Are you Weeping

“And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven.”

— Nehemiah 1:4

   Yesterday we finished Ezra, but the building isn't finished, and as I opened Nehemiah this morning I realized that maybe we aren't quite finished with the weeping either.

   We left Ezra brokenhearted over the condition of God's people, and now we find Nehemiah hundreds of miles away from Jerusalem hearing that the people are in trouble, the walls are still broken down and the gates have been burned. He hears the news and sits down and cries.

    That part really got me this morning because Nehemiah wasn't even there. He didn't tear down those walls. He didn't burn those gates. He wasn't responsible for the mess, and from where he was sitting, it would have been very easy to shake his head, feel sorry for them and go right back to his life. He had a good position in the palace. He had responsibilities of his own. Jerusalem's walls weren't technically his problem.

                But they became his burden.

And as I sat with that this morning, I felt God ask me a question....Are you weeping for what I have called you to build?

   That question really hit me because I know what it is to be frustrated by something that's broken. I know what it is to look around and think somebody needs to do something. I know what it is to see things in the Church, in ministry, in our families and especially in the next generation that desperately need rebuilding and wonder why nobody seems to see what I see.

    But Nehemiah didn't respond to the broken walls with frustration. He didn't ask why the people already there hadn't fixed them. He didn't start criticizing their failure or immediately come up with a plan to do it better.

                    He sat down and wept.

 There is a difference between something getting on our nerves and something truly breaking our hearts.(really let that sink in)

     That is where God began dealing with me this morning, because we can become so frustrated with the very people we've been praying for God to send us. We can pray for our churches to grow and then become uncomfortable when the people walking through the doors don't know how church works yet. We can say we want the next generation and then spend more time complaining about them than getting close enough to understand them. We can pray for broken families and prodigals and people who desperately need Jesus, but when they actually show up with all of their brokenness, sometimes we forget that this is what we were praying for.

           We asked God to send us people.

          But People come with broken walls.

   The question isn't whether we can see what's broken. Most of us can see it. But can we still see the people living behind the brokenness.

That's what I see in Nehemiah. His heart wasn't broken because Jerusalem didn't look the way it used to. His heart was broken because people were living exposed among the ruins. They were living in fear. And I had to wonder if sometimes we have become so focused on pointing out the condition of the walls that we've forgotten to weep for the people living behind them.

     And Nehemiah's prayer convictes my heart this morning. When he begins confessing sin, he doesn't stand at a distance and tell God what they have done. He says we have sinned. He puts himself right there with them. I don't want to miss that. If God allows me to see something broken, that doesn't mean He has appointed me judge over it. He has invited me to kneel beside it. Seeing the brokenness isn't permission to criticize it, it's an invitation to pray over it. And the thing that keeps frustrating me is actually a section of the wall God is trying to get me to care enough about to help rebuild.

 There is a difference between being bothered and being burdened. When I'm bothered, I keep wondering why somebody isn't doing something. But When I'm burdened, eventually my prayer becomes, God, is that somebody me? And when I look at the things God has been putting in front of me lately, the kids, the next generation, the Church, families, people who don't necessarily fit neatly into what we've decided church people should look like, I have to wonder if some of the things we are tempted to see as problems are actually the very places God is asking us to build.

   The kid who can't sit still isn't an interruption to ministry, that child is the ministry.

    The messy family isn't keeping us from building the Church, they're part of who we're supposed to be building it for.

    The generation everyone keeps saying is lost isn't a generation we should be standing around complaining about. They're waiting for someone who loves them enough to build.

   Then I got to the very last sentence of the chapter: “For I was the king's cupbearer.” It almost seems like a random detail until you know what's coming next, because the man whose heart is suddenly breaking for Jerusalem just happens to be standing close to the king whose favor he is going to need to get there. Nehemiah didn't know when he became the king's cupbearer that this position would one day connect him to rebuilding Jerusalem. He was just serving where he had been placed. But God already knew.

   And that made me look at some things in my own life differently today. I think we aren't always waiting for God to position us for what He's called us to build. Sometimes He's already positioning us and we just haven't seen how the pieces connect yet.

 That job matters.

      That classroom matters.

 That church matters.

Those people God keeps putting in front of you matter.

    Even that strange season where you've wondered, God, why am I here, isn't separate from the assignment at all.

Nehemiah's palace wasn't separate from his calling to rebuild the wall. It was part of God's preparation for it. And suddenly I can see this beautiful thread running from Ezra straight into Nehemiah. Ezra wept because he saw what was broken inside the people, and Nehemiah wept because he saw what was broken around them. Their burdens looked different, but God used both of them because rebuilding Jerusalem was never really just about buildings and walls.

                It was always about people.

Which brings me right back to the question God put in my spirit this morning.... Are you weeping for what God has called you to build?

I believe that question is for me, but I also believe it is a question for my church and for the Church as a whole.

    We say we want revival. We say we want our churches full. We pray for prodigals to come home and for the next generation to know Jesus. We want our communities reached and broken families restored.

But do they still break our hearts?

Love Pastor Mandy 

Daily reading Nehemiah 1

MandiesDandies / Ark of Hope