A GREAT BIG PRAYER, Part 3, Nehemiah 1:5-11

A Great Big Prayer based on a Great Big Promise

Nehemiah was concerned about his people. They were in great distress and the walls of the city were broken down. But he was a student of the Scriptures and he knew both the history of God’s people and what God had promised hundreds of years ahead of time regarding them.

In his prayer he appealed to God’s promise. See it there in verses 8-9, “Remember the word which Thou didst command Thy servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the peoples; but if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause My name to dwell.'

Hundreds of years before the destruction of Jerusalem God had forewarned His people of what would happen when they would fall into disobedience and idolatry. He also promised to restore them if they would return to the Lord (Cf. Deut. 30:1-5). So Nehemiah’s prayer was based on that promise. You will find the same thing in the book of Daniel when Daniel prayed and confessed the sins of his people. He acknowledged that the calamity had come upon the people just as was written in the law of Moses and he pleaded for God’s intervention according to His promise (Daniel 9:13-19).

Do you know what these men were doing? They were standing on the promises of God’s word. As the hymn says, “Standing on the promises that cannot fail, When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, By the living Word of God I shall prevail, standing on the promises of God.” More than that, they were praying on the promises. We need to pray according to the Word of God.

Wentworth Pike, wrote, concerning the relationship of prayer to the Word of God, “The Bible is the authoritative Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit. Prayer is the Holy Spirit’s intercession for us according to the will of God. Our participation in the Spirit’s intercession requires our use of the Spirit’s Sword. Prayer “in the Spirit” is based upon the Spirit-revealed principles of the Bible, saturated with the Spirit-inspired words of the Bible, and guided by the Spirit-illumined thoughts of the Bible.”

There are two primary ways in which we can do this. First we pray according to the promises that God has made to us as believers in Christ. At a crucial time in his ministry Hudson Taylor was very discouraged. He had come to an end of himself in many trials and troubles. He came across that great text in John 7:38, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, “From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” He began to think and pray according to that promise of rivers of living water flowing from his innermost being. His life was transformed in that process. There are so many promises that we can turn into prayers. Philippians 4:19 is a great example, “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” How about Philippians 1:6, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in your will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

The other way that we can pray Scripture is to take the prayers of Scripture and pray them for ourselves and others. This can be overdone, as in the prayer of Jabez, or misunderstood--if we merely repeat them as some sort of religious ritual--but if we pray them in faith by the Spirit we can be confident that God will answer them. We’ve been studying through Colossians 1:9-12 on Wednesday nights. We have there in that text the prayer of the Apostle Paul for the believers in Colossae. If we take that prayer and pray it for ourselves and for others we know that we are praying according to God’s will and can be confident that He hears and that He will answer our prayers.

Not only did Nehemiah pray according to the Scriptures, he prayed according to God’s past dealings with Israel revealed in the Scriptures, “They are Your servants and Your people whom You redeemed by Your great power and by Your strong hand.” Nehemiah prayed according to God’s past dealings with His people. The deliverance of the nation of Israel from Egypt was the supreme testimony of His love and power directed towards His people. He prayed according to that. God just as you delivered your people from Egypt, intervene now on their behalf that they might be delivered from this great calamity that has come upon them through their disobedience.

Likewise our prayers should always look back to the cross. Our great deliverance in salvation happened through the cross. At the cross God defeated sin, and death, and hell. Through faith in Christ we were forgiven, redeemed, and adopted as God’s children. At the cross we first experienced victory over sin. And every subsequent victory henceforth is won through the merits of that great battle.

Believer in Christ, you have been muched blessed by God. You were dead in your trespasses and sins, but God saved you by His grace and mercy. He chose you, He adopted you, He redeemed you, He forgave you, He made known to you the riches of His inheritance, He sealed you with the Spirit. He saved you to the uttermost. Let the Scriptures encourage you in this--the God who worked in such a powerful way in your life exhorts you to come again to Him for grace and mercy and forgiveness and restoration--for revival.

Pastor Jerry