Amelia Student Ministries - Amelia Church of Christ

It seems that whenever we are looking at how to pray, we look toward Matthew 6, to what we call the Lord’s Prayer. This is a great example of prayer that is given to us from the mouth of Jesus. But I think when we only look at that particular prayer, we are forsaking a whole lot of other prayers that we can look at. One such prayer is found in Nehemiah 1. So lets look at some of the key elements of this prayer.

Worship:

Nehemiah’s prayer begins with worship of God. In verse 5, he says ⁵O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God. Worship is an important element in prayer because it humbles us before the Lord. Raising up the Lord inevitably makes us lower. The higher he goes, the lower we become. It can’t happen any other way.

Confession:

Confession is the next crucial aspect of prayer. ^6b I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s house, have committed against you. ⁷ We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses. Confession again forces us to examine ourselves compared to God. Confession is an admittance that we are not good enough for God. Confession says that we don’t deserve God. However, it also says that we are grateful for His grace.

Faith in God’s Promises:

Another important aspect of Nehemiah’s prayer is that he had TOTAL faith that God would answer his prayer. The key to having this kind of faith is to pray things that God has promised to us already.  Ne 1:8-9 “Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, ⁹ but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.’ We have been promised a lot of very cool things, such as Forgiveness, Peace, Guidance…but we have not been promised a boat, or a really hot boyfriend/girlfriend, or to pass that test that we totally didn’t feel the need to study for. Will God give us these things? Maybe, maybe not, but if we pray for things that He promised to us, we can be 100% certain he will give us to them. Because God is faithful.  And god is Truth. He cannot let a promise go unfulfilled because then god would be a liar.

Request:

It wasn’t until after this, that Nehemiah finally made his request to the Lord.

So with your next prayer, are you just going to ask for what you want, like God is a Genie that just can’t wait to lavish you with everything you could ever imagine, OR are you going to pray humbly for the multitude of things that God promised if we ask for them?

So I have started reading through Nehemiah. Nehemiah is a pretty sweet book in the Old Testament because it is written entirely in 1st person. I mean that is pretty cool. Clearly it is written by this guy named Nehemiah, bet you didn’t see that coming. Well, this guy was the man who was responsible for the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem that were destroyed in the Babylonian Captivity.

However, as cool of a book as it is, you have to read Chapter 3 to read the book of Nehemiah (sorry, you can’t skip it). This is basically a super specific account of all the people that helped build the wall, and the sections that they built. It would be very easy to simply breeze through this chapter, and think very little about it. I mean it is merely a list after all. But if you really look at this chapter, it is one of the coolest passages on unity that I have ever read.

One of the things that you find is that EVERYONE helped build the wall.  There were rulers next to common blue-collar workers. There were Priests next to the CEO’s of the companies (Ok, so obviously that isn’t an exact description of their jobs, but you get the point). No one was too good to serve. I feel like that is sometimes missing in our churches today. They say that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I find this to be pretty true.

Well, in this society, they weren’t too good. One of the rulers was responsible for building the Dung Gate. Talk about glamorous. They didn’t complain about work being too hard, they just did it because it needed to be done. There is much work to be done in the kingdom. Are you willing to step up and do the work?

So my random thought for today is gonna be really quite random. It is this: Blowguns are AWESOME!!!! I really came to this conclusion while at CIY. I purchased a Nerf blowgun a Kmart for the low, low price of $3.15. I thought it was a bargain…I had no idea how good of one at the time.

Well once I figured out how to aim with a blowgun, I quickly began to have fun. It started as shooting pop cans from across the room.  However, that soon got boring, so instead I started shooting Ryan in the face. That was a lot of fun. In fact, it is still fun, so if any of you guys have Nerf guns, I highly recommend Ryan’s face as a target option.

However, I think my blowgun skill have moved to the point where I am ready to hunt leopards in the amazon with poison-tipped darts. I can feel it. The time has come. So if you want to go leopard hunting with me, buy a Nerf blowgun and practice. That is my Random Thought for today.

I’m sure many of you have heard the song “The Good Life” by Three Days Grace.  I recently heard this song…again, and it really made me start thinking.  This is an incredibly sad song. All it talks about is the if he can have a little bit more fun, more money, more, more more, then he will be able to be happy.  Many of us can look at that and immediately see what is wrong with that theory. If all you ever want is more, then it will never be enough and you will never be happy.

The problem is that many of us pretty much pray this prayer to God all the time. How often do we as Christians fall on our knees to plead to God for more grace?  For more strength? For more forgiveness? We don’t need to ask these things from God. He has already given us what we need. When we are baptized into Christ, we get everything that we need. We receive forgiveness and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Often when we sin and fall short, in our guilt and shame we plead for God to be merciful on us and forgive us and give us more grace.  He already has…2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” Christ’s death is enough for us. In 1 Peter 3:18, it says that “Christ died for sin once for all….” One time, was enough for all sins; every sin you ever commit is covered by the blood of the death of the cross.

We don’t have to walk around miserable and defeated when we sin because we know that our sin is forgiven. Already, we don’t need more. I will however caution you. Paul writes about this to the Romans in 6:1-2, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” We should never sin just for the sake of gaining more grace.  Being forgiven will NOT justify living in sin. But it doesn’t mean we have to live in constant fear of not being forgiven either.  We have the good life already because we are forgiven.

I was reading today about David’s Mighty Men. This little story in 2 Samuel 23:8f always intrigues me, but on this occasion I noticed something I hadn’t before. Mostly, it talks about the amazing exploits of the Three Mighty Men of David who were Josheb-Basshebeth, Eleazer, and Shammah.  These were some tough dudes. These were the kind of dudes that they make movies about because they were the guys that fought whole armies by themselves and won. I personally wouldn’t want to tangle with them.

But WAIT… there were two more??? I thought it was the Three. Well, yes, these two were never actually included in the Three. Bummer, right? Well, the story goes on to say that even though they were never really included in the group, they were potentially more famous than the other three. These two were named Abishai and Benaiah.  So what happened to these guys?

Well, Abishai, even though he never was a part of their group became their commander. Yep, he was put in charge of them. And Benaiah was personally chosen by David himself to lead his bodyguard. Hmm…I guess sometimes it pays to not be a part of the group.

A lot of times we get in our minds that a certain group is exactly where we want to be. Maybe they are the cool kids, or the they get the special treatment from teachers. But this story shows us exactly what can happen when we aren’t a part of the group… Amazing things. They could have changed to be a part of the Three, or been bitter that they weren’t, but instead they continued to do what they were called to do, and so they were rewarded because of it.

We are called to live for Christ. If that means that we won’t necessarily get to be a part of a group, oh well, because God can do amazing things where you are.