Courage | Part 2

I shared a few weeks ago how my my shoulder was kinda getting janky on me again, and I was just whining about being old. And

what it turned out is I got this tendonitis, so I had to literally I've shut down. I had to not use it for a couple weeks here to not work out and exercise with it. But the problem is I really need to exercise.

One of the main reasons is it's it's stress reduction. Started off being for sports and now it's kinda gone into, you know, just being healthy, but also it's one of the prime healthy stress reducers for me. So if I don't exercise, I get a little stressed out and I just

it just doesn't work well for me. It's good because you could say I have enough energy. I need to go use some of it. So I decided to adapt. Go, okay. I can't use the shoulder. What I'll do is I'll just do cardio and legs because that'll

be great. So then I go out there to start warming up to just do some cardio legs, I had no idea because walking, it wasn't affecting me. But when I started warming up and I just started doing some air squats, my right knee felt like what was on the inside wants to come to the outside.

And this is just a dull ache. This is pain. And I'm like, what happened to my knee?

I don't remember doing anything to my knee. And I don't know. Maybe some of you can a little bit more seasoned than me. Is that what getting old is like? You just all of a sudden, what happened to my knee? It's like it doesn't wanna work. It wants to hurt. And and this isn't even the knee I had surgically repaired thirty years ago. This is my good knee. So apparently,

I don't have a good knee anymore. So now I'm like, what am I gonna do? Left side of my body? What am I gonna have to do? So I realized I was I to stay healthy and to not go completely insane, I only had one option left. It was definitely not a plan a at all, and it was to eat better.

I said that one of the prime reasons to exercise for me is stress reduction. The second one, I'm can I be honest with you guys? Is it okay to 11:30 crowd, you'll keep it between yourselves? The real reason I exercise is Bill likes to eat. Okay. I work out to support my eating habit. I mean, I'm telling you,

as I like to now and I always go in fits and bouts of I'll eat a little I don't eat completely terrible all the time. I try to make healthy choices. But even when I eat healthy stuff, I'll eat a lot of healthy stuff. And

so this idea that the only option I have left is I can't do the part of fitness I like. I enjoy workouts. Because even when I don't feel like working out, the nice thing about a workout is you go in not feeling like it, you come out super happy and feeling better. Nutrition is the opposite.

You go in with this great plan and visions of getting all in shape, and then after about three days of eating kale, you're like, I hate the world, and I don't like anybody.

And and so I'm just warning you that I'm probably hangry right now, and and and it's 11:30, and I haven't had any kale or spinach in a couple hours. So I'm gonna be mad. So I just that has nothing to do with the sermon. I just wanted you to know that. So, no.

No. But what I realized with that only option left of being fit, they do say that honestly you can't really out exercise bad eating. They say that to be really fit, it's about 80% is what you stuff in your pie hole, to be technical. And and and and I realized that and yet I struggle with it.

You know why? Because when when when all the other things immediately feel good and the other things are easy to do and the other thing and and eating right also is hard when you get busy, isn't it? I mean, you ever tried to drive

kids to a soccer game or whatever you do during the day and eat a salad at the same time or eat a good sandwich? You know what's easy to eat while you're driving? A burrito.

That's easy to eat while you're driving. So you get busy. You get wrapped up. So then the eating turns into a pseudo, okay, I try to eat as well as I can. I know I need to eat. I do it, but it's not as sound as it should be.

What I realized in my life, I don't know about you, but every time there seems to be parallels in my spiritual walk with my physical walk. When I look at my spiritual fitness plan,

there is my version of good eating that I struggle with. It's easy to get too busy to focus on it right. It's too easy. It's it's it's it's hard sometimes, and and I wanna not do it. And and and it's really the heart of the topic today.

It's this idea of my prayer life. I like to read god's word. I like to study it. I like to teach it. I like to serve god. But it's something about when it's time to just focus on prayer. I pray but sometimes I do a burrito prayer.

I I I just jump in and I and I don't I don't do it as much. I I don't have this control, and I wrestle with it. I just wanted to tell you that full disclosure because as we talk about the topic today, we are in this series called courage,

and and we've been unpackaging what does it mean. How do we have courage in our lives? How do we have the courage to step out

and trust God to go after the life he's really called us to, which is crazy because when we trust him, we actually step into the life we were built for. And the honest truth is even if it sounds crazy and scary what God asked us to do,

when we do that, we actually start to get the fulfillment, the satisfaction, the joy, all the things that we do long for but we seem to run after in other ways. Yet we still need courage to do it because sometimes the way God calls us do it just doesn't seem

doesn't it's like good eating to us sometimes. So what we've been doing in talking about courage is we've defined courage as not the lack of fear Because courage is really a condition of the heart, not our circumstances.

Courage is a condition of our hearts, not our circumstances. And many of us, we wait to have courage to step out where God's asked us to go, to go out. And what we're waiting for is the circumstances to make it easy for me to be brave. And that's not courage. And by the way, that's never gonna happen.

And and so it's just a a reason to not step out. And like my dad told me and the bible says clearly and we said last week, if you're not scared, it's not. I was wimpy. Six of you were listening. If you're not scared, it's not Hurry. There you go. That's better.

And this idea that we've been unpacking. So what is the conditions of the heart? It's a heart condition. So we're looking at these six heart conditions as we go through the story of a man named Nehemiah who displays these six conditions of the heart that create a courageous life.

The life we really do long for but we don't understand that it's through courage that we get it. It's through courage that it happens. And so we've been unpackaging that, and last week we talked about the dislocated heart. The first condition of the heart to have courage is my heart needs to dislocate.

Meaning before my body, before I make a commitment, before I actually jump and do anything, the first thing that needs to move is my heart. My heart needs to dislocate, meaning move from where I'm at, maybe the safe place, the comfortable place,

and move to where God is, to where God is calling me. So that that dislocation is the first thing to have happen. And we've seen that in the in in in the story of Nehemiah in the first four verses. If you weren't here, it's Nehemiah's man who he grew

up, was born and raised in a foreign land. He was a Jew. He was a faithful Jew. He knew the Lord. He knew God's word. And and and yet he grew up in a foreign land because what had happened was the people of God had had basically been given a time out where they just kept not trusting God, not trusting God, not having courage.

And so he gave them a time out. They got overrun. Jerusalem got destroyed. They got dispersed to this foreign land but god said, hey, this is kind of a time out. I will bring you back. You're going to come back to my plan to bring me honor. This city is going to be the great city again. It's gonna be the place that declares to the world who the one true god is. He made all his promises and seventy years later, just like he said,

they got to go back. And there was two major waves that went back over the next seventy five to ninety five years, and and they've been back. Nehemiah is in this period almost a hundred years later,

and he has never went to Jerusalem. He was only born and raised in this place called Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire at the time. And he had risen to the ranks of being cup bearer to the king,

which sounds like a lowly job, but it's really you're the number one key adviser to the king and you're kind of the head of the secret service, basically. You protect the king. It's a very important, prestigious, safe, comfortable, well paying job, basically. And he's in this position,

and he hears that one of his brothers has come back from Jerusalem. He was some of the people that lent went, and he wanted to know how it's going because he's faithful. He wants to know how's God's plan working out. And he says it's terrible. The people are in danger and they're disgraced.

And they're both from the same thing. The danger and the disgrace is the city in a hundred years, they cannot they still haven't gotten walls built. They haven't built a wall around the city.

And what you gotta know to understand the power of the story is a city without walls back then is a disgrace of a city. First of all, you need a city for the obvious you need the walls for the obvious reason, protection.

But not only protection, if you go a hundred years and you still haven't built walls, that means your city doesn't need them because you're a podunk town that means nothing to anybody.

And this is supposed to be the city that God promised to declare the one the city of David, the city of God. It's supposed to bring glory and honor to his name, and it's just sitting there and no one cares. There's no walls.

That caused Nehemiah's heart to dislocate. We saw that last week. He was sitting in Susa, the safe place that he'd always known, but his heart had traveled to Jerusalem. Guys, the first step of courage in your life is gonna be you have to let your heart go to where God wants it to go, not where you want it to go.

The next thing now we're gonna talk about this idea that has to do with prayer. What does prayer have to do with courage? What does prayer have to do with courage? Well, I heard a great phrase once. It said, courage is fear that has said its prayers.

So what does courage have to do with prayer have to do with courage? We're gonna see now because after Nehemiah's heart dislocates, the very next thing he does we're gonna look at today is he prays and we're gonna look at his prayer And we're gonna see in this prayer the big idea for today. If condition number one

of courage is a dislocated heart, condition number two is a broken spirit or a broken heart.

And wait. You just said prayer. Yes. Our prayer life is both an indicator and a developer of a broken heart. A broken spirit.

What do I mean by that? If a dislocated heart is about being overwhelmed by the need, because he saw this problem, he saw something that shouldn't be, he saw something that he knew that God wanted to do something different and it bothered him. So a dislocated heart is about being overwhelmed by the issue at hand.

If that's what a dislocated heart, the broken spirit or broken heart is about being overwhelmed by God. The God who can fix it. The God who has the power. The God who has the understanding. The God that can lead and guide and provide where he guides. And you have to have that.

If you see in your life there's something that should ought not be that way, and I know God doesn't want that way. And you skip what we're gonna talk about today, and you go to just what we're gonna talk about next week, which is having radical faith.

It's not till part three that we get to actually physically jump and do something. But if you skip and go from there's a problem, yo, I'll solve it if you turn into vanilla ice and and and just jump right into it. You've skipped the broken spirit part. That's a dangerous thing

because that could be driven from pride or fear or legalism. We might jump after something that God wants us to do without having a broken spirit because you're saying hey God look what I just did. You're trying to impress God. Which might be indirectly say see God I did this so now you should give me what I want.

Or it's pride. I see the problem. I'm gonna go do this for you God. Watch me. You can't leave this step out. And like I said, this step for me and so many of you might be like me, I'm just honest with you. If if you look at the six things that we're talking about in the series,

if there is one of them that'll trip me up and make me get cowardly, it's this one. It's this one because it's so easy to blow right past it. And here's what I'm saying. We're gonna see in Nehemiah's prayer, our prayer life is an indicator of a broken spirit and how we choose to pray is a developer of the broken spirit.

So let's look at it because as we read this prayer, what I'm gonna do is is is read through it. And I believe there's three things we need to understand about how a broken spirit is developed

and indicated. Heat's obviously indicated by his prayer, but now we develop it this way too. So I'm just gonna kinda read through this and point these three things out. So the first one's found in verse five. He says, then I said, now he prays, oh lord god of heaven, the great and awesome god who keeps his covenant of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands.

Right there. Stop. The first thing you do is the first thing he says is, did you notice how did he start his prayer? If you're like me, especially when I'm busy and I feel overwhelmed or I get get overwhelmed to dislocate our things are not the way they should be and I'm bothered in my spirit by something,

oftentimes when I pray, I don't start my prayers like this. Oftentimes, I don't know about you, but I start prayers that they start with me.

My prayers start with where I'm at. Do you ever start your prayers with the problem? God, I need your help. This is blah blah. And you just jump right in at the deep end, and our prayers start with with where I'm at. That's not what Nehemiah does here. His prayer doesn't start with where he is. It starts with who God is.

It's not about where he's at. It's about who God is. And he starts his prayer by praising God, by declaring who he is.

In other words, step number one, the first indicator and developer of a broken spirit before God to give you courage is I must cultivate a high view of God. That's what it's saying here. I if I'm gonna do this, I have to cultivate a high view of God, and it shows up in the way I pray.

In the way I pray, do I have a high view of God? Do I do I do I see do I understand? What do I mean by being broken? That broken spirit means I know that the power in prayer is in the one who answers, not in the one who asks.

And I need to do that first. The first thing I need to do is cultivate this high view of God. Or another way, simple way, it's 11:30. Some of you are ready for lunch. Say it simpler, Bill. I need to see God clearly. The first thing I need to do in my life if I'm gonna have courage is do I see God clearly?

Do I see who he really is? Do I understand who God is? And can I declare that? And it shows up in my prayer life. I should start with God.

My prayer should always start there because look what he did. He starts off, you know, he knows in just a few words. Look at how much there is in here. He starts off saying, oh lord, the word he uses for God in this in this in this name is God has a lot of names in the Old Testament,

and most of them are descriptors of God. They describe his attributes, but there is one name that's called, you know, his personal name. It's almost like God's first name. It's Yahweh, and that's the name he uses. He doesn't just say a generic, oh God,

the higher being out there. And that's interesting because this is a guy that grew up in a culture that's all he's known is a culture that has hundreds of gods.

But he chooses to pray by using God's personal name he's saying, oh God, the one and only God, the one true God, the only God that actually is. Then he says the great and powerful and not Oz, the great and powerful Yahweh and he's declaring that he is the one and only God who was and is and will ever be.

He's being very clear that he's talking to a God he knows and he knows who he is. And you're thinking well what does that how does that relate to me? Guys we still live in a culture that has hundreds of gods

And we still have people, you might be sitting here, and when you pray to God, do you just say God's name because you're like, I'm just talking to God, whoever's up there, and you don't really know him?

Are you just using a generic name for God? The guy in the sky, the being out there, whoever it is because you don't know him. Well, there's the first issue. This is a guy that that knows who he's praying to and he knows that the power of prayer is the one who answers.

And the first thing he does is he sets that right by praising him, by declaring who he is. And there's actually the more even more powerful thing is after he declares the god of all power, he goes out his way to say, who keeps his covenant of what? Unfailing love.

So he goes, this is the God who was and is and will always be. And he's the God that does not break his promises. He is the one. He keeps his word. You could take that to the bank and he has a covenant. And what is that covenant?

Unfailing love. Meaning he's the god that even if you break the covenant, he'll uphold his end. He understands I'm praying to the one that can make this happen. I'm praying to the one I ought to trust. I'm praying to the one that knows more about me than I know about myself.

Do you pray that way? Do your prayers start with praising the God? And a lot of us don't do because you don't know God.

And we're gonna see in a few verses the way you know God is you gotta know his word because this is where he's revealed. That's why I say read the word. Get in the word. Because you don't have anything to say about who God is if you don't know who he is.

And so the first step is is I must cultivate a high view of God. You know why? Because that results in something else. When I see God clearly, I then understand myself accurately. Or in other words, when I when I cultivate a high view of God, it results in an accurate view of self. That's the second thing.

Seeing God clearly. When I cultivate an a a high view of God, it results in an accurate view of myself. Because look what he says next in verse six. After he declares who God is in verse six, he says, listen to my prayer. Look down and see me praying night and day for your people Israel.

And he goes, look what he says, I confess that we have sinned against you. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned.

And then he explains what sin is. This is great. This is a great definition of sin. A lot of people don't understand it. He says, we have sinned terribly by what? By not obeying the commands, decrees, and regulations that you gave us through your servant Moses. The regular way he gave through his servant Moses, the Old Testament. It's the word of God that they had at the time. So he says, here's how we sinned. We've all sinned by not listening to your word.

In other words, he says, we have all sinned, including myself, by not trusting you, God. We have sinned by not believing you. You realize that's what sin is.

And you know, if you've been a Christian for any length of time, we start to get this attitude. Kinda like what Israel did. We're God's chosen people. We're better. They thought God chose them because they were better. No one chose them because they're just like us. The reality is this. The reality is this. We all

choose in our lives to not have courage. We all choose to not trust God. We make decisions in our life that says, I don't believe that God is all powerful and I don't believe that his love is unfailing. Because God's word will say do this, but we're like, no, that doesn't sound that doesn't sound pleasant.

Think about it. When we when we choose to to do this sin called don't trust God, that means it's because we don't understand who he is. When we see who he is, we see the gap between who he is and who we are. That's the whole point here. Once he declared who god was, it opened up Nehemiah's heart to say, I'm not that.

But if we choose to not see god clearly, we won't understand ourselves accurately and we'll make this weird kind of shift in our mind. Our prayers will become more about I need to get God to agree with my agenda rather than the heart of it is I need to get back on God's agenda and trust him.

And so if I don't see God clearly, I won't see myself accurately. And myself inaccurate will be I gotta prove myself to God or I'm better than God or I know better than God. And that's what sin is. At its heart, it's like I I I I basically have pride and God says he does not respect that. He will not help that. He gives grace to the humble, but he rejects pride.

And the pride of sin is I hear what God says, but I don't believe it. Do you realize that means we're seeing ourselves inaccurately?

When I don't really see God for being the God of all power, the God of the universe, the one who was and is and will ever be, the one who made you and me, the one who knows all the universe, and despite all that he died for you and me, he has absolute incredible unfailing love.

He knows us better than we know ourselves. But if I don't really see that, if I don't declare that in my life, that's a broken spirit. If I'm not broken to know that, I will think I know better than God. And that's why I won't listen to him sometimes. And that's why when God says, hey, this is what I want you to do with your life, that doesn't sound fun. I don't want to do that. That sounds miserable. I want to do that. See? I don't see myself accurately. I think I know better than God.

When God says, here's what I want to do with your time. Nope. Here's what I wanna do with your money. Oh,

god. That looks terrible. I don't wanna sacrifice for that. You know what'll make me happier? Another car, another house, another relationship, another this, another that, another thing, another vacation, another trip, another experience. That's the thing that's gonna make me happy. And when we say that, what we're saying is, I don't believe you, God.

And that's because I don't see myself accurately. I think I know more than God. I think I'm better than him. I think I know myself better. And the truth is we couldn't be more wrong. But if I don't see God for who he is, I will not understand myself. And I'll miss the whole point.

And then I'll turn my prayer life even if I come to church. We can do this and and and say we love Jesus. And what happens when I don't see God clearly? What I start to do is I start to view God through the lens of who I am when it should be the other way around. I need to view me through the lens of who God is.

A W Tozer, one of my favorite theologians, he died back in the sixties And he wrote and he always had a concern for the modern church. And his concern wasn't the music style. It wasn't all that stuff. It wasn't the contemporary things. That wasn't his concern. He thought we should be relevant,

explain things in a way we can understand, but what he was concerned about is our high view of God.

We're so concerned with making God our friend, we forget that he's Lord of all. And he was concerned with our understanding of who God is. He felt like the modern church, do we really seek to know who God is? Because he said this and I think it's so accurately.

He said how we view God is the most important thing in our life because everything else you think and do will come from that. Everything you know even if you don't I don't believe in God. Exactly. How do you view God? He doesn't exist. So how do you live your life? There's no God. It's whatever I wanna do.

You see? How you view God is going to determine everything else you do. And so that's why this says it starts with high view of God then results in an accurate view of myself. And what was his accurate view? I'm not God. He's the God of all power. I don't have the power.

I can't make this happen. He's the God of unfailing love and his covenant. I'm the one who fails. I'm the one that doesn't trust. So there's this gap. There's this gap. But he's confessing it. So seeing God accurately enables him to confess I got this wrong. And now I know what you're thinking. Sometimes you're like, what?

That mean God's like just really insecure? That what he needs to do is, God, you're great and I suck. You know, is that what he's doing? I like the comedian Brian Regan. Anybody ever listen to him? He does a whole shtick and one about how when we go to parties and someone tells a story,

we all wanna because of our insecurities, we wanna be better. We all wanna one up each other. Hey, that ain't nothing. And then we play that game of I know, well, my story's better. Well, I top that. I top that. And we wanna have the top story because what we really wanna do is to make ourselves feel better. We wanna say, me, you.

Me, you. Me, you. And and and and and is that what God's doing? Does God to feel better about himself needs us to declare how great he is and wallow in how terrible we are? That's not what he's doing at all. You see what he's doing is when we see that gap,

it's not to make us feel bad. It's not. And I hope some of you've been in churches before and I'm not afraid of throat punching, but I want you to hear the right thing.

A lot of -it never gets further than that. You need to confess that you're a dirty, rotten, horrible sinner, and it's true. We are sinners. We fail and all that, but we think it stops at that. God's great. We're not. You know, we should just declare that we're terrible and all that. And and and and you've heard it before. You've heard it in preaching. You might heard the preaching. It's like, doesn't go any further than this. He's like, brothers and sisters,

you better turn or you're gonna burn. You better fly or you're gonna fry, you know, and then that's it. If you don't want God ticcing you and sending you a really hot place, we're like, already live in Arizona. What does it matter? See that type of preaching doesn't work here.

Hell's probably five degrees cooler than this and not as humid. But the idea was that's true.

God is here and we're here. But why does he want us to see that, don't it? Because what he starts off to do the first thing is when we see the discrepancy, we see ourselves accurately, and we know we can't do this without God, and we know that we are the ones that failed, and that causes us to first confess.

That's what I was talking about. He confesses we've sinned, and that's like when you're going the wrong way. You ever drive in and you got on the freeway and you're supposed to go south, you headed north and you don't realize it for a while? Confession is like, hey, I'm going the wrong way.

And then you have a decision to make. You're either kids, vacation got changed cause you don't want to turn back around, or you get off the road, turn around, and go back the other way. That goes right along with confession. I realize I'm going the wrong way.

Repentance is then to turn around. And you've heard confession or repentance, But it's deeper than just you made God mad, and if you don't turn around, you're going to hell. It's God has unfailing love, and he knows us. He's the God of all great and mighty power that loves us completely

and knows what we really long for. And he's saying you're going the wrong way. And when you realize he's the one that loves and we're the ones that fail, he's the one that always succeeds, we're the ones that don't. He's the one that knows us better than we do. We don't know us better than him. When we realize that, we can own the fact we're going the wrong way and choose to turn around.

God does not want us to see our sin to make us feel bad. He wants us to see our sin in order to be bold.

It's not about feeling bad. It's about enabling us to be bold. Because if you just wallow in it and you just sit there, we'll never do anything about it. But he wants us to know that I am the answer, and you can boldly turn around. You don't have to sheepishly turn. You could boldly turn around because look what he says next. It's right here in this passage.

It says, please remember, verse eight, what you told your servant Moses. This is the bible he's quoting. He says, if you are unfaithful to me, I will scatter you among the nations. Meaning, if you don't trust me, you're gonna go the wrong way.

And and he says, but if you return to me and obey my commands and live by them, then even if you're exiled to the ends of the earth, it doesn't matter how far away you got from me. If you turn around, I will bring you back to the place I have chosen for my name to be honored. You see what he's saying?

When you see God clearly, you see that discrepancy. And instead of us in our arrogance or our fears or pride not listening to God because we think we know better, we know we don't know better. But now we see the clear of the unfailing

God, the guy with the unfailing love that loves us so much. He says, all you gotta do is hit the brake, turn the turn signal on, flip the u-turn, and I'll bring you back. And who brings us back? Is it us? Do we have to do all the effort? He says, I will bring you back. Just have the courage to turn around.

Confess and turn around. That's it. Yay. Amen. Someone clapped. Somebody understands. That's the beauty of it. That's why we need to see the discrepancy. That's why we need a broken spirit. A broken heart is the humility to know and to confess and turn around. But here's the problem. How far away did he say you could get?

It doesn't matter how far you get. You can come back. And there's two types of people right now that are still driving towards the end of the earth and beyond. Some of you feel like you've sinned or you've gotten so far away, there's no hope for you.

This is why we need to see ourselves through who God is and not the other way around. If you define a God like you, he won't forgive you. If you define yourself through the God who created you, you know you can be.

It doesn't matter how far. It doesn't matter what you did. And trust me, I'm I'm preaching a way I'll call sin out and sin is whatever he says don't do. But I don't think, hey, your sin is worse than it is. It's like trust God. Believe God. Have the courage to believe him over yourself and it'll change you.

We need to be bold in our ability to turn back but some of us think I can't and then some of us won't because right now you're liking the ride. You like the view out the window of your life right now And you've bought into a lie that you think what you have on your own is better than what you would have with God.

And once again, you do not see God clearly. Because what God says is not if you go and be exiled, I'm gonna punish. You might go on to this exile and have a lot of great cool awesome experiences. But you know what you're gonna miss out on? The calling of your creator. The one who built you for something different.

Who knows you better than you know yourself and your pride and your stubbornness and your fear, your fear of the uncomfortableness of turning around is gonna stop you. That's why our prayer life is directly connected to if we have a broken heart or not.

We need to be broken before the lord and understanding he's god I'm not but that's a good thing. Because he loves me. Do I believe him? Because that's what leads to the last thing. When I cultivate a high view of God, which results in an accurate view of self, which then that leads me to a courageous commitment

to God's agenda. Remember what I said? If if we get this out of order, we spend a lot of our prayer lives trying to convince God to buy into our agenda. Pleading with God and and it doesn't work that way. God wants us to pray in boldness and courageously committing to what his agenda is.

And I can do that when I have that high view of God and accurate view of self. I confess. I repent and I can turn and then I can turn back and have this courage. Look what he says in verse 10. He says, the people you rescued by your great power and strong hand I just meant thank you. You've forgiven us. You've rescued us. You've turned you have the power. You're the one. You'll bring us back. He goes, we are your servants.

What is what is he committing to? Not great, God. Now that I did this, give me what I really was after. Give me he says, no. I am now gonna commit. We now serve you. Those of us that turn back know that the goal is back to your agenda, back to your plan. I can't you know a lot of us get stuck and confess but no repent.

Alright, God. I'm sorry I'm not listening to you. I'm sorry I'm not listening you. I'm sorry not listening to you. I'm sorry I'm not listening to you. I'm glad you love me because I'm just gonna keep driving this way. And we're never gonna experience what he wants.

Turn around. And what that turnaround is, I'm just courageously committing back to what is God's agenda? What does he call me to be? What am I supposed to be as a Christian? What is this supposed to be about? I can courageously get back to that. That's the litmus test.

Do I want to go where he wants to go? Because look what he does. After that he says that we're your servants. Then you get into the part of the prayer that most of us start with and end with. He finally has a request.

His prayer request comes at the end after it's been filtered through all this stuff and his request is 100% about being resourced to do God's will. Not God resource my will. I promise to be a good boy or girl, but give me what I want. He's like, I've surrendered. I'm gonna do what you want and it's scary,

but I need your help. And I know I can pray this because you promise. And in the New Testament, is very clear. Jesus says, anything we ask for, if it's in God's will, we get it. Where God guides, he provides.

So here he boldly prays. Oh Lord, please hear my prayer. Verse 11. Listen to the prayers of those of us who delight in honoring you. Please grant me success today. And here's the last this is the only time he actually asked something. By making the king favorable to me, put it into his heart to be kind to me.

He knows that he needs to what he's gonna have to do to be a part of God's plan, he's gotta go talk to the king. And I am telling you, you don't wanna miss next week. You can read ahead, but if you don't understand the context, you're gonna be underwhelmed by what he does next.

But what he does next, I'm just gonna give you a little bit of a a insight here, spoiler alert. What he does next literally is risking his life. And that's what god's asking to jump You think, well God just wants me to be safe and happy. No, he doesn't.

He wants us to be courageous and bold and go where he wants us to go to make a difference. And that's why we're always bored with life and running after the next thing and the next thing because we were built for that. We were built for the courage. We were built for this mission.

We just don't believe in who God is. We're afraid.

Is God gonna if I jump, will he catch me? So you know what we do? Instead, we spend our time doing step one. Alright. My heart's been dislocated. I want this, but sometimes it's about what I want. Then I pray really hard and I jump. God, please catch me. I hope this is a good plan. Oh, yahoo. Bam.

Land on the that didn't work. And you know what? Then we're mad. God, why didn't you listen to me? And he just lowers the rope and says, hey, grab a hold. I'll bring you back up. We'll start all over again. And you gotta make a decision. How many times you wanna jump and pancake?

If we do these first two things, what we talk about next week, radical faith. When you jump where he wants you to jump, when and from a broken heart and and and and dislocated heart, he will catch you. It might be a wild ride, but he'll catch you. And that's really what's happening here.

The question is this, do I believe I can get more done on my knees than on my feet? And what's interesting is how do you get to prayers like this? Do you realize in verse four it says that when he heard and his heart dislocated, he says, for days, he mourned and fast and prayed. Then he said,

you know how he got to a prayer like this? By praying long and hard.

You only get to prayers like this when you pray. And then we know that he spent months praying this prayer before he went got a chance to talk to the king.

Am I willing to do that? Am I willing to pray?

God, basically dislocate my break my heart for what breaks yours. Help me to see you clearly and myself accurately so then I can act boldly. Now you're ready to jump. Now you're ready to jump. Am I willing to do that?

Because you know what? What Nehemiah knew he needed to do, we're gonna see as we go ahead. He knew that to be a part of it, he needed to be a leader. He needed to coordinate and he was gonna have to go build walls. He's gonna to build a wall because he knew that's what needed to be happen for him to fulfill God's agenda and God's mission. And I'm gonna tell you next week, guys, I'm gonna ask you to start praying now.

If this is your church, start praying now. Because your leaders have been praying for years over this. It's time for us to build some walls.

Because God gave us the mission very clearly in scripture. Called me like the Nehemiah leader to be here first. But just like it happened, Nehemiah doesn't make it happen. God's people made it happen. But they had to trust God.

And the idea was he called us to be here to point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus. We are running out of room and that people keep coming. So we know we need to put up some walls. We need to build a building. The reason I'm waiting till week three to even show you this is because the first two weeks,

before we even jump, you gotta have these first two characteristics of a courageous heart. The other reason too is I honestly believe that the building is just an example about what we're preaching about. That in every area of our lives, we need courage. This chance to build this building is just one opportunity. It's one moment that we can do something about it. And I'm gonna be very bold with you. If this is your church, I'm gonna ask you to get scared, and I'm gonna ask you to give financially.

I'm gonna ask you to do that. And I'm gonna I I you know, I just assume that people wanna listen to God. So I'm gonna assume everyone that's a Christian, that everyone says this is their church, is going to make a commitment to this building. Because that's the way it works.

And we're gonna talk about it next week about how to jump. But I'm gonna ask you start praying now. God, can I see the mission of this church? Is my life really about pointing people to you by loving them like you, like your word says? Am I going to believe you? And then if it is, let me see you clearly and me accurately

because that's the only way I'll truly boldly jump. Because I need to trust that you will catch me if I jump where you ask me to go. It's that simple. And and and and you know what? And I realized this. I I realized what we need to have in these moments is the faith of a child,

which is kind of weird. Whenever I heard that Jesus said you have have the faith of a child, that seems weird because children don't seem to be, you know, they're not too bright. They're young. But but then I realized what he meant by that. Have you ever seen a kid once they believe in something?

How do they act when they believe in something? They have such a faith that that that is so beyond us. And what he meant was we need to trust God like a kid trusts something. And I learned this lesson when we first moved here to start Rock Point Church.

When we first moved here, we lived in a house. My oldest daughter was was five at the time. And and we had this house had one of those walls that was about this tall so you can put a TV and stuff in the one side. And and I decided one day I'm gonna play a game to get her to trust me. And you ever do these games with a kid that you immediately regret it because they start to love it so much that you you you can never stop doing it? So my game was I sat her up and I go, hey, jump to daddy. Trust daddy. She's like

go, come on, can trust me. And I had to put my hands where my fingertips are practically touching her. The first time all she did was go, She felt like two inches. She's like, see that wasn't bad. Was like, no. She goes, again. I sat her up there. And I just slowly kept moving further away.

So I got to where she's jumping out pretty far. Then it got so bad that she got so into it and liked it that she would actually run back because this wall was long. It was like a runway. And you'd hear the pitter patter of her feet. She would take off and then run and jump, and I was so far away that every time I did it, the only thing I did is I had to look to make sure mom wasn't around because it because this is it was a tile floor, and I thought she is going to freak out if she sees me doing this with our five. She didn't mind when it was a few feet, but I'm talking, I'm pretty far away. And she's running and jumping. Woo hoo. And she would just jump like a swan dive.

And there's weight and I'd just catch her. So then that's the but then she got so winded. It's like, daddy again. Daddy again. Daddy again. That's probably why I have a bad shoulder and knee. It was all the catching of her jumping.

So then one day she kept doing it. Daddy get in. I'm like sweating. I've been doing this for so long. And I was expecting a phone call, and so I I I I right as I sat her up there, my phone buzzed. So right when I sat up, hey. Hey, sweetie. Just wait a second. And then I turned and I looked at the phone.

And you ever have those moments that that it happened like in a nanosecond, but it seemed like time slowed down. I remember my I can feel the neurons in my brain putting two and two together because as I turned,

the first thing that I remember my brain started to process but didn't know what to do with right away was I heard the pitter patter of feet. That's not good. But I didn't react yet. And then my peripheral vision caught something, a shadow of something. And

I realized right then my brain put Tutu together that says, I said, wait a sec. She didn't wait. I turned, she went back, ran, and jumped, and now she's flying face first towards our con our tile floor, and that's not a good thing. And that's that when my brain put it together, and I went, no.

And I turned just in time as she's flying in. I lunged out, and all I had time to do was to grab an arm and a leg. And I got one arm like as it was going down, and I fired her down, and it was like, I felt like a pilot. It's like, we're gonna hit the ground. Pull up. And all I could do is I went, and

I swung up, and she went down so fast. Her chin like this. She didn't hit, but you could see a line in the dust, which my wife says, don't tell them we had a dusty floor. So

I go, that's what you got out of that story? So then I'm like, I I swing her like this, and the momentum was so hard. I didn't know I was gonna fall over if I just kept going. So I just went up like this, I just, boom, I flung her in the air like it's an acrobatic thing, and she spun up. She was spinning around like she's a a ice dancer or something and and and pirouetted like four times in the air. And

then I was like, bam and I caught her And I was like, oh, oh, made sure she is okay. Look. I go, Carrie's not around. Right? Because because if she saw that, I'm gonna be grounded. I'm not allowed to play with my daughter anymore. And I was just like, oh. And I figure out, I go, are you okay? And she goes,

that was awesome. Again, daddy. Again. Again. She thought it was the greatest ride ever. She had no clue. She just thought that was amazing. And I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm like, sweetie, do you understand? I told you not to jump. Why would you jump? Daddy wasn't even looking.

Why would you jump when I'm not looking? And she looked me in the face. She had this weird tilt to her head. She actually put her hands on both sides of my cheek. Because I'll do that with my kids when We try to say something gentle but really want to understand. Well, my son sometimes it wasn't gentle. It's like, don't look away from me.

But with my daughter, she was this gentle little, you know, awe. She looks at me, puts her hands, copies me, puts her hands up and she goes, you're daddy. You always catch me. Faith of a child. That's what we're talking about. A broken spirit will enable you to say, he's daddy. And it doesn't matter how crazy it sounds.

It doesn't even matter if I don't think he's looking. He will always catch you. Father god, thank you lord. Thank you for how you do love us. Thank you that this prayer began with your servant Nehemiah thousands of years ago declaring the obvious, your power, your greatness, but was able to declare your unfailing

commitment of love to us. Lord, I pray simply that each and every one of us, especially myself because this one I can get distracted from. Lord, I can get caught up in in in in serving you, in telling others about you. They don't spend that time talking to you. Lord, may we all see you for who you really are

and enable that to be the mirror into our own souls that declares and makes us see ourselves accurately. But because of your love, we can now turn and act boldly to have courage to go where you want us to go. In other words, Lord, give us a heart that says, your daddy and you always catch me. I

pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.