

And so that's something we can pray.

I mean, it may be something we need to work on and we don't even perceive it ourselves, but we can ask God to show us.

Do I need to work on my attitude?

Is there something?

Am I maybe not always positive and upbeat at work or whatever at home?

He'll show us and then he'll do the heavy lifting.

He really will help us when we ask him.

He changes other people's hearts on our behalf, but more than anything, he changes our hearts on our behalf.

And that's an area that he'll help us with.

Just help us to have great attitudes with other people.

We're going to see the things that Nehemiah faces.

You know, and he is going to face discouragement, and he's going to face attacks, and he's going to face lies, and he's going to face criticism.

It's not like he's just living in this happy-go-lucky world.

But he's going to face it all with a great attitude, with the hope in God.

And he'll show us exactly how to handle each of those things.

As we go on, we're going to see what do you do when someone criticizes you?

What do you do when someone discourages you?

What do you do when somebody lies about you?

What do you do when you're afraid you're getting an attack?

Nehemiah walks through all of it for us.

Nehemiah had a great attitude.

King had never once seen him sad.

And so Nehemiah had waited for the perfect time.

He had trusted God to change this king's heart.

The king historically was known as a pretty hard-nosed guy.

Most kings were.

And this one was.

You know, he just never knew exactly what he was going to do.

And he made decisions uh hard and swift.

But Nehemia prays and he waits, and I don't know how he knew this was the right time, but he knew.

Um and so he comes in and he lets the king see his distress.

See, in doing that, Nehemiah was demonstrating something else.

He was demonstrating that he was all in.

Because at this moment, he was risking his life.

Now, in our culture, we may not get that.

How would you be risking your life just by going in there and and uh and acting all stressed out?

But it was important because these guys were here to serve the king, you know.

The king wasn't here to to make uh his wine uh bearers, uh his cupbearer's dreams come true.

No, the cupbearer was here to serve him.

And so Nehemiah doesn't know what his reaction is going to be.

Is he gonna have him killed?

Is he gonna throw him out?

Is he gonna lose his job?

Um and we know that Nehemiah knows this by the next verse.

He says, uh, then I was terrified.

He was terrified.

But I replied, Long live the king, how can I not be sad?

For the city where my ancestors are buried is in ruins, and the gates have been destroyed by fire.

See, he doesn't know what's coming in.

He's sitting there, he's terrified.

But God had answered his prayer, he had put kindness into the king's heart for Nehemiah.

And the king asked, Well, how can I help?

With a prayer to the God of heaven, I replied, If it pleases the king, and if you're pleased with me, your servant, send me to Judah to rebuild the city where my ancestors are buried.

And here we learn something new about Nehemiah.

The guy can multitask.

He can pray and have a conversation at the uh at the exact same time.

He's only got a couple of seconds here, but he uh he prays to God.

And it's interesting because he tells us Nehemiah in the first chapter tells us exactly word for word what he prayed for.

You know, this idea of putting kindness into the king's heart, because he felt that was important.

Here, he doesn't tell us at all what he prayed for.

What was important to Nehemiah is that when he was in tough situations, he prayed.

And it doesn't take long to pray.

Just a quick two-second prayer to God.

It might have been thanks for his good reply.

It might have been, oh, give me the give me the right words.

But when he was under pressure, he prayed.

And there's so much power in quick prayers.

You know, sometimes when we interact with people, the thing that we should be doing is praying and talking at the same time.

I would say that if you have a strong marriage, you've already learned this uh principle.

You know, we're in the middle of a conversation and you're like, oh, help me not to lose my temper, or uh help me to pay attention, you know, or um give me something encouraging to say.

Help me not to say uh anything stupid.

You know, those types of things.

You know, I do that all the time, even when I'm talking with Susan.

It's like, God help me on this one.

Help me to react right, or you know, help me to stop looking at the ball game and get back over here.

But we're, you know, we're asking as uh as we pray, and we can do the same thing as students, you know, as as um with our classmates, we can do it with difficult customers at work.

God, give me patience, give me the right thing to say.

Um there is power in quick prayers.

I personally believe God prefers short prayers.

You know, uh, he's not gonna be impressed by our vocabulary, might as well just get right to the point.

And uh and it doesn't take long.

Man, a second, two seconds.

You know, that's why the Bible says, you know, don't stop praying.

It doesn't mean we pray all the time that we're not living our lives, we're not working and connected with other people.

We're not going off to spend, you know, years in prayer, probably.

But he's talking about a way of living our lives where no matter what's going on, we can shoot off these quick prayers.

We're just connected with our Father.

We're asking his help in every situation.

And he cares about every situation.

He cares about school, he cares about work, he cares about our families, he cares about every situation.

So Nehemiah shoots off a uh a short prayer in the middle of the conversation.

The king with the queen sin beside him asks, How long will you be gone?

When will you return?

After I told him how long I'd be gone, the king agreed to my request.

Now we're gonna see what Nehemiah was doing for those four months.

He was waiting on God.

He was planning.

He was planning.

I also said to the king, if it pleases the king, let me have letters addressed to the governors of the province west of the Euphrates River, instructing them to let me travel safely through their territories on my way to Judah.

And please give me a letter addressed to Asaph, the manager of the king's forest, instructing him to give me timber.

I'll need it to make beams for the gates of the temple fortress, for the city walls, and a house for myself.

And then the king granted these requests because the gracious hand of God was on me.

God had put it in the king's heart to be kind to Nehemiah.

And when he said yes, he would help, Nehemiah had a plan.

Can you imagine if the king had said, Okay, how can I help?

And Nehemiah said, Oh boy.

Honestly, I didn't really think you were going to say yes.

You know, I haven't really thought that through.

What would what would you do if you were me?

I mean, would you uh how would you get started?

No, he had it all thought out.

He knew what he needed to build the wall, the wall.

He knew materials, he knew he needed to get places.

He had a plan.

See, and if we're gonna build and rebuild in our lives, we need to plan.

We need to have a plan.

See, sometimes we get, as Christians, sometimes we get salvation confused with life.

Now salvation is a free gift.

We cannot earn salvation.

You just can't.

In fact, we really mess things up when we try to.

It is an absolute gift.

We just accept it.

Jesus did it, we accept it.

We turn to we turn to Him, our spirits come alive.

They get connected with our Father.

He starts transforming us.

It is a free gift.

There is nothing we could possibly do to earn it.

It's a free gift.

A great marriage isn't a free gift.

It's not a free gift.

You see, salvation is a free gift, and so we're Christians, so we grab a hold of that and we need to.

But life's not a free gift.

And so if we want to have a great marriage, we are gonna have to work on it.

We're gonna have to have a plan for rebuilding it.

I mean, God really does do the hardest part, what we call the uh heavy lifting.

But we're gonna need a plan.

It might be really simple.

It's like, okay, you know what?

We're gonna start going to the marriage class.

Or we're gonna start going to a marriage counselor.

But we're not just gonna sit and pray.

We are going to take that time and we're gonna develop a plan.

We're gonna take what God teaches us, we're gonna apply it, we're gonna make hard decisions, we're gonna ask God to change our hearts, we're gonna get humble with each other, we're gonna be more unselfish.

We're gonna start getting on the same team.

Those types of things.

And someday in our marriage, when we have a great marriage, when it's completely rebuilt and we're having that same celebration, and now we've got joy and we've got safety and we've got a future in our marriage, we're gonna say, God, that was a gift.

That was a gift from you.

But it wasn't a free gift.

It was a gift.

We've got to do our part.

And it and it's so easy sometimes just to be cavalier and and and and um and just ask God to do things when we're not taking steps ourselves.

Um if you're a student, you know, you can ask God to uh to give you an A on an important term paper.

I mean, he cares.

He cares about your school work as much as about you and your school work as much as he does anything.

He cares and he'll help.

But he's not gonna sprinkle magic dust on the term paper, you know?

He's gonna be that still small voice telling you to stop playing Halo for a while, you know, and go uh go do some extra studying.

You know, and he and he might, the Holy Spirit will give you some wisdom and show you a structure on how you can on what to study and how you can study better.

And on the day of the test, give you an especially clear mind and help you remember things.

And you and you'll do well on uh the test, but he's gonna bless our efforts, he's gonna bless our triumph, then he's gonna make it greater than we ever could ourselves.

And so we see that while Nehemiah was waiting on God, he was also working on a plan.

God works with plans.

You know, even the seemingly crazy God stuff, you know, the big God adventures, like when he asked Noah to build an ark.

You know, here he is building this huge boat in the middle of the desert.

You know, even with that, he had a plan.

It was embarrassing enough for Noah to build a boat.

I mean, how bad would it have been if he got like half done and he You know, but he had a plan.

God had told him exactly the materials, the dimensions, how to build it, he had a plan.

You know, the same's true for us.

That that um it's just good to have a plan.

It's good to think things through.

I've the first uh the first mission trip I ever went on to was uh was to Uganda, and it was a great trip, and there's about ten of us going um over there, and the person that was leading this um trip is a great person who um who I honestly admire.

And uh organization wasn't his strong point.

And so on this particular trip, we could probably could have used someone that had that as a skill set.

But it's the first it's the first trip.

And so we get we get to the airport and we got a bunch of stuff we're taking, because we pack light because we're taking supplies and stuff over there uh with us to Uganda.

But we get there and we got the wrong weights, and we got we don't have enough bags, and we're having to distribute the stuff, and and um the uh and so we go and we have to buy stuff, and it's just big, just like uh last-minute kind of commotion, and then we go to check in and we don't have any seats.

And there's uh you know, like ten of us, and we're flying to London, then you've got to switch airports, and you're flying to uh in Tebby on this particular trip, and um and so we don't have any any any seats.

And the plan was we were just gonna trust God with our seats.

And um and in fact, we all held hands and we believed God for an upgrade to first class.

And well, about ten hours later, and we're on the back of the coach playing, and I've been sitting there literally for ten hours like this, because I'm between two huge guys in the middle seat, and I'm thinking, man, I wish we had had a plan, you know?

Maybe an exit row or an aisle seat or uh or something.

You know, and it wasn't that big a deal, you know, and the whole experience was so uh was so great.

But the point is just because God's involved doesn't mean we don't have to do our part and plan something out.

And we go sometimes on these crazy God adventures that hurt ourselves and they hurt our families, and and they may or may not be impactful because we haven't taken the time to plan it out.

How are we gonna do this?

What's the best way?

And and and that type of thing.

Um God's for us.

He'll take our plans and do more than we could possibly think or imagine.

But whatever we're trying to rebuild, whatever we're building or rebuilding in our lives, man, take a time and make a plan.

You know, if you if if addiction's your thing, come to the Freedom from Addiction Group on Wednesday night.

You will walk out with a plan.

With a bunch of new friends and a plan.

Step by step.

You'll have a plan.

And God will bless that plan, and he'll do the hard part, but we have a part.

You look back and you'll say, Man, sobriety, what a gift.

But it wasn't a free gift.

There was a part.

And so Nehemiah did his part.

He had it all um planned out.

He knew what they were gonna do.

And so when the king said, What do you need, he knew exactly what they needed.

Here's the plan.

Um then down to verse 9.

It says, When I came to the governors of the province west of the Euphrates River, I delivered the king's letters to them.

The king, I should add, had sent along army officers and horsemen to protect me.

See, I thought Nehemiah's request was pretty bold.

I kind of read through that quickly, but to me, he had asked for a lot.

You know, he basically kind of asked for the time off, and then the king said, Well, you know, what do you need?

He said, Well, I'm gonna need lumber from your uh from your forest, I'm gonna need uh I'm gonna need a house for myself, I'm gonna need all this all this stuff.

I'm like, wow, that's a big ask.

Um he kind of went for it.

But um, but he had prayed that God would supernaturally put kindness in this king's heart toward him.

And so what the king did was even more than he asked.

It was more than he asked.

The king, I should add, had sent along army officers and horsemen to protect me.

He had sent his own army with Nehemiah to take care of him.

And that's the way our God is.

He gives us everything we need.

He gives us more than we ask.

If the worship team wants to come up, we'll get uh ready to sing one last song together in a minute.

But that's what God is like.

That's how he helps us rebuild.

You know, we ask for his help.

We ask for his help.

We trust that he can change people's hearts.

We make a decision to have a great attitude.

And we pray quick, powerful prayers in the middle of tense, tough situations.

We wait and we plan, and God makes sure we have everything we need.

More than we could ask.

Everything we need.

We are all in a unique position to build and to rebuild.

God is going to give you everything you need.

He is for you.

He hasn't forgotten about you.

He knows what you're facing.

Build and rebuild.

He'll give you everything you need.

And we can learn from Nehemiah.

He's given us a how-to book, building and rebuilding with God.

Nehemiah is uh traveling now, where we're at in the story.

He's almost to Jerusalem.

Two months from now, two months from now, he's throwing the biggest party they'd ever seen.

It's gonna say that the joy in Jerusalem's heard throughout the land.

Two months.

And he can do the same for you in a surprisingly short time.

You know, the walls may seem to crumble, it may seem impossible, but you're in a unique position to build.

And in doing it God's way and with God's help, man, our sadness can turn to joy fast.

A matter of weeks, a matter of months.

He's for you.

He'll do it, he'll help you build.

We just do our part.

All right, let's stop there and let's pray.

If you'd stand, we'll get ready to sing the last song.

Father, thanks for being such a great God for adopting us as your kids.

What a wonderful thing to have you as our Father, to be for us, for teaching us.

Thank you for Nehemiah.

Thank you for this man what you did in his life, thanks for causing him to write it down, then saving it for us.

And help us, God, help us to apply what you're teaching us.

God, help us to build.

Help us to build great things in our lives, help us to rebuild the things that are torn down in our lives.

And give us the right heart, give us the right attitude, give us the wisdom to plan.

Just transform us from the inside out, God.

We thank you and we love you and we trust you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.