Brick by Brick // Pray & Plan before Pressing Play // Pastor David Ivarson

Good morning, good morning. Everybody doing okay today?

Great, great, great, great. All right, I'm so excited to be with you guys today in Pastor Josh's absence. Not that I don't want him here, but I'm very grateful for my chance to be with you guys.

I want to tell you, I want to say thanks first. Our family has been here for a little over a year now, and we're getting accustomed, we're getting kind of settled in. It's tricky because we spent less than 24 hours in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is where we were for over 25 years, so lots of family, great memories, history, those kind of things. And so we were there because of a celebration of life service for one of our dear friends, and so we came back last night. And it still feels like home when we cross over from North Carolina into Tennessee, but we're working on that.

I want to tell you about some strides and some things that I've learned. I got, my wife corrected me, which is a fairly often occurrence, but she corrected me a couple weeks ago because I was, when I'm talking about the county, I was talking, I used to call it Forsyth County, right? Oh no, Forsyth is how it's supposed to be. And I was saying Forsyth, so I don't know if you guys fell into that bracket or whatever. It's easier for me because we live in Davidson County, so it's a lot easier.

I just stick with Davidson. But the other thing was, and this is when I feel like we've really arrived into North Carolina. Now Tennessee is kind of like this in a way too, but it's also a little bit different.

But I got to drive a tractor on the road the other day. So I was really excited about that, and I feel like it's becoming home. We're having a great time learning and getting close. But again, Tennessee still feels a little bit like home even though it's coming along the lines of accepting it as North Carolina.

But that's because our two oldest kids are still in Tennessee, and then we spent 25 years of our life there building some great memories. So anyway, I want to say that and all of that to say thank you guys for the way that you have loved on our family and accepted us and supported us. I'm so encouraged by that, or we are all so encouraged by that. I want to review a little bit from last week. We are in week number two of our study on Nehemiah brick by brick. This is leading us up to our groundbreaking for new property and new facilities, and we're so excited about that.

That's that first weekend of November, so we're looking forward to that. Here are a couple things that I heard before we jump into Nehemiah 2, some things that I heard last week and just want to kind of review and catch us up. This is kind of an overarching, this first one at least, is really an overarching theme of what we're going to talk about all the way through the book of Nehemiah.

Here it is. It's more about God rebuilding a people than his people rebuilding a wall. More about God rebuilding a people than his people rebuilding a wall, and that's what God's after anyway. God's always after our hearts. He's always after rebuilding us, reshaping us, molding us, conforming us, and getting us to look more like his son.

That's his plan and purpose for us, so that's one aspect of review. Another one is that the Bible is one story, and that is how it's meant to be read. We're supposed to read it as one story.

A lot of times, especially if you read what people call devotionally, a lot of times the emphasis is more on, well, what do I get out of this? Where am I in the story? There are places, obviously God's chosen people. Israel, there are places that the church is in there too, but more so than that, the overarching theme is God's story and specifically his redemption of us. His redemption of us, so it is a redemption story.

Here are a couple aspects of his redemption story, and again, these are all just kind of in review. His faithfulness is in exchange for our faithlessness. Have you ever been faithless? Yeah, you don't have to raise your hand. You just say, mm-hmm, yeah.

Just say, mm-hmm, yeah, that's me too. But it's his faithfulness is given in exchange for our faithlessness. And then the next thing, his healing in exchange for our brokenness. Have you ever felt broken? Yeah, well, he gives healing.

Isn't that great news? He gives healing in exchange for our brokenness. His redemption for our wandering, his redemption for our wandering, and this is less like accidentally wandering, like maybe you're in some new territory, a hike in the woods or out in a big yard or something, and you, you know, I just don't know where I am.

You just kind of accidentally found yourself lost. That's less, it's less like that and more like what Jonah did. Whenever God says, you need to go to Nineveh, and he went the opposite direction. So that's, that's like us. If you guys are anything like me, I pray and I ask God, and I feel like God's clear on what he wants me to do.

And then I do, I do the thing I wanted to do all along. And so we've got to be careful about that, but that is, those are some of the themes that are going to be kind of prevalent throughout our time in the book of Nehemiah, and specifically some review from last week. So let me pray for us, ask God to bless our time in his Word, and then we'll jump into Nehemiah chapter 2 today.

Let's pray. God, thank you for just the awesomeness of you and the awesomeness of your Word. God, that you would write us a love story about your grand plan of redemption for us. God, it wasn't plan B.

You weren't freaking out whenever Adam and Eve messed it up. God, you knew that they would mess things up, and you knew all along that you would have to send your son to redeem us. And boy, oh boy, are we grateful. We are so thankful for that. So thankful that you didn't just talk about your plan, you didn't just talk about your love, but in the way that you sent your son, you proved it.

You proved it, and you followed through on your plan like you always do. God, thank you so much for loving us, for saving us, for those of us that know you, for any of us that don't know you yet. God, just draw us to you with your love and your kindness like you have done for all of us, God, because you love each one of us individually, but also mankind in general. You love us all.

Thank you so much. God, I pray as we look into your Word, you'll give us open ears and open hearts so that we receive what you have for us, and we love you in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so let's look at our big idea for today, and I'll repeat it. We'll talk about it here, we'll talk about at the very end before we do some kind of reflect and response time. We'll do that at the very end, and then kind of in between, I've got three observations that we'll talk about, and we'll just work through those together.

But here's our big idea. Prayer and planning should always precede pressing play. Lots of Ps, right?

Lots of Ps. Prayer and planning should always precede pressing play. And then the second part, all of these require faith to follow God's calling.

So faith is the foundation, faith is at the baseline, faith is where we start. But then we want to do these things. Pray, we want to plan, and we also want to press play.

But we have to get them in the right order, all right? So we've got to pray first, and then we've got to plan first, and then we can press play and allow God to do some things. And we'll see this illustrated in the life of Nehemiah specifically here in chapter 2.

Let's talk about because faith is the baseline and it's our foundation, let's talk about faith, and some of my favorite stories about faith. There's ones in Genesis 22 talks about Abraham who is supposed to sacrifice Isaac. That was, I mean, if you guys have children and you're a dad, you can a little bit imagine how crazy that would be, but there were so many things at play. You know, Abraham was promised to be the father of many nations, and there's a big problem when you're supposed to be the father of many nations and you have zero male heirs. Like, you have no children. And so that didn't happen, him having children until he was 100 years old.

And Sarah was also up there in ages while she was in her 90s. But God, of course, fulfilled his promise, gave them Isaac. But then he makes this weird request, and it gives us some insight at the beginning of chapter 22 of Genesis about how he was going to test him. So God obviously knew he was going to pass the test, but I'm so glad it's written for our benefit to see that Abraham was definitely going to pass that test. So he asked Abraham to go sacrifice Isaac.

And so they get their caravan together, they pack up all their stuff, they go down the road and they get close to the mountain, and then they're going to go just the two of them, and they're going to go up to the mountain and worship God and do the sacrifice thing and then come back. But listen to this statement of faith that Abraham makes. He says, we, talking about him and Isaac, we will go worship and we will come back. Like, he had no doubt that God had it under control. If God was going to ask him to do something that seemed crazy, he was going to provide. And if you fast forward to Hebrews chapter 11, isn't that so great, you can look backwards and you see with such better clarity, we realize what we're told there is that Abraham believed that even if he allowed, if God allowed him to go through with it, he would somehow raise Isaac back from the dead because it was his son of promise. It wasn't just that you will have a son, but he said multiple times, Isaac is the son of promise. Abraham knew that that's what had to happen and that God could do that. So, that great statement of faith, we will go worship and we will come back.

And then there's another great statement of faith when you hear about the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. You guys know that one? Yes?

No? Okay, yeah, all right, good. Yeah, amen, okay, good. All right, so that's in Daniel chapter 3. And so they are supposed to bow down at this golden image that the king sets up, the music's playing. And it's, if you've seen like the illustrated pictures of it, it's like everybody else is bowing down and then there's three people standing up.

And so they literally took a stand for God and it got them in big trouble. So they go before the king. It's like, hey, why are you not falling down, I'm going to throw you in the fiery furnace. All these different things that he's, which I still have a question like, why is fiery furnace like the first option? Like why do we just go, I mean, it's not like a slap on the wrist, time out in the corner, it's just straight to the fiery furnace. I don't know.

I don't know how that is. But anyway, they're going to the fiery furnace and they're thinking about it and they're like, no, no, no, we're not doing that. And here's their statement of faith. Our God is able to deliver us out of the fiery furnace, but even if he doesn't, we're still not going to bow down and serve you or your gods.

What a great statement. So Abraham's statement, we will go worship and we will return, we will come back. And then Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, our God is able to deliver us, but even if he doesn't, we're still going to take that stand, we're still going to trust God. Here's something I do need to say, because faith is so foundational to our life in Jesus, I do need to say this, because we do want to focus on people who had great faith in God, but we don't want to overly emphasize their faith. Because what's more important, it's actually the object that our faith is in. So it's not our faith that does really anything. It's because that faith is put in a faithful God. It's only as strong and its most important aspect is the object that our faith is in. So obviously when we're putting our faith in God, that's the right place, right?

That's the right place. All right, let's read verses one through four. So we've got it split up into three different sections today.

We'll read a section, talk about our observation, unpack it a little bit, and then we'll move on to the next thing. But let's read verses one through four before we jump into our observation number one. So this is Nehemiah 2. And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, great car company by the way, in the 20th year of Artaxerxes the king, that wine was before him, and I took up the wine and gave it unto the king. Now I had not been before time sad in his presence. Wherefore the king said unto me, Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? That is nothing, this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then I was very sore afraid, and said unto the king, Let the king live forever. Why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my father's sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire? And then verse four, Then the king said unto me, For what dost thou make request? So the king notices, he's sad, and he's like, You've never been sad in my presence before. And that really could have got him into some trouble, but because of the relationship that Nehemiah as the king's cupbearer had with the king, like you have to trust your cupbearer not to set you up, give you something that's going to hurt you if you've got some people who are conspiring to do that.

So he trusts him and he asks him and said, What do you need? And notice what he did, remember that last part of verse four says, I, so I prayed to the God of heaven. And that brings us to our observation number one today, Nehemiah was faithful in prayer because of his faithful God. And remember we talked about that, it's not, remember we're not wanting to emphasize as much that he was faithful, Nehemiah that is, but instead we want to emphasize the point four, that it was because God was faithful, and he knew that, and that's why he went to him in prayer. So before answering the king, Nehemiah prayed, and actually the time between, flip back if you would, to Nehemiah one four, this is what we read last week, and Pastor Josh so greatly explained this to us, but look at verse four, and it came to pass when I heard these words and talking about how just Jerusalem was in shambles and as the temple of his God was all destroyed, he was upset about it. So when he heard these words, he sat down, wept, mourned, and fasted, and then prayed before the God of heaven. And so he did all those things, and sometimes when we read that, we're like, well it took me five seconds to read that, it probably happened in five seconds. But actually the distance between the time space between chapter one, him praying, and then getting to the point where he's requesting this of the king is four months. So he has been praying and being broken and repentant and trying to get the people around him to do the same thing for four months, and now he's finally going to the king for his request. And so that's why we have observation number one, Nehemiah was faithful in prayer because of his faithful God.

So the time between there was about four months. And so here's a question for us, and we have some more official questions at the end, but here's an unofficial question just to kind of get us asking questions of ourselves and thinking through the answers. What am I missing out on because I'm not willing to pray with the same kind of faithfulness and zeal that Nehemiah did, that Nehemiah prayed with? Because sometimes, and I'm not going to try to lump you guys in this, I'm just going to say this of myself, a lot of times I'll pray once, twice, maybe even three times, and then I'm like, well I mean God already kind of knows, which he does of course. And I would say that prayer is more for our benefit, right? It's not for us to do something silly and feel like we can bend God to our desires and make him do what we want to do and trick him into doing things faster than he knows is right to do or even do something totally different than what he wants to do. Instead prayer lines us up with what God already has planned and what God already is doing in our lives. So what could we potentially be missing out on because we're not willing to pray with the kind of faithfulness and zeal? So remember, it's not, again, it's not, and I can't say this enough, it's not about our faithfulness. It is a little bit, but it's more so about a faithful God who we're praying to. You don't go to somebody in prayer or even any kind of request.

Think about your friends, think about your family. You don't go to somebody with any kind of a request if they've let you down, if you feel like they're going to let you down again. So why not always, why not keep going to God? Yeah, we should go to God, but have you ever felt let down by God before? I felt like it, like my perspective was wrong, now looking back, but I've definitely felt like God let me down. Of course he didn't because he has bigger plans, his ways are not my ways, his thoughts are not my thoughts, Isaiah talks about.

But in my human limited perspective, I definitely thought that he's let me down. So the encouragement is to keep praying, keep being repentant, keep weeping and doing the things that God has called you to do to really show him, again, not that you're trying to prove to him something that he doesn't already know about your heart, but it does show and he does love whenever we get on his page, that's the point. Here are a couple things, I asked that question, what am I missing out on because I'm not willing to pray with that kind of faithfulness and zeal.

I thought of two things, I don't think it's an exhaustive list, I think there are definitely more things that I'm sure that you guys can think of as well, but here are the two I thought of, we can miss out on experiencing God's plan. For some reason he wants to use us, he wants to equip us, prepare us, use us and then bless us for doing what he asks us to do, even though he provided everything, set the stage, he's sovereign over past, present and future, he just works everything out, but then for some reason he blesses us and we can miss out on that, we can miss out on that, so let's be faithful. The second one, and this is the most important one, we miss out on the opportunity to know God better, like as you pray and as you rely on him and as you trust him more, as I do these things as well, we get to grow in him and we get to learn more about him and we get to realize how good he is, how he does things for his glory and for our good, how he does those things for us, so that all those things go along with observation number one, Nehemiah was faithful in prayer because of his faithful God. Nehemiah totally understood that knowing God better was important, he totally understood that getting on his page was important, so that's why he wanted to push forward in prayer. Observation number two, I'm going to go ahead and give it to you and then we'll read verses five through ten, here's observation number two, Nehemiah made plans consistent with the answers to his prayer, so he didn't do what I do sometimes, go to God, feel like I hear very clearly from God what the next step is and then I just do whatever I want to do instead. Nehemiah did not do that, he made plans that were consistent with the answers to his prayers.

Here's verses five through ten, we'll read those together. And I said unto the king, so this is right after he prayed and then he knows what God wants him to tell the king, the request to make known and so he does it. And I said unto the king, if it pleased the king and if thy servant have found favor in thy sight, that thou would ascend me unto Judah, unto the city of my father's sepulchres, that I may build it.

Remember it was all broken down, busted up and that made him sad. And the king said unto me, the queen also sitting by him, for how long shall thy journey be and when wilt thou return? So it pleased the king to send me and I set him a time. It ended up being, this is a little bit of a side note before we go to verse seven, it ended up being 12 years, like he was doing this whole building process, planning, preparing, actually doing the work, the pressing play on those plans for 12 years, so that was impressive that the king would let him go, what kind of trust that he had, that's so good. Verse seven, moreover I said unto the king, if it pleased the king, let letters be given me to the governors beyond the river, that they may convey me over till I come unto Judah. And a letter unto Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the palace which appertain to the house and for the wall of the city and for the house that I shall enter into. And the king granted me according to the good hand of my God upon me.

So we'll pause here for just a moment, no let's finish reading then I'll make this remark. Then I came to the governors beyond the river, gave them the king's letter, so the king followed through. Now the king had sent captains of the army and horsemen with me. Then when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the servant the Ammonite heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel.

We'll talk about those guys a little bit later today, more so in the coming weeks because those are the bad guys. But what we want to say right here is that he asked very specifically, remember observation number two, Nehemiah made plans consistent with the answers to his prayers. He took his cues from God, knew exactly what he was supposed to do and those were the things that he made, the requests that he made of the king. And I don't feel like he was reaching but I was very encouraged that the king gave him everything that he offered. He said, okay you're going to have safe passage but not only that you're going to also ask for these resources, everything he needed. Here's something so great about our God. He has resources that we've never even thought of, has resources we've never even thought of. The scriptures specifically in Psalms talks about how he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, owns the cattle on a thousand hills. I feel like that's our family's next step, drove a tractor by a cow. I feel like that's just logical, that just makes sense, it's logical so got to figure out which bedroom he's going to sleep in and all that.

Maybe downstairs, probably a basement, it's cooler down there. But God has resources we've never thought of, he owns the cattle on a thousand hills. And then Psalm 24 says this, the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. So even though he owns everything, he has everything, he has availability to give to whoever he wants to and the timing of when he wants to do that, he also is so sovereign over everything. Sometimes he does things like this, he provides but he makes the devil pay for it.

Isn't that great? He does things sometimes but he allows other people who don't know him, maybe they never will, maybe they just don't know him yet, but he makes them pay for it. And that's kind of the case here with King Artaxerxes. King Artaxerxes never claimed yet or even later claims to know the one true God but yet he funds all this and helps and reaches out to this guy Asaph that helps with the lumber and makes sure that Nehemiah is taken care of. And that's just another great story of our God, another great thing that he does. Now let's look to observation number three but first we'll read these verses.

We're going to read 11 through 20 and then we'll talk about observation number three and go from there. So I came to Jerusalem and was there three days, alright, so Nehemiah's about to do some things a little bit behind the scenes without telling a bunch of people, we'll read the details here, continuing in verse 12. And I rose in the night, I and some few men with me, neither told I any man what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem, neither was there any beast upon me, save the beast that I rode upon. And I went out by night, by the gate of the valley, even before the dragon well, sounds like a pretty awesome place to meet, hey meet me at midnight at the dragon well, and to the dung port, alright, less awesome place to meet, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem which was broken down and the gates thereof which were consumed with fire.

Then I went on to the gate of the fountain and to the king's pool, but there was no place for the beast that was under me to pass. Then went I up in the night by the brook and viewed the wall and turned back and entered by the gate of the valley and so returned. Verse 16, and the rulers knew not whether I went or what I did, neither had I as yet told it to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the rulers, nor to the rest that did the work. In other words, nobody knew about this, Nehemiah was keeping it a secret from them at this point in time for a purpose. Let's read on verse 17, then said I unto them, ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste and the gates thereof are burned with fire. Come and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem that we be no more a reproach. Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me as also the king's words that had spoken unto me, he had spoken unto me, and they said let us rise up and build so they strengthen their hands for his, for this good work. Here's what I think about when I think about verse 18 and maybe you guys grew up in a church like this where the pastor would get up and he'd say rise up.

Nobody else did that? Okay. Maybe a few of us. That's not how I speak though so we'll just get back to reading regular but I just thought about that. They would also say things like if that doesn't light your fire, your wood's wet, you know those kind of like those kind of things aren't you?

You never heard that either? All right. I'll just keep stuff.

I'll keep stuff to myself. That's fine. All right. But now we get introduced to the bad guys.

All right. So these are the bad guys that we'll continue to talk about for the next couple of weeks. But they're pushing back a little bit on Nehemiah's plan that says this in verse 19. But when Sanballat the Hornite, Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian heard it, they laughed us to scorn and despised us and said, what is this thing that you do? Will you rebel against the king? Verse 20, then answered I them and said unto them, the God of heaven, he will prosper us.

Therefore we his servants will arise and build but ye have no portion nor right nor memorial in Jerusalem. So they pushed back on him. He was pushing back on them a little bit like you guys don't even need to be here. This is ridiculous. We're taking care of this.

God's called me to do this. He's going to continue to explain that to them. They're not going to believe them.

They don't care, you know, whatever. And then he's going to continue to do what he's supposed to do. But here is observation number three from those verses 11 through 20. Nehemiah pressed play while continuing to communicate with God through prayer. So he had prayed. He had done the things that God wanted him to do based on the prayer, the answers to prayer that he had gotten. And now he's pressing play. Now he's putting his plan into action. But guess what he continued to do?

Pray. He was going to continue to pray. And we know this because in the 13 chapters of Nehemiah, there are at least 12 prayers recorded. So he didn't just say, okay, I got my plan.

Let me just kind of do this in my own power. He continued to pray, continued to talk with God, continued to take his direction and instruction from God who ultimately is after his own glory too, which is what Nehemiah was trying to do in the first case and in this whole instance was rebuild the walls, eventually rebuild the city and the temple and be able to worship God there like they had been commanded years ago. So Nehemiah kept praying while he was working God's plan. You'll see that he keeps praying and he keeps working even when the haters show up to discourage him. And again, we'll talk about that more in detail.

But today we're introduced to Sanballat and Tobiah. And what do we know about haters? Haters are going to hate, right? Haters are going to hate. That's right. It's just what they do. Haters are going to hate. So that's what they do.

That's what they're going to do. So our observations for today and review before we go back into our big idea, observation number one, Nehemiah was faithful in prayer because of his faithful God. Faithful in prayer. Again, it's so great that he was faithful, so great that Abraham was faithful. It's so great Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and other people in the Bible, these great stories that we love, so great that they were faithful. But the better part is they were faithful because of a faithful God. They knew they could trust him. They knew they could trust him. Our God has not changed.

New Testament says he's the same yesterday, today and forever. So we can trust him. Just like Nehemiah knew he could trust him. We can have confidence and hope that we can trust him as well.

That was number one in review. Number two, our second observation, Nehemiah made plans consistent with the answers to his prayers. So prayer first, then start making plans, but you can't just go out on your own. Like I've done so many times, you guys have probably done that as well. We try to do things that we want to do. Maybe it's a timing thing that we just may even be doing the right thing, but we're not doing it at the right time. God has clearly said, wait, and we're trying to go do our own thing. But we want to trust God and make plans consistent with the answers to our prayers. And then number three, Nehemiah pressed play while continuing to communicate with God through prayer. So he was doing the action and God empowered him to do it and paved the way with everybody providing supplies and the king gave him the time off that he needed, which that reminds me, Pastor Bao and I, we can talk about maybe just asking for some more holidays throughout the year.

I mean, if he got 12 years, if he got 12 years off, we can at least have a couple extra days. So anyway, we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that when Pastor Josh gets back. We'll work that out. Kenneth, you can help us. Yeah, we'll work on that. All right, good.

But those are our three observations. Let's go back to our big idea. Prayer and planning should always precede pressing play. Prayer and planning should always precede pressing play. Remember, we've got to do these in the right order. We've got to do these in the right order. All of these things require faith to follow God's calling and don't forget that that's our foundational statement. That is where we need to start. That's where we need to come back to. That's where if we don't stay there, we need to come back, but then hopefully we can stay there and then continue. Prayer and planning should always precede pressing play.

All these things require faith to follow God's calling. I've been listening to a song that I really love lately that's called Take You at Your Word and I've listened to it on repeat a lot, played on Wednesday night some with our students. But here's, I'm not going to sing it, so don't freak out. I'm just going to say it, which I know kind of loses a little bit of the excitement, but I'm going to read you this.

It's the chorus of it. It says, I'll take you at your word. Obviously this is someone talking to God. If you said it, I'll believe it.

Isn't that great confidence? You don't have to say, well, if you said it and you really meant it. We know God means things. If he says something, we can take him at his word. I feel like that's the whole point.

They were talking about this song and that's why they named it that. But if you said it, I'll believe it, I've seen how good it works. So it's like this person is saying, I've seen your plans before, they always work out.

They always work out. If you start it, you'll complete it. And then it finishes with, I'll take you at your word.

I love that as well, just the idea of if you start it, you'll complete it. That's the same thing in Philippians that Paul talks about, Jesus makes that promise to us about our sanctification. Like if he starts something in our heart making us more like him, he's not going to stop. He's going to continue. He's going to continue. If he started that work, he's going to continue. Remember, he's the beginner and the perfecter of our faith, the pioneer and perfecter. He's going to do those things. So we can take him at his word and that's, here's a quick question for us before we go into our official reflect and respond time, but can this be me?

Can this be us moving forward from today? Can we take God at his word? He can handle his end, right? He can handle his end, so can we handle our end? Which again is kind of tricky and it kind of overlaps a little bit because he gives us the encouragement. He gives us a desire.

He gives us the boldness and he just asks us to be faithful, asks us to be faithful in trusting him. So I want to give us a couple moments to go through a reflect and a respond time. I've got three questions I want to ask us.

They'll be on the screen. I'm going to ask Miss Becky to come forward and she's going to play just to give us some less than awkward silence, I think. Give us some music in the background and a chance just to reflect and respond over this thing. So I'm going to give you the opportunity to handle this a few ways.

One, if you would prefer to read those off the screen and keep your eyes open, totally fine, but if you'd prefer to listen to me read them so you can just kind of focus and eliminate distractions. That's what I love about being able to close our eyes and bow our heads is it helps eliminate some distractions so that we can focus in and hear exactly what God's wanting to say. I brought these three reflect and response questions directly from our thoughts and our observations today, but what's so great about God and how his Spirit works in our hearts is he may be saying something totally different to you. You may not know him at all and you may be wondering what in the world is going on. How do I know Jesus? How do I, like why would I want to follow somebody? What's faith?

What is this? What does it require of me? I would love to share that with you.

I could do that after the service. There's other people, other pastors here that would be more than happy to share that with you. So that's the first step if you don't know Jesus. Now if you do know Jesus, that's where the reflect and respond questions come in because it gives us an opportunity to allow God to speak to our hearts, encourage us, let us know exactly what he wants us to do and then he'll help empower us to do those things.

Excuse me. So here are a few questions. Question number one, where am I struggling to trust God in prayer? As you answer these questions in your heart, you allow the Holy Spirit search, you can come to the altar and pray if you'd prefer to do that. You can stay in your seat and pray. You can go maybe across your aisle to another person if that's something that God is moving you to do to pray with that person because you have something between them that you need to get sorted out or if you see that they need somebody to pray over them.

All those things are appropriate and again, that's not an exhaustive list either. There are other things. The ultimate thing we want you to do during this time is to be sensitive to what the Holy Spirit is wanting you to do in specific relation to what we talk through today or just what He may be talking to you about something else. So number one again, where am I struggling to trust God in prayer? Maybe you've taken something to Him and you're struggling with leaving it with Him. Sometimes we do that. We take something to Him in prayer and then we leave it with Him for a while.

He doesn't act. He doesn't intervene so we take it back. Let's just leave it.

Let's just leave it with Him. Number two, what plans have I made that I have not sought God about yet? Sometimes we make our own plans and we try to do our own thing and God hasn't said yay or nay. God hasn't said anything. So we want to take those plans to Him and make sure that we got the right word from Him, make sure that we're doing right, make sure the timing is right, make sure our hearts and our attitudes and make sure we've been praying and we'll continue to pray through the whole process.

And then number three, where do I need to step out with boldness? Because God has clearly told me what to do next. So where do we do what Nehemiah did whenever he pressed play? He's continuing to communicate with God. He's continuing to take all the orders and directions from Him but he did have to step out in boldness. He went kind of behind the scenes and did some things first but then eventually as we'll see he's going to face that pushback from those people that are the bad guys, the haters, but he's going to gather people around them and make those plans come to fruition because God is faithful and God is with them. So where am I struggling to trust God in prayer? What plans have I made that I have not sought God about yet?

Where do I need to step out with boldness because God has clearly told me what to do next or how do I begin a relationship with Jesus? Those are at the very least the things that God may be dealing with our heart about today. I'm going to give you guys a few moments of just Becky playing the instrument today, the piano, and then I will pray for us. God, thank you for how incredible you are for our time together today that you had given us your word, the redemption story of you pursuing us, for you stopping at nothing to redeem us, to be your children, to be in your family, to ultimately be with you one day in heaven forever but also in the meantime to start that eternity now by having that relationship with you and living the abundant life here on earth so that other people can see, so that other people can know what life is like in you, understand the excitement and the encouragement and all the things that you offer and there will be hard times of course.

Of course you even talk to your disciples about that. Hard times will come but you're greater because you're with us and you're greater than anybody than he who's in the world and so as hard times come, God, we can trust you. God, these things are on our hearts today and we're grateful that you spoke to us. We're grateful that we were able to listen and now let us apply these things and live more closely to you, have a better and deeper understanding of how much you love us and how much you want to show the world around us your love so that more people can know you. God, we have opportunities coming up very soon like trunk or treat for people in our community and in our neighborhoods and in our area here to know that this church is a beacon. It's a place where people who have been called by you to be salt and light, to preserve and to shine the light of your gospel on them. God let us do and be those things this week and moving forward into the following weeks as well. God, we love you and thank you and appreciate all you do and especially all you are. Thank you for being such a faithful God that we can rely on in Jesus' name, amen.