SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 07/28/2011 7:55 AM
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 for 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 an 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. (I think that they stopped free down loading of his sermons now.)
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 in 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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