They said to me, “Things are not going well for those who returned to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down, and the gates have been destroyed by fire.” When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven.
Nehemiah heard bad news from the home front. People in Jerusalem felt disgrace because of the exile and the wall was torn down, allowing anyone to attack and demean the city of Jerusalem. Nehemiah’s response? He sat down and wept. He wept for days. Then he prayed and fasted and mourned for the city and its people.
Bad news comes at us often. There seems to be so much hurt and pain, war and famine and brokenness. It streams across social media and news sites into our lives at a rapid pace, a pace that we often can’t absorb. That stream’s impact is to desensitize us from everything. We just ignore it, or if we do acknowledge it, it has minimal impact on our lives. It’s effect is minimal. So we grow numb to it all. Until it becomes personal. And this was personal to Nehemiah.
It was personal because this was home for Nehemiah. It was the home of his ancestors.
When the bad news hits us, how does it impact us? Nehemiah sat down and wept. He wept for days it seems. He not only wept, but he sought God. He asked God what he could do. He asked what he and God could do to restore the people and to help them not feel the same and disgrace that existed within the ruins of the city.
Prayer is a mighty tool in our toolkit. But prayer that doesn’t move us to act is a broken tool. It’s an empty toolkit. Prayer that leads us to simply toss out a few words to Heaven is an empty prayer that may have limited impact as well.
Prayer that lingers, and waits, and listen are prayers that hear from God how to be involved in answering that prayer. Those are the prayers that avail much. We shouldn’t just pray for the poor around the world. We shoud pray for the poor and ask God how we can help those we are praying for. We shouldn’t just praying for the hurting. We should pray for the hurting and ask God how we can help them not hurt anymore. We shouldn’t pray for a friend to have their needs met. We should pray to God and ask him how we can meet the needs of our friends who are struggling.
Sometimes, nothing can be done to help that person or that people group but to help them see from a new or different perspective or to find joy in the mist of chaos. Sometimes, it is simply listening to God each moment, connecting a hurting person to an organization that can truly help them.
But too often, we use prayer as an excuse to do nothing else. And that’s a failure on our part. It’s a failure to listen to God. It’s a relational failure where we fail in our relationship with God and others by not actively helping. And it limits our impact upon the other. The ripple effect never gains momentum.
Our treasure will be found in Heaven. That’s where Jesus tells us to put it. It will be the lives of the people we have impacted during our living years. But we also have a ripple effect available here, during the living years.
Our prayer should be, “How can you, oh God, solve this through me?” “How can you, God, bring impact through me?” Nehemiah likely prayed a prayer like that for his home country, his people, and his friends.
Oh that he would do that through us because we asked him to!