Father, we just want to thank you tonight
for the presence of your Holy Spirit in
this meeting, God.
And I know that people online can also
feel the touch of your hand has come
into the room.
And it's as if you are touching your
people for a specific purpose that we're now
living in, a specific time in which we
find ourselves.
And God, tonight, I believe that you're calling
a mighty army to its feet.
You're calling us to walk in the supernatural
power that you are willing to provide for
us as we are willing to be sent
in your name.
God, would you help somebody tonight to get
up?
Somebody that didn't anticipate, came into this prayer
meeting just filled with their own concerns and
is going to leave this prayer meeting filled
with the concerns of your heart and the
needs of others around them.
We thank you, Lord, that with the calling
come the giftings of the Holy Spirit.
We thank you, Lord, the change of heart
and nature is available to whoever calls out
to you.
God, thank you, Lord, that you've made us
aware of human need all around us with
20,000 people this very moment surrounded by
fire with no way out.
You've made us aware, God, of the spiritual
condition in certain parts of the world with
young people willing to pray and believe.
May we join them in heart and not
only pray and believe, but go where you
call us to go as they have done.
Thank you, Lord God, for giving us the
ability to hear this short sharing of your
Word.
But God, it doesn't have to be a
long sharing.
It doesn't even have to be more than
a verse of Scripture, and you can transform
a life.
God, your Word has such power.
Would you open our hearts, open our ears?
Would you give me the ability to speak
this tonight?
And Father, I thank you for it, and
I praise you in Jesus' name.
Amen and amen.
You may be seated here in the sanctuary,
and those that are online, thank you for
joining with us tonight.
And I want to encourage you at the
end of this sharing tonight, we're going to
have communion together celebrating the victory of Jesus
Christ on the cross for your sins and
celebrating the incredible promise of strength that God
has for those who place their trust in
Him.
So all you have to do is get
some juice and get a cracker or some
bread, whatever you have in your house, and
you can celebrate that incredible victory with us,
especially if you have experienced the salvation of
Christ in your own life.
I want to talk to you tonight about
the prayer before you pray, the prayer before
you pray.
It's from Nehemiah chapter 1.
Nehemiah chapter 1 in verse 1 says this,
it starts this way, the words of Nehemiah,
the son of Hakaliah.
It came to pass in the month of
Chislev, whatever that month was for them, in
the 20th year, as I was in Shushan
the citadel.
So here's the story of a man who
is actually born and raised in a place
of captivity.
Anywhere that we live in this world, any
environment we find ourselves in that causes our
lives to be shorter than what God intended
it to be, that there's less glory being
exuded or spoken through our lives than God
intended for our lives, is in some measure
a place of captivity.
It's the restriction.
So he's in a restricted place in a
sense.
He's part of the group that's born into
a Medo-Persian empire, initially conquered by Babylon,
the people of God, because they had treated
casually the things of God.
And now you have a generation born in
this place of captivity, as Nehemiah was.
Now, in this place of captivity, he had
done fairly well for himself.
He worked hard.
He made peace with his captivity, and a
lot of people do.
We make peace with our circumstances, and inside
of our circumstances, or the limitedness, in a
sense, of our ability to make a difference
in our world, we fight hard to eke
out our own place, our own living.
He'd done quite well for himself.
As a matter of fact, he'd worked himself
right into the king's palace, as the head
butler, as it was.
Now, to be the head butler, you had
to be trustable, because everybody was always trying
to poison the king.
You had to be willing to take risks,
because you had to be the first partaker
of everything that was fed to the king,
and because everybody's always trying to poison the
king, it's rather a high-risk profession.
You had to be able to manage a
certain number of people, because the king obviously
would have not much of a stomach for
incompetence in his presence, so you had to
have at least some leadership ability.
And so he had eked out a pretty
good living.
He probably had a nice apartment in or
near the king's palace.
He was able to lead some people, and
he was trusted by the king.
In his place of captivity, it probably doesn't
get much better than that, or so he
thought.
Then one day, some of his brothers came
to visit from Judah, and he said, I
asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped,
who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.
And they said to me, the survivors who
are left from the captivity in the province
are in great distress and reproach.
The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down,
and its gates are burned with fire.
And so it was, when I heard these
words, I sat down and wept for many
days.
I was fasting and praying before the God
of heaven.
One day, a word came that changed everything.
And the word wasn't about himself.
It was about others.
I think it was maybe a change of
heart.
Maybe his burden had been about himself, my
job, my security, my life, my happiness.
You know, most of us are concerned about
these things, but suddenly a word comes one
day, and it's about others.
And it's not just about others, it's about
his family, the family of God.
It's about the people that he knew historically
should be a blessing in the earth, should
be exhibiting and exuding the presence of God
everywhere they go, should be bringing the name
of God as it is or was in
that time to glory in the earth.
And these people that were set apart through
the promise of God that was given to
Abraham to be blessed and to be a
blessing throughout the earth are in reproach.
The wall is broken down.
In other words, there's no demarcation anymore between
these people that were blessed of God and
the rest of the world.
There's nothing that separates these people anymore.
And it should break our hearts when the
church or God's people get to the place
where they're not discernible from the people all
around in the world, where there's no wall
of separation anymore.
There's nobody that can say, this is where
God's people dwell and this is where we
dwell.
It was kind of an intermixing.
And not only that, they were in reproach.
They were being laughed at throughout the known
world of that time.
Oh, these are the people of God.
These are the ones who said, God is
with us.
These are the people who said, we have
this great history of God partaking, taking us
out of captivity and parting the seas and
bringing us through the Jordan and bringing down
Jericho and establishing a temple where his glory
was manifested and was supposed to be all
throughout the earth.
And yet here we are, the people of
God in reproach.
And the gates are burned with fire.
And at the gates of most walled cities,
that's where commerce took place.
That's where the plans for the future were
made.
In other words, the people of God don't
have a real plan for the future.
Everything is in ruins.
And maybe for the first time in a
long, long time, when he heard these words,
he sat down and began to weep.
There's no indication he was raised there or
ever had been there.
But you see, you don't have to be
somewhere for the burden of God to come
into your life.
Suddenly God, by his Holy Spirit, imparts into
us something that's in his heart, because we
are being called for a specific purpose that
he has outlined for our lives.
It's not the purpose that we garner for
ourselves with all of our jostling and all
of our study and all of our trying
to find a nice place to dwell in
the midst of our circumstances.
It's something that God has for each of
our lives.
And when you're starting to seek God, when
you begin to pray, that burden can come.
And it's planted there sovereignly by God.
You don't have to work it up.
You don't have to try to sit down
and pull out a Kleenex and make yourself
cry.
Something of the Spirit of God begins to
work inside of each of our lives.
And he sat down and wept and mourned,
it says, for many days.
And it was like, oh God, this is
not right.
God, it's not right that you're not glorified
in the earth.
It's not right that your people are being
reproached.
It's not right that the wall that separates
your people from the rest of the world
is down, and there's this intermixing now.
And there's no demarcation of who's from God
and who is not.
It's not right that your people don't have
a plan for the future, because aren't we
supposed to be glorifying your name in the
earth?
Didn't you promise Abraham that through us the
whole world was going to be blessed, but
through us now your name is being mocked?
It's not right.
And he began to weep.
And that thought could be in his heart
as it comes into ours, what difference could
my life make?
What could I do that could change the
situation?
I'm a butler.
I serve the king.
I lead his staff.
I make sandwiches.
I take the first drink of every cup
and the first bite of every sandwich or
piece of chicken or whatever it is he's
eating, just in case somebody wants to poison
him.
But suddenly this burden of God has come
upon me.
God, are you calling me to something bigger?
And as he begins to pray, he begins
to repent for the sins of God's people.
And he includes himself in that.
He says, God, let your ear be attentive.
Let your eyes be open.
Hear the prayer of your sermon, which I
pray before you now day and night.
And I'm telling you, when the burden of
God comes upon you for something, you can't
shake it.
When God starts leading, you can't push it
away.
It stays, and it sticks to you like
Velcro.
And he says, I confess the sins of
the children of Israel, which we have sinned
against you, both my father's house and I
have sinned.
We've acted very corruptly against you, he said,
and not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor
the ordinances which you commanded your servant Moses.
But he said, God, remember, I pray the
word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying,
if you are unfaithful, I will scatter you
among the nations.
But if you return to me and keep
my commandments and do them, though some of
you were cast out to the farthest part
of the heavens, yet I will gather them
from there and bring them to the place
which I have chosen as a dwelling for
my name.
Oh, Lord, I pray, let your ear be
attentive to the prayer of your servant and
to the prayer of your servants who desire
to fear your name.
You see, with the burden, faith started to
arise in his heart.
It wasn't just what we have done against
you, God, but it's what you have promised
if we'll turn back.
It's never too late to turn back, because
you are still God.
You are still all-powerful.
You still have the ability to do the
things that you promised one day that you
would do for us.
And so one day he finds himself in
the presence of the king of Persia, and
you're not allowed to be sad in the
presence of the king.
You could get your head cut off.
The king wanted everybody around him to be
happy, happy, happy.
You had to be happy, happy all the
time, or literally you could lose your head
if not your freedom.
And he was sad in the presence of
the king, and the king said, why is
your face sad since you're not sick?
This is nothing but sorrow of heart.
And then he says, so I became dreadfully
afraid.
You know, it took a long time to
get there, and he was in danger now
of losing the whole shooting match.
And I don't know why he did it,
but Nehemiah just, he took the chance, because
you don't speak this way to the king
in those empires, but he just said, why
should I not be sad when the city,
the place of my father's tombs lies waste
and its gates are burned with fire?
So the king said to me, what do
you want?
What are you requesting?
Isn't that amazing?
The king, the king of Medo-Persia is
now talking to the butler.
Normally the kings would not address butlers, but
obviously this man had found favor with him.
And the king said to the butler, what
do you need?
Think that one through.
That's the way it seems sometimes when I
go to the throne of God.
I don't know about you, but it's like
the king is speaking to the butler one
more time, saying, what do you need?
And so the king of Medo-Persia, he
has got access to anything he wants.
He's got access to gold and silver and
armies and anything he wants.
He's in favor at this moment.
The king has just asked him this question.
And so I look at it as a
type of prayer of going to the throne
of God.
And God suddenly says, my son, my daughter,
what do you want?
So the interesting thing is, he says, so
I prayed to the God of heaven.
In other words, I prayed about what I
should pray for.
I prayed about what I should ask for.
Now, I want you to think about this
just for a moment.
If Nehemiah had just assumed that he knew
what he needed, he would have said, okay,
I need an architect.
I need 12 cement trucks.
I need bricks.
And that's what we do.
We assume that we know what we need
when we go to prayer.
Have you ever thought that we should start
our prayers by asking God what we should
pray for?
We should go say, God, you know what
I'm going to need a year from now,
because you're already in the future.
I'm not there yet.
So, Lord, what should I be asking you
for?
You know what I will need.
When I get Nehemiah, he had no idea
what he was going to need when he
got there.
He's not a builder.
He's not an architect.
He's a butler.
All he's ever done is serve sandwiches on
trays and take the first sip of every
glass and the first bite of every sandwich,
and suddenly he finds himself in a position
where God is leading him to something, and
the king is saying, what do you need?
And so he turns to God to pray
about what he should actually pray for.
I hope that's getting through to you, because
it really got through to me when it
first hit me.
God Almighty, I've been asking you for things
that I thought I needed.
For example, in 1 Kings chapter 3, verses
5 to 9, you can read it later,
God appears to Solomon by night, and let
me just…
I'm going to go read the Scripture to
you.
At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in
a dream by night, and God said, Ask,
what shall I give you?
Now think of Nehemiah just as you're reading
this.
And Solomon said, You've shown great mercy to
your servant David, my father, because he walked
before you in truth and righteousness and uprightness
of heart, and you have continued this great
kindness for him, and you've given him a
son to sit on his throne as it
is this day.
Now, O Lord my God, you have made
your servant king instead of my father David,
but I'm a little child.
I do not know how to come out
or go in.
Your servant is in the midst of your
people that you've chosen, a great people, too
numerous to be numbered or counted.
Therefore, give to your servant an understanding heart
to judge your people that I may discern
between good and evil, for who is able
to judge this great people of yours?
Now, although the Scripture indicates that his request
pleased the Lord, I want to suggest to
you that his request was short of what
he should ask for.
You know, he asked for this great wisdom.
He asked for this great ability.
God gave it to him.
But in retrospect, you look back and you
say, Would to God that Solomon had said,
Would you give me a heart to obey
the wisdom you're going to give me?
Would you give me the heart of my
father David?
Would you give me the ability to make
it to the end without failing?
Solomon didn't know what was ahead of him.
Solomon didn't know that his wives were going
to turn his heart away, but God foreknew
it.
God saw it.
He was warning him.
It's all through the book of Proverbs, my
son, my son, my son, my son.
He's trying to get through to him, but
he asked for what he thought he needed
so he could go in and go out
and judge and discern the people, but he
didn't ask for the power to judge and
discern himself.
And he ended up at the end of
his life building heathen temples.
He ended up a total spiritual wreck in
the sight of God, because he didn't ask
for what he really needed.
He asked God for what he thought he
needed.
I want you to think that through, because
that's the one thought that God's put on
my heart.
And it happened, actually I was preaching in
Italy, and in the middle of the message
it just hit me, where Nehemiah stopped and
prayed about what he should pray for.
I don't know if I've ever done that.
I do it now, but to say, God,
you know where I'm going to be in
the future, so you know what I'm going
to need.
Will I need courage?
God, will I need deepened faith?
Will I need the ability to forgive?
I don't know.
You know what I'm going to need.
And so, Lord, would you move upon me
to ask for what I'm going to need
now, so that I don't find myself entrapped
or in a situation where I'm going to
be, my testimony's going to be marred or
become less than it should be.
I pray now all the time.
I'll be 70 in September, and I pray,
God, don't let me blow it in the
last season of my life.
Whatever you need to show me, show me.
Whatever you need to say, say it.
Whatever I need in my life, give me
the courage to ask for it.
Don't let me assume that 40 or 45
years of victory means the next 15 are
going to be the same or the next
10.
Don't let me assume that I know what
I need.
Show me what I need.
So, I can see Nehemiah, and he draws
back, and instead of asking for seven architects
and a cement truck and bricks and all
these other things that a natural man would
think that he needs, he asked for a
commission.
Isn't that amazing?
Send me.
Not recognizing that if you don't send me,
I'm not going.
What's the point?
If I'm not commissioned of God, then I'm
not going to be empowered by God to
do what I'm called to do.
So, he said, send me.
I love that.
That's sometimes really simple, God.
I could decide to go, but I'm not
deciding to go.
I'm asking you to send me.
Send me.
Then he asked for spiritual authority.
He asked the king of Medo-Persia to
give me letters causing those leaders in other
parts of the country on my journey to
have to give me passage.
So, he asked for a commission.
He asked for spiritual authority.
Then he asked for provision.
He said, I'm going to need timber for
the work that I have to do in
building the wall and such like.
And then he said, I'm also going to
need some timber for my own house.
I'm going to need a place to dwell.
And then lastly, he just asked for protection.
And God, the Bible tells us that the
king of Medo-Persia sent an army of
soldiers with him to guide him on his
journey.
I could just imagine.
You know, I'm never surprised anymore by God,
what he does and how he does it.
Can you imagine?
You're in Judah now.
You're in Jerusalem.
The wall is down.
The gates are burned with fire.
The Bible says the rubble is so high
that at some point, the donkeys can't even
pass underneath it.
And it's just an absolute mess.
And here comes this guy into town.
Hey folks, I'm here.
Lift up your heads and rejoice.
God has sent me.
What do you do for a living?
I'm the butler.
Anybody like a sandwich, like a drink?
Isn't it amazing?
You know, God never calls us where we're
comfortable.
He never calls us where our natural skill
set would take over, because if he called
us where our natural skill set would take
over, we would take over.
It's really that simple.
We would begin to do things the way
we think they should be done.
So he sends a butler who doesn't know
how to do it, not realizing he doesn't
need an army, doesn't need masons or cement
trucks or any of this stuff, because his
job is to encourage the people to begin
to build this wall in the vicinity of
their own homes, to get families to start
building, to get the priesthood to start building
again.
He's really he's probably been a motivator as
a leader, the head butler as it was,
he's probably been a motivator, and now he's
being used of God to motivate the people
to begin to build this wall in the
vicinity of their own homes.
And of course the Bible tells us in
52 days, 52 days, a butler sent by
God rebuilds a wall.
A miracle.
Even the enemies of God had to admit
that it was the hand of God.
You know, I preached something similar to this
in Italy, not realizing that in the meeting,
I called the message, a butler called to
rebuild a wall, and not realizing that in
the hotel we were in, the head butler
had slipped into the meeting, and he gave
his life to Christ at the end of
this message.
It was truly amazing to be there and
to see that.
I mean, you talk about God speaking to
you.
Somebody had invited him, and he just came
in and sat in the back, and the
next thing you know he's at the front
giving his life to Christ, the head butler.
You know, a butler called to rebuild a
wall.
And so tonight I have believed in my
heart this whole service that somebody out there,
this is your moment now to be called,
you've made peace in a sense with the
place that you were born in.
You've done your best, and some it's been
successful, and others it's not been as successful.
But here you are tonight, listening to a
message, and you can't explain the burning that
suddenly come into your heart, the sudden infusion
of faith, sudden infusion of a sense that
your life is meant to be more than
it's been so far, as good or bad
as it may have been.
It's meant to be more, and the reason
you're feeling that is because your life is
meant in God to be more than it
has been to this point.
And so all you have to do is
exactly what Nehemiah did.
You say, Lord, send me.
I don't even know what it is yet
or how I'm going to do it.
But God, I'm tired of the reproach.
I'm tired of the broken homes.
I'm tired of the burnt gates.
I'm tired of the devil mocking families and
children.
I'm tired of the destruction that's all around
me.
So God, I'm asking you tonight, send me.
Send me.
That's where it begins.
Send me.
God, I don't boast of any skill set.
I don't have a certificate to hang on
the wall that you could use, but God,
here am I.
I have a burden, and I believe that
you're God, and I believe that as we
pray, you're willing to show mercy.
I believe you can rebuild anything that's been
torn down.
I believe you can bring anybody home, no
matter how far they are.
If their hearts will turn, you can bring
them home.
I believe you can restore families.
I believe you can rebuild the walls of
prayer and protection and provision around people's homes.
I believe that you can be glorified in
the earth once again.
And God, I'm yielding my life to the
purpose that you have for me.
As Nehemiah did, I say, God, give me
spiritual authority.
Give me the ability that you say in
the Bible, where I can speak to mountains
and have them move.
I can tread upon serpents and scorpions and
over all the power of the enemy.
Give me the things that I need in
my life to do the things that you
have called me to do.
Protect me, oh God.
Protect me from every enemy that would rise
up against me, and protect me from the
things in my own heart that could rise
up and lead me astray.
God, I cast myself completely on your mercy
and into your hands.
Folks, this is what revival is going to
look like in our generation.
It's not going to be the mighty.
It's not going to be the noble.
There might be a few, but it's going
to be the nobodies, the nothings, the people
who never thought God would ever use them
are going to rise up, and they're going
to say, I've had enough of this.
I'm tired of the destruction of my family.
I'm tired of the reports and the reproach.
God Almighty, send me.
It's no deeper than that.
And all the power that you need for
God to use you was won for you
on the cross of Calvary 2,000 years
ago.
Jesus Christ paid the price for your sins.
Everything that separated you from the purpose of
God was destroyed on the cross.
And when you open your heart to God,
you are brought by mercy.
When you receive the sacrifice of Christ, you
are brought by mercy back into relationship with
God.
God promises to give you his Holy Spirit
and to raise you up out of where
you are or what you have become into
what he has destined your life to be.
And he promises you that the journey will
be victorious.
Something will be done that will bring his
name again to glory.
And I can't tell you what your journey
is going to be.
I don't know what it's going to be,
but I can tell you this one thing.
When you get to the end, you're going
to raise your hands as we sang tonight,
and you're going to raise a hallelujah to
God.
You're going to say, Lord, only you could
have done this.
Only you could have rebuilt this broken down
society, these broken down families, these broken down
walls, these burnt gates in only 52 days.
God, only you could have done that to
my life.
Lord, I surrender to you tonight, and I
ask you, Father, in Jesus' name, to do
through me what only you can do.
I'm going to ask you online.
There's people listening online.
Stand up wherever you are right now.
Just stand up in your homes, your kitchens.
If you're in your car, get out of
your car.
Roll the window down so you can still
hear my voice, but stand up.
Stand up and say, Lord, I'm going.
Commission me.
Empower me.
Send me.
Protect me.
Provide for me.
But God, my life is going to make
a difference in my generation.
I'm not making peace with captivity any longer.
I'm not making peace with mediocrity.
I'm not even making peace with my own
sense of success.
If my life is less than what you've
destined it to be, I'm up and I'm
out, and I'm going where you want me
to go, and I'm going to do what
you're calling me to do.
This is the call of the cross of
Jesus Christ.
This is what revival will look like.
Listen to me, my brother.
Listen to me, my sister.
It's time to get up.
It's time to go with God.
It's time to cast off those chains and
shackles that have held you down.
It's time to put away all your thoughts
of what success in life is supposed to
look like.
Success in life is when God is glorified
through you in whatever he has called you
to do.
That is success in life.
That's the life that gets to the end
with a shout of glory.
That's the life that gets to the throne
of God and hears his voice one day
and say, well done, good and faithful servant.
You've been faithful in a few things.
Behold, I will make you ruler over many
things.
Enter thou into the joy of your Lord.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
God Almighty, in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name,
hear the prayers of your people tonight.
Hear the prayers of those who long to
belong to you tonight.
Hear the prayers of those who say, Jesus
Christ, tonight I'm yours.
Tonight, God, I'm asking you not just to
save me, but send me.
Send me where you want me to go.
Give me what I need to get there
and protect me along the way, and God
Almighty, keep me to the end.
Hallelujah to the Lamb of God.
We're going to go to the communion table
in just a moment, and we're going to
celebrate the victory of Christ that was won
for you and for me.
Get some bread, get some juice of any
sort.
We'll be back in just a moment.
We're going to sing one song and come
back in just a moment and celebrate the
communion table together.