Men's Luncheon - Pastor Greg Addison - October 6, 2026

Okay, how's everybody today?

How are you guys doing?

Everybody's good?

Fantastic.

Good to see you guys.

Our first Baptist folks want to remind you this Sunday, we're gonna we've rescheduled our um going on our property for four o'clock Sunday afternoon.

So uh we'll be out there uh spending the day having a good time, so we'll have food trucks and bouncy games and stuff for the kids and come do picnic with us, right?

Uh we also uh want to bless the food today, and we also want to say thanks for our folks that teach us.

So uh let's do that this morning.

Lord, we thank you for our kitchen folks and how they take care of us every week, and so we pray you'll bless them.

Thank you for how they bless us every week.

We thank you for the meal we've had today, and we pray you'll use it to give us strength to our body to serve you, and we pray, Father, that you will uh uh really teach us today and walk us through as we talk about Nehemia's relationship with you and how we can have a relationship and walk with you on a daily basis.

So, Father, we want to thank you, praise you in Jesus' name.

We pray.

And everybody said also we have maps, I think, back there by the soundboard for uh Thursday or for next Sunday afternoon if you want to know where the property is and all of that.

So, uh what we want to do is take a few minutes and I have a little bit different setup here.

Uh so I'm gonna have to do some of this back here.

There you go.

All you gotta do is get on Mazard and it dead ends.

It dead ends right into Vash Grass Creek, and it's the on the left, and so it's awesome.

You see the big wide construction road there, and it's great.

So you just go down Mazard until it dead ends, and you're there.

Alright, so we're talking about Nehemiah, and uh what we're gonna talk a little bit about today is Nehemiah's uh prayer life, but he gives us a very unique picture in Scripture about what it looks like to have an individual prayer life with the Lord.

So we have verses like this in Scripture that say things like, pray constantly, or if you memorize it in the original, you know, the King James Version, like I did, the old school one, it says, pray without ceasing.

So what does that look like?

Like, how do you pray without ceasing?

I mean, what does that mean?

How are you praying constantly and make that work in a normal working life?

Like, how does that work?

I mean, so often we think about prayer is I've got to get over in a chair at my desk, or I've got to get on my knees, or in church, or like everybody's stand and the preacher's praying or whatever.

But prayer is actually just talking to Jesus.

We say that, but then we treat it like a program note or this specific activity when really it's a constant ongoing relationship that you are going throughout the day with.

I think of it a little bit like texting now.

Texting has become this part of life where we're just doing it as we go through the day.

And so Janet and I are texting and we're doing whatever, and so like Tuesday is her one of her days to keep our grandkids in North Little Rock.

And so, like this morning, she sends me a picture of him, you know, she's got little griffin, and he's six months old now, and so he's starting to do things, and so she's sending me these little texts and this stuff, and it's just kind of this ongoing conversation without the day.

Does that make sense?

Well, that's actually a very good picture of what it looks like to have this relational prayer life with Jesus, and we actually get a picture of that and how it works right here in the life of Nehemiah.

This, how we're rejoicing, how we're giving thanks in everything.

And when you put prayer, pray consistently or constantly or without ceasing, and you attach that to everything, then you realize this is an ongoing life here.

And again, this praying constantly is God's will for us in Christ Jesus.

It is that will for us, that relationship with them, that how we walk with him, how we're being transformed in his image and connected to him, identifying with him and walking with him.

That's actually what God's will for us is, is to walk in a relationship like that with him.

So I want you to just look at this moment in Nehemiah's life.

Okay?

So in chapter one, we know that uh he is living in captivity.

In chapter one, we find out that he is in this really high-level government position.

So he is one of those Jewish men who were who were made captive when uh Babylon conquered uh Judah, conquered those, that part of the nation of Israel, brought them in captivity, and they are spread around the world, and now you've had a couple of regime changes we talked about through that life of Daniel.

And so now you're having a third down the road uh uh regime change of a country that is kind of taken over and controlling the world.

And so here you have a man who was the result or the progeny, if you will, of those people born in captivity.

So he was likely born in captivity.

He had never been to Jerusalem, but he maintains his Jewish identity as a person of God.

And so when people come from Jerusalem, he finds out that they're in this capital city where he's living, serving this foreign king, and he asks them about Jerusalem.

They tell him that the city has been devastated, the remnant of people live there, they're in depression, they're oppressed, the walls are broken down and all that stuff.

And so it breaks his heart and he begins to pray.

And so chapter one is him coming to the Lord and pleading for the nation of Israel and the restoration of Jerusalem and the restoration of Israel.

And you get to the end of that, and then here's what you get at the very end of chapter one.

He says, O Lord, he puts this encapsulating statement and this prayer request at the end of his prayer.

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, other Jewish people who are praying.

And then he asks this request, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.

I was the cupbearer to the king.

And so he is specifically asking God for an open door before this king to be able to address what's going on in Jerusalem.

And then you get to chapter 2, and now it unfolds the story when he says, during the month of Nisan.

So what you've learned in chapter 1 is here's one month, and he begins to pray, and we have a couple of months down the road now, and he has been constantly in prayer over this vision he has for the restoration of Israel.

And it says, in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king.

Now again, we know the cupbearer and we know what that role is.

One of the ways you became king in these foreign nations like that, these pagan nations, is you knocked off the king that was on the throne, and then you got to be the king.

And one of the ways that you knocked him off is you could poison him.

So he's the cupbearer to the king.

He's kind of like his manservant or his butler, but he's also there to protect him.

And so he would taste the food and make sure that it wasn't poisoned.

And so how he presented himself to the king was very, very important.

If he drank the wine or if he had tasted the food, and then he looked like he was about to get sick, that was significant because then Arta Xerxes would have this question was there something wrong with that?

And are you going to drop over dead?

And if you act all weird about it, and then there's not a problem with it, and you've given the king some false fear about what he's drinking, that's really a problem.

And it's especially a problem because this king is not a nice guy.

He is an evil, rotten, thinks he's a god, horrible pagan guy.

So you're messing with this king, that's a serious problem.

Like it's life-risking of a problem.

So he says, I took up the wine and gave it to the king.

Now I had not been sad in his presence.

That is a hugely important statement right there.

I mean, he is painting this picture of this moment.

And so the king says to him, Why is your face sad?

Seeing you're not sick.

In other words, this is not a guy who's concerned about one of his key employees.

This is a guy who is an evil guy, thinks he's a god, you're messing with my meal, you're creating these problems with me.

What is wrong with you?

And then he says, This is nothing but sadness of heart.

Then I was very much afraid.

So you see here the picture of what's happening.

I mean, he he is he knows that the king is mad now.

He's seen other people that the king just, for whatever reason, off the top of his head, decides to kill people, and he's like, he's gonna kill him here.

And the king says to me, Why is your face sad?

Seeing you're not sick, this is nothing to sadness of heart.

I was very much afraid.

So I said to the king, Let the king live forever.

Why should not my face be sad when the city, the place of my fathers, lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire?

Then the king said to me, Well, what are you requesting?

Here's a moment, and a door has been opened, and he says, I said to the king, let the king live forever.

Um should not my face be sad when the city of the fathers lies in ruins, and all that?

King said to me, What are you requesting?

So I prayed to the God of heaven, and I said to the king, if it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, the city of my father's graves, that I may rebuild it.

And the king said to me, the queen sitting beside him, how long will you be gone, and when will you return?

And so there what you get is this picture of this moment that's this terrifying moment, but it's a moment that God has worked and orchestrated and opened a door, and in the midst of this, the king is after me, my life is on the line, I'm afraid of this whole moment, I'm stepping into this moment, and in the middle of this exchange, the Bible says, I stopped and prayed to the king of heaven.

Now, clearly, in this moment, you're not going to have this deal where he tells the king, wait, I'm going to go over here and I'm going to kneel and have a prayer session.

That's not what's happening in the middle of this deal.

You're having this ongoing conversation, and in the midst of this conversation, he recognizes that this is a door that God has opened.

He has been praying for favor for the king for months.

And now God has presented this moment and he steps into it, and in the midst of his conversation with the king, the Bible says that he prays to heaven and then tells the king, This is what I want to do.

It's an incredible picture of in this ongoing time, he is walking in a spirit of prayer.

He is not changing what's happening, but he is approaching it in a spirit of prayer.

He is connecting to the Lord in this quick, text-like fashion, but he is attuned to what God is doing.

He is praying with God, he's recognizing God as moving, and he is speaking in this spirit of prayer.

That's one of the best pictures in Scripture when it says pray without ceasing, what you can ever get in the context of this moment.

It's an incredible moment that you see.

So let me give you just a couple of principles of what this looks like.

This relational walking with God prayer time.

So the first principle you get is that the relationship is built in secret prayer.

When he stops and prays to the king of heaven, that's not a, oh my gosh, I better learn how to pray right here.

It is not a guy who is living a carnal, as we would say in modern life, Christian life, and disconnected from Jesus, and then all of a sudden, oh my gosh, he's gonna chop my head off, I'm afraid, and we wing up this prayer in this moment like that's gonna have any effect, which is what all of us have done at times in our lives, and that's not how that works.

This is a prayer that we see that's flowing from months of praying for favor in front of the king.

And so when he has this moment and he's attuned to this moment, and he recognizes it as a God-opened door moment despite the risk of it, and he's willing to step into that, he is letting this prayer fly in the midst of this moment based on a relationship with God that he has built in secret.

It is a relationship where he has been praying for months, he's been seeking the face of God.

As we, if you go back and read chapter 1, he is praying scripture back to God.

He is being connected with the Lord.

God has broken his heart over the condition of Jerusalem, and he has this picture and this sense, and he has grabbed a hold of God and has been walking through this journey with him, praying over this, asking the Lord, pleading for this.

And so when he has an effective prayer in a moment like that, it doesn't just happen because we wing it up there.

It flows from a secret relationship of prayer that we have built in our time with Jesus every morning.

When we get alone with him and we spend time praying with him.

It's when we get alone with our Bibles and we get alone with the person of Jesus, and we're spending time talking to him about what we see and what we're feeling, and we're asking him about what he wants to do in our life, and he is downloading his heart on ours, and our heart is broken over spiritual matters.

We're focused on spiritual things.

He's talking to us about it.

We're wrestling back with him, and we're trying to work through all this.

We have prayer requests.

God, I want you to do this.

God, I want you to do this.

God, I'm looking for this deal.

God, will you move in this deal?

God, I have my love list.

I've been praying over these three guys, and I've got this one guy.

And Lord, I'm just brokenhearted.

You've made me focus on him, and I need you to open a door where he will actually listen, and I have an opportunity to share Jesus with him, and we're doing that in our quiet time, and all of a sudden at lunch or coffee in the morning or something, an opportunity, he says something, you see that moment, and you recognize it because you have built this relationship with Jesus in prayer on a consistent basis every morning where you've been working through that.

You can't just step into that moment and fling some prayer up there.

It's not going to be specific, it's not going to be heartfelt, it's not going to be one based in faith, it's not going to be one that is attached to what the meaning of this moment is, because I haven't been praying for this moment.

And so I'm unprepared for this moment, and I'm not really even sure what this moment is.

But Nehemiah is prepared for this moment because he's been praying for this moment.

Even when it's a moment where the king says, You look bad, you're messing with my dinner, you're upsetting this whole deal, and he's pointing his finger at him, and he's about to be afraid he's going to get his head chopped off, and yet he is still attached to this moment as a God moment because he has built this relationship with God, and he can recognize a moment despite his fear and despite the risk, because he has built this time in prayer.

And so, if we're going to do this praying without ceasing business, and it's going to be effective in our lives, it is not going to be effective unless it has a foundation of a relationship with Jesus that we have built in time that we've just spent with him.

Too many times we want to walk through our Christian life as if it is a philosophy and belief system, and we don't pay the price in the relational part of how our Christian life is actually built and empowered.

And you see an incredible picture of that here when you track these months and this whole deal, and you get he is praying for this moment, and his prayer in the moment is the result of his relationship that he's built.

Here's the second principle: there is a shared vision for life and purpose.

There's a shared vision that he has with God for life, and there's a shared vision that he has for the purpose of the day.

And so for months he's been praying.

There hadn't been any other opportunity to do this yet, but he has a vision about Israel, and he has a vision about Jerusalem, and he has a vision about the people of God.

And it's a God-birthed vision.

It's something that he owns, it's something that he has been praying back to the Lord.

It's something that God has done in his life, it is something that he has held on to for a period of time.

He is committed to this vision because he believes God has birthed it in his life.

He's birthed it in his life to such a way that when the king says, What do you want me to do?

He is ready to ask the king for permission to be the one who goes to Judah and leads the rebuilding of the wall.

You get that?

He's not winging it in this moment.

He has been praying, he has been invested in it, he is invested in it personally enough that when God keeps the door open and he says, What do you want me to do?

he steps in and asks for permission to go and do that.

Now he is invested in a vision for Jerusalem and the people of God that is the result of his prayer life.

And so when he has a moment, he recognizes the moment as being attached to what God has burdened him in his heart to do.

I believe there's also not just the vision ongoing, but there is a vision for each day.

When you spend time with the Lord and you surrender your day to the Lord, you are saying, today is your day.

What do you want me to do in this day?

And since you've surrendered the day to Him and you've built a secret relationship with Him, you go about the day asking the Lord to recognize things, asking the Lord to help you see things, asking God to give you wisdom in those moments.

And so there is a vision for the day that is a part of walking with Jesus.

And I think that he had a vision for the day.

Every day he was praying for a time with the king, and when God opened it up that day, he was ready because he had a vision for this could be the day.

So it's not just a macro vision, but it's a micro vision for each day and how it plays out in that journey.

Because he was ready when it happened.

Right?

And so I think it's important that we understand that.

He has a spiritual burden.

He was stirred daily by his walk with Jesus, and he was had remained prepared, had remained focused enough that he could recognize that moment.

And then he was sensitive to God's movements.

How often are we not sensitive?

How many times did we miss a window because we were not attuned in that deal, right?

How many times we miss it?

How many times we miss an opportunity to invite somebody to church to share Jesus?

To point out and give Jesus credit for something.

Right?

And we've got to be prepared for those things and recognize those moments.

If we believe anything about what the Bible tells us, then we know that God is at work around us.

Is that not true?

If we don't believe God is at work, then we have a fundamental issue about what salvation is that we need to discuss and figure out.

But if we're saved and God saved us, and the Bible says, by grace are we saved through faith, and not on ourselves, give to God, and let not of works as any man should boast.

And then you get to Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10, the next one, when he says, We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.

Ephesians 2:10

He has prepared beforehand for us to walk in.

Then we've got to understand God's working in our life didn't end when we got saved.

It began when we got saved.

And he saved us to these moments that he is opening the Doors and he's working in our life, and he's giving us this vision and this burden, and he's opening these things.

And when I am in a constant state of prayer with him, and I'm walking through the day, and we're texting back and forth, if you use that illustration, then we're gonna recognize God is at work around us, and where is this moment that he's going to give me today?

Where is the moment that he's gonna open a door?

And sometimes it hits us without us knowing, but we recognize that it's a moment.

Sometimes it's something that we've been praying for, and the door opens and we're ready to walk into it.

But either way, it's built on the presumption that God is at work around us and that there are God moments in every day.

And the question is: do we recognize them?

Do we see them?

And the foundation of seeing them is we've built this prayer life.

We have the shared vision of God, what he's trying to do, and what we're trying to do, and every day we're surrendering ourselves to the steps in that journey and the moments that he would bring about.

Nehemiah was ready for this moment when it happened.

He was willing to step in it, despite the fact that he was literally risking his life.

Because he had a belief and a vision that God was going to do something and he was going to be a part of it, and he was willing to participate in that, and he was willing to go, and he was willing to step in that moment when God created it.

And so I think in our lives, a lot of times, this pray without ceasing doesn't make sense because we're not approaching every day with a shared vision with Jesus for what he might do in that day, for the door he might open, for the conversation he might create, for the bridge that he might build that we can walk down.

And then finally, number three, he speaks to Jesus in these life moments, knowing that he's present.

Now I love this right here.

Then I was much afraid.

I said to the king, let the king live forever.

What why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my father's grave, lives in ruins, as gates have been destroyed by fire?

Then the king said to me, What are you requesting?

So I prayed to the God of heaven, and I said to the king, I mean, this is an instantaneous deal, right?

But what he is saying here, there's so many ways you could have written, I prayed to the Lord, I prayed to God, I prayed to Jehovah, I prayed to Yahweh.

But he said, I prayed to the God of heaven.

I mean, in his mind, even in an instantaneous prayer, he is attached to the power and the person of God.

I mean, in this moment, I'm facing a king who thinks he's a God, but I am walking with the God of heaven.

And I don't have to make a long prayer because he's right here in this moment.

And he opened this moment and he's carrying me through this moment, and he is reminded that he is more powerful than Artaxerxes.

And he says, Here we go, because God's with me in this moment.

If God created the moment, if the moment is a result of a shared vision that we have for him for the day, then we know that God is present in that moment and carries us through that.

Why else would you step in and tell our Xerxes that you had seen him time and time again cut people's heads off and everything else, boil them in oil and all the other stuff that they did, why would you step into that moment if you didn't know that the God of heaven was with you and was greater than the person that you're talking to?

Right?

And because he had built a relationship in secret, because he had spent time with the Lord, because he had prayed those promises from Scripture back to him, because he had been broken before the Lord, because he had revisited the promises of God to restore the people of Israel, because he knew the heart of God, that God's heart was redemption and rebuilding and repair, and because he knew he was faithful to his promises and he had spent time with that, it gave him a vision for what God wanted to do, how those promises would be fulfilled, how Jerusalem would be rebuilt because God had promised to do that, and how God had laid it on his heart to have a burden for that, and how it began to take shape in his life that he was going to do that.

And since he had spent time with that God and he knew that God, and he had asked for favor before this king, and because he knew the God of heaven was greater than Artaxerxes, and because he had all of that on his heart, it was so attached to him that he couldn't hide his countenance in front of the king.

King says, Why are you sad?

It is written on your face that you are carrying a burden that is affecting you.

That's how much he was attached to this, and he says, God is with me, and here we go.

And he steps into that moment because he knew that the God of heaven was with him.

That's what praying without ceasing looks like.

That's what praying constantly looks like.

That's actually what the will of God in Christ Jesus is and looks like as exampled in the life of Nehemiah.

So I want to encourage you a couple of things.

Be faithful to your prayer life.

Do not take it for granted.

Spend your time with Jesus.

Get a piece of paper in whatever form that works for in your life, and you write your prayer requests down and you pray them to the Lord and you allow him to create a burden and a vision for life.

Right?

Spend that time with him.

Then when you go about your day, you ask the Lord in the morning, what are we gonna do today?

What are we gonna do today?

My kids love watching Phineas and Ferb.

I mean, you got kids, grandkids watch that, right?

What are we gonna do today, Ferb?

What are we gonna do today, Jesus?

And you go through the day waiting for that moment, asking, confirming, talking, texting, if you will.

The God of heaven who is with you and he was in that moment.

It doesn't take a long prayer when you've built that relationship and that connection.

It doesn't take a long prayer when you see the moment, but when you see the moment, say, Lord, here we go.

Lord, help me in this.

Help me say the right thing, keep the door open, here we go.

And I'm telling you to change, it'll change your life.

Let me pray for us.

Lord, I pray that you will use this example of Nehemiah to encourage us in our individual walk.

I mean, ultimately, you saved us to walk with you daily.

Commanded it in places like 1 Thessalonians that we looked at.

But you've modeled it and exampled it in real life situations just like this.

I can't imagine the stress that Nehemiah was under in this moment, and yet to be able to recognize that you are at work and to step prayerfully into that moment with you in front of this man, this king, with all that entails in that, and yet he was connected to you and walked into that moment through his daily prayer life.

I pray that you'll stir that for us.

I pray you'll give us a vision and a desire to have that kind of walk, to have that kind of prayer life.

I pray that you'll help us to fight through things in the morning that would get away.

So just like Nehemiah did, we can build our prayer life in secret alone with you in such a depth that we carry you with us and we sense your presence and we talk to you in these moments that we believe you create.

And Father, I pray you'll bless these guys with that.

I pray you'll draw them close to you.

I pray it'll be incredible moments in days ahead as we strive to follow this example you've created for us in Nehemiah's life.

We thank you most of all for the gift of salvation that Jesus died on our cross, died on that cross to pay the price for our sins.

He rose again, conquering death and sin to forgive us so we actually could be in a relationship that looks just like this.

Bless that with these guys today.

In Jesus' name we pray.

And everybody sit?

Hey, great to see you all today.