7/28/2011 7:55:12 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: He cared enough to volunteer
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Nehemiah 1:11
Message of the verse: “11 "O Lord, I beseech You, may Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and the prayer of Your servants who delight to revere Your name, and make Your servant successful today and grant him compassion before this man." Now I was the cupbearer to the king.”
In a number of earlier SD’s I wrote that the commentary written by Warren Wiersbe that covered the book of Nehemiah was “Be Heroic.” I wrote this in error. “Be Heroic” covers Ezra, Haggai, and Zechariah. His commentary for the book of Nehemiah is not in the “Be” series and it is entitled “Standing Firm in the Face of Opposition.” Now that this is cleared up I will procede with today’s SD.
Verse eleven concludes this prayer that Nehemiah was praying to the Lord over the “mess” that was going on in Jerusalem. It is good to read the many prayers that are recorded in the Bible for they give insight in how these godly saints prayed. This will not be the only prayer that is recorded in the book of Nehemiah, If memory serves me correct the longest prayer found in the Bible is in this book of Nehemiah.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “If God is going to answer prayer, He must start by working in the on doing the praying! He works in us and through us to help us see our prayers answered.”
I believe that in an earlier SD I mentioned that I was studying the fifteenth chapter of John, the part about the Vine and the branches. Well in that section is verse seven which reads as follows, “"If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” I don’t want to go into all of the detail of the study, but I do think that the conditions that Jesus says in this verse were taken by Nehemiah in his prayer to the Lord. John MacArthur’s message on this section of John fifteen can be found on the following website www.gty.org
Once you are on this site you will have to click on “resources” and then in the search box write the following “Abiding in the Vine, Part 2.” His message on this section will come up and you can look at it to read it, you can listen to it from the site, or you can download it and put it on a mp3 player to listen to it later on. They have made it free to download any message that is on the site so download as many as you want to. I have over 2000 messages on my Ipod and listen to them when I get the chance or when I have a question about a verse in the NT.
John MacArthur writes the following from the MacArthur Study Bible about John 15:7-10 “True believers obey the Lord’s commands, submitting to His Word (14:21,23). Because of their commitment to God’s Word, they are devoted to His will, thus their prayers are faithful (14:13,14), which puts God’s glory on display as He answers.”
I believe that when you listen to the prayer of Nehemiah in the first chapter of Nehemiah that you can then understand why God was pleased to answer it. You can also understand more about the kind of man he was, and Nehemiah as a man of the Word of God as seen in the prayer.
Dr Wiersbe writes “Real prayer keeps your heart and your head in balance so your burden doesn’t make you impatient to run ahead of the Lord and ruin everything.”
It was the desire of Nehemiah to ask the king to give him time off from his job as cupbearer in order to go to Jerusalem to finish the walls and gates of the city. He knew that if he asked at the wrong time, or on the wrong way that he could even lose his life, but Nehemiah had prayed about this as seen in this prayer and trusted in the Lord to bring about this burden that he had to the right conclusion. Nehemiah cared and this was the theme of this first chapter of Nehemiah.
Dr. Wiersbe points out others from the pages of Scripture that also cared: “Abraham cared and rescued Lot from Sodom (Gen. 18-19). Moses cared and delivered the Israelites from Egypt. David cared and brought the nation and the kingdom back to the Lord. Ester cared and risked her life to save her nation from genocide. Paul cared and took the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire. Jesus cared and died on the cross for a lost world.
“God is still looking for people who care, people like Nehemiah, who cared enough to ask for the facts, weep over the needs, pray for God’s help, and then volunteer to get the job done. ‘Here am I, Lord---send me.’”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: From looking at the prayer found in this first chapter of Nehemiah and by studying more about prayer from John 15 I truly have a desire to have a better and more effective prayer life. I wish to pray about things that bring honor and glory to the Lord from the answers that He gives to me from the prayers that He burdens me to pray. I wish to be patient to wait on Him and not to go before Him, something that will be difficult for me, but possible with the help of the Lord.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1. Continue to learn contentment.
2. Seek the Lord’s will for my life in my prayers.
3. Abide in the Vine.
7/28/2011 9:10:00 AM
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