We saw in Nehemiah 1 a great model of prayer that had elements of a formal petition: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. It gives insight into Nehemiah’s habits of personal devotion. Here we see something else. Nehemiah is talking to the king (ch.2). The king asks what Nehemiah wants. He realizes that after months of prayer the decisive moment has arrived. He is ready to speak. But before he speaks, he utters a quick additional prayer to “the God of heaven.” The most striking secret of middle-management success revealed in Nehemiah’s encounter with King Artaxerxes is careful planning. In simple language: Nehemiah had a single fixed goal (he wanted to rebuild Jerusalem), and he had worked out how he would achieve it.
Effective people do first things first and they do one thing at a time. We need to put first things first also. But how can we do that unless we work out our goals carefully? It cannot be done, because unless a person has a clear understanding of what he is trying to do and why it is important, other important but lesser matters will crowd in to chase the proper goals out. “People who aim at nothing are sure to hit it.”
There is a story involving Yogi Berra, the well-known catcher for the New York Yankees, and Hank Aaron, who at that time was the chief power hitter for the Milwaukee Braves. The teams were playing in the World Series, and as usual Yogi was keeping up his ceaseless chatter, intended to pep up his teammates on the one hand and distract the Milwaukee batters on the other. As Aaron came to the plate, Yogi tried to distract him by saying, “Henry, you’re holding the bat wrong. You’re supposed to hold it so you can read the trademark.” Aaron didn’t say anything, but when the next pitch came he hit it into the left-field bleachers. After rounding the bases and tagging up at home plate, Aaron looked at Yogi Berra and said, “I didn’t come here to read.” He knew his goal, and he did not allow Berra to distract him.
The second part of planning involves ways to achieve the fixed goal. It had been four or five months since Nehemiah had begun to pray about how he might rebuild Jerusalem, but he had not been inactive during those months. When his opportunity came, Nehemiah was ready. He said, “If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?” Careful planning. If he had not thought the matter through carefully, his conversation with the king might have ended with permission for him to go to Jerusalem, but he would have been stopped by the governors of Trans-Euphrates or he would have arrived without being able to obtain the necessary materials.
It is surprising how often careful planning is overlooked by persons in leadership, whether in the Church or outside it in business or government. Dependence on God does not eliminate planning any more than it eliminates hard work. But while Nehemiah was planning, he was also praying. After the king had granted his request to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls and had agreed to supply him with the necessary letters of requisition, Nehemiah acknowledged that in the final analysis his success was not due to his own careful planning but to God: “And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests” (Nehemiah 2.8).
God will provide beyond what we ask Him for too. It is true that God does not always answer our prayers when or how we expect Him to. But when we pray in God’s will and wait on Him to answer in His own time, we find that what God does is perfect. God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3.20).
Maranatha!
(mar-uh-nath-uh – “Our Lord Comes”)
Pastor Steve can be reached at PastorSteve@MaranathaBibleChurch.org