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Courage | Part 2 · Rewind

Rock Point Church

69 min

Pastor Bill Bush · Jul 23, 2018 · 5 min read · 69 min listen

The big idea

Our prayer life is both the indicator and the developer of a broken spirit, the second heart-condition of courage — and a broken spirit is what lets us see God clearly, ourselves accurately, and then act boldly.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 7Courage is a condition of the heart, not our circumstances, and the first condition is a dislocated heart.
Point 2 of 7The second condition of courage is a broken spirit, and our prayer life reveals and shapes it.

Point 3 of 7A broken spirit starts by cultivating a high view of God — seeing Him clearly before anything else.
Point 4 of 7Seeing God clearly leads to seeing ourselves accurately, which is where confession happens.
Point 5 of 7God's promise removes the excuse of being too far gone or too comfortable to turn back.
Point 6 of 7A right view of God and self leads to courageous commitment to God's agenda rather than bargaining for our own.
Point 7 of 7A broken spirit produces childlike trust that God will catch us when we jump where He calls.
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Nehemiah 1:5
Nehemiah 1:6
Nehemiah 1:8
Nehemiah 1:10
Nehemiah 1:11
Nehemiah 1:4

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Bill Bush · Jul 23, 2018 · 69 min watch · 3 min read

Courage | Part 2

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Nehemiah 1:5
Nehemiah 1:6
Nehemiah 1:8
Nehemiah 1:10
Nehemiah 1:11
Nehemiah 1:4

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

Our prayer life is both the indicator and the developer of a broken spirit, the second heart-condition of courage — and a broken spirit is what lets us see God clearly, ourselves accurately, and then act boldly.

Courage is a condition of the heart, and after our hearts dislocate toward what breaks God's heart, the next step is a broken spirit developed through prayer. When we see God clearly first, we see ourselves accurately, which frees us to confess, turn around, and courageously commit to His agenda rather than trying to talk Him into ours.

Key points

1
1Courage is a condition of the heart, not our circumstances, and the first condition is a dislocated heart.
Pastor Bill recaps last week's teaching that courage isn't the absence of fear, and that our hearts must move toward where God is calling before our bodies do. He retells Nehemiah's background as cupbearer in Susa who, hearing that Jerusalem's walls still lay in ruins after a hundred years, let his heart travel to a problem he'd never even seen.
2
2The second condition of courage is a broken spirit, and our prayer life reveals and shapes it.
Pastor Bill distinguishes a dislocated heart (overwhelmed by the need) from a broken spirit (overwhelmed by God). He warns that skipping this step and jumping straight to action can be driven by pride, fear, or legalism, trying to impress God rather than trust Him.
3
3A broken spirit starts by cultivating a high view of God — seeing Him clearly before anything else.
Working through Nehemiah's prayer in verse 5, Pastor Bill points out that Nehemiah doesn't start with his own problem but with declaring who God is, using God's personal name, Yahweh, and praising His covenant of unfailing love. He contrasts this with how easily prayers become a generic god of the sky rather than the God we actually know through His Word.
4
4Seeing God clearly leads to seeing ourselves accurately, which is where confession happens.
In verses 6-7, Nehemiah confesses that he and his people have sinned by not obeying and not trusting God's word. Pastor Bill explains sin at its root as not believing God, quotes A.W. Tozer that how we view God determines everything else we think and do, and says the gap we see between God's greatness and our failure isn't meant to shame us but to free us to turn.
5
5God's promise removes the excuse of being too far gone or too comfortable to turn back.
Pastor Bill reads Nehemiah quoting God's promise that no matter how far scattered His people are, if they return, He will bring them back. He names two groups who keep driving away from God: those who believe they're too far gone and those who simply like the view out the window of their current life.
6
6A right view of God and self leads to courageous commitment to God's agenda rather than bargaining for our own.
Pastor Bill shows how Nehemiah's prayer moves from confession to declaring himself God's servant and only then makes a request in verse 11 — for success in approaching the king — entirely in service of God's mission, not his own comfort. He notes this request follows what he says was months of prayer before Nehemiah ever got the chance to speak to the king.
7
7A broken spirit produces childlike trust that God will catch us when we jump where He calls.
Pastor Bill tells the story of teaching his five-year-old daughter to trust him by jumping to him from a wall, and the time she jumped when he wasn't looking and he barely caught her. When he asked her why she'd jump without him watching, she cupped his face and said, you're daddy, you always catch me — which he ties back to the trust a broken spirit produces.

Application

Pastor Bill frames the ask as learning to pray with a broken spirit so we can jump where God calls, trusting He will catch us.

Start your prayers with who God is
Before bringing your requests, cultivate a high view of God by declaring who He is, the way Nehemiah did, rather than jumping straight into your own need.
Let seeing God clearly show you yourself accurately
Ask God to reveal the gap between His greatness and your pride, fear, or self-reliance, and let that lead you to confess rather than to keep proving yourself to Him.
Turn around, however far you've gone
Whether you feel too far gone or you're simply comfortable with the direction you're headed, believe God's promise that He will bring you back if you turn.
Courageously commit to God's agenda, not your own
Let your prayer requests flow out of surrender to what God wants to do through you, like Nehemiah asking for help to serve God's mission rather than bargaining for his own comfort.
Start praying now about the church's building and mission
Pastor Bill asks the congregation to begin praying ahead of next week's call to radical faith, including being willing to give financially toward the church's need to build.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“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”
Read the whole chapter →
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

Before Nehemiah did a single thing about the broken walls of Jerusalem, he sat down and wept. He mourned for days. He fasted. He prayed. It would have been easy — and very human — to jump straight into planning mode. The problem was obvious. The need was urgent. But Nehemiah didn't lead with a strategy; he led with grief. Pastor Bill made the point that courage is a condition of the heart, not of circumstances. That means waiting for the perfect moment when everything feels safe and clear is actually waiting for the wrong thing. Nehemiah's circumstances never got easier. What changed was his heart — and it changed in the place of prayer before it changed anywhere else. This is an important starting place for our week together. Before we get to what Nehemiah prayed or how boldly he eventually acted, we need to sit here for a moment — with the image of a man who let himself be genuinely undone by something that mattered to God. That kind of response doesn't come from willpower. It comes from a heart that is already oriented toward God and already paying attention to what breaks His heart. The week ahead is an invitation to examine where your own heart is positioned right now — not to produce guilt, but to open a door.

For reflection

When you encounter a need or a problem that seems too big, what is your first instinct — and what does that instinct reveal about where your heart is positioned?

Pray

Pray for honest awareness of where your heart actually is right now — not where you think it should be.

Day 2

Nehemiah opens his prayer not with his request but with who God is. He calls God 'the great and awesome God who keeps His covenant of unfailing love.' That is a deliberate, unhurried declaration — and Pastor Bill highlighted it as the first movement of a prayer that flows from a broken spirit rather than a panicked one. This matters more than it might seem at first. When we launch straight into our requests, we are — even unintentionally — treating God primarily as a resource for our problems. When we begin with who He actually is, something shifts. We are no longer the center of the conversation. We are not briefing God on the situation; we are positioning our hearts beneath His. That is a very different posture. A high view of God is not just a warm-up exercise before the real prayer. It is the prayer shaping everything else. Nehemiah's description — great, awesome, faithful, loving — is not flattery meant to soften God up. It is Nehemiah reminding himself of the truth about who he is talking to. That truth is what made bold action eventually possible. You cannot draw courage from a small view of God. And you cannot develop a large view of God without actually spending time in His presence, declaring who He is before you declare what you need.

For reflection

When you pray, how much of your time is spent on who God is compared to what you are asking for — and what does that ratio suggest about your current view of Him?

Pray

Pray by beginning only with attributes of God — His faithfulness, His power, His love — and stay there longer than feels comfortable before moving to anything else.

Day 3

Once Nehemiah has declared who God is, something almost inevitable happens — he sees himself clearly. The prayer moves directly from 'great and awesome God' into honest, specific confession: 'I confess that we have sinned against You. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned. We have sinned terribly by not obeying the commands, decrees, and regulations that You gave us through Your servant Moses.' Pastor Bill described this as a high view of God producing an accurate view of self. That sequence is important. We don't start with self-examination and work our way up to God. We start with God, and that honest vision of Him does the examining for us. When you stand in the light of who He actually is, the gap between His character and your own choices becomes visible in a way that is hard to ignore. This kind of confession is not about shame or self-punishment. It is about accuracy. Nehemiah is not wallowing — he is clearing the air. He is naming the real distance between where his people had been and where God had called them to walk. That honesty is actually an act of faith, because it means trusting that God already knows and that coming clean before Him is safe. You are not informing Him of something He missed. You are agreeing with what He has already seen — and that agreement is the beginning of something new.

For reflection

Is there a place in your life where you have quietly chosen your own wisdom or preferences over what God has made clear — and what would it look like to name that honestly before Him today?

Pray

Pray for the willingness to be specific in confession — not vague or general, but honest about one real place where you have drifted from what God has asked of you.

Day 4

Nehemiah's prayer takes a remarkable turn in verses 8 and 9. He doesn't just confess the failure; he reaches back to what God had already promised. He essentially says, 'Lord, You told us this would happen if we disobeyed — but You also told us that no matter how far we scattered, if we returned to You and obeyed, You would bring us back.' He is holding God to His own Word. Pastor Bill described this as the moment seeing yourself accurately sets you free to turn boldly back toward God's agenda. Confession that is honest and complete doesn't leave you stuck in the past — it opens a door forward. The promise Nehemiah cites is not wishful thinking; it is God's own stated commitment. The people had failed. But God's faithfulness was not conditional on their perfection. This is worth sitting with if you have ever felt like your failures have put you too far out to find your way back. Nehemiah's prayer assumes the opposite — that God's whole design is to bring wandering people home. The return is not earned by getting your act together first. The return is the act of turning toward God with a heart that is honest about where it has been. Courage, then, is not the absence of a complicated history. It is trusting the God who already knows your history and has promised a way forward anyway.

For reflection

Is there a promise God has made in His Word that you have been slow to stand on — perhaps because you didn't feel you deserved to claim it after a season of drifting?

Pray

Pray through a specific promise from Scripture and ask God to make it more real to you than your own sense of unworthiness.

Day 5

By the time Nehemiah reaches the final verses of his prayer, something has fundamentally changed. He began broken and weeping. Now he asks boldly — but notice what he asks for. He does not ask God to make the situation easier. He does not ask to be kept safe or to find a comfortable path. He asks for success in going before the king, and specifically for the favor needed to do what God was clearly calling him to do. Pastor Bill's point here was precise and worth returning to: prayer that flows from a broken spirit ends with requests that are entirely about being resourced for God's will, not about recruiting God to your own agenda. That is a line worth examining in your own prayer life. Are you asking God to bless a plan you have already decided on? Or are you asking Him to resource you for the direction He has already made clear? This kind of praying takes honesty to get to. It only becomes possible after you have spent real time with who God is, been honest about where you have been, and trusted His promise to bring you back. The boldness in Nehemiah's final request isn't presumption — it is the natural result of a heart that has been through the earlier movements. You cannot shortcut your way to this kind of courageous, agenda-free request. But you can grow into it.

For reflection

Looking at your current prayers, are they mostly oriented toward God resourcing His agenda through you, or toward God endorsing an agenda you have already formed — and what is one honest step you could take to shift that?

Pray

Pray and ask God to show you one area where you have been asking Him to bless your plan rather than align you with His.

Day 6

Related passage

Nehemiah prayed for months before he acted. That is not a detail to skip past. Most of us feel pressure — internal or external — to move fast, to have a response ready, to show that we are doing something. Nehemiah's example cuts against all of that. The broken spirit that eventually produced one of the most courageous acts of leadership in the Old Testament was formed slowly, in private, through persistent and unhurried prayer. Pastor Bill drew a direct line between the quality of a person's prayer life and the posture of their heart before God. Psalm 51 is a useful companion here because it comes from a very different person in very different circumstances, yet arrives at the same place: 'The sacrifice You desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.' This is not about spiritual performance or achieving a particular emotional state. It is about what God actually works with — a heart that is honest, surrendered, and oriented toward Him rather than toward self-protection. If you have found this week that your prayer life has been thin or transactional, that is not a verdict — it is an invitation. Nehemiah didn't start as a man of deep, sustained prayer. He became one because he let the weight of what mattered to God settle on his own heart and stayed there long enough for something to break open.

For reflection

What would it look like in a practical, concrete way to give prayer more unhurried space in your week — not to perform spiritually, but to actually let God's perspective settle on your heart?

Pray

Pray for a genuine willingness to slow down — to let prayer be formative rather than functional in this season of your life.

Day 7

Looking back across the whole passage, Nehemiah 1:4-11 is not simply a model prayer to imitate — it is a portrait of a heart being transformed from the inside out. Grief leads to worship. Worship produces honesty. Honesty opens the door to bold, surrendered action. None of these steps can be skipped without losing something essential in what follows. Pastor Bill closed with a direct invitation: to begin praying now about what God may be asking of Rock Point — including the building campaign ahead — before commitments are made and before the moment of decision arrives. That is the Nehemiah pattern. The courageous yes comes after the broken prayer, not instead of it. Wherever you land this week — whether full of fresh resolve or carrying some honest uncertainty — the most important thing is not to have all the answers. It is to be in the right posture before the God who does. A heart that begins with who He is, tells the truth about where it has been, and holds His promises over its own fears is exactly the kind of heart God has always worked through. Not because it is impressive, but because it is surrendered. That is where courage actually comes from — and it is available to you, not after the circumstances improve, but right now, in the place of prayer.

For reflection

As you look back over this week, where did God most clearly challenge or encourage you — and what is one specific thing you want to carry forward into how you pray and live in the weeks ahead?

Pray

Pray through the full arc of Nehemiah's prayer yourself — begin with who God is, move into honest confession, claim His promises, and end by asking to be resourced for His agenda rather than your own.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Nehemiah sat with devastating news for four months before he ever said a word or took a step — this message looks at what was happening in him during that silence, and why it mattered so much for everything that came after.

Discussion questions

1
In Nehemiah 1:5, Nehemiah opens his prayer not with his request but with a declaration of who God is — His greatness, His faithfulness, His unfailing love. Why do you think he starts there, and what difference might that starting point make to everything that follows in the prayer?
2
Pastor Bill described a 'broken spirit' as being overwhelmed by who God is, not just by the size of the problem. How is that different from simply feeling crushed or discouraged by hard news?
3
In Nehemiah 1:6–7, after fixing his eyes on God's character, Nehemiah moves immediately into honest confession — both his own and his people's. What seems to be the connection between seeing God clearly and being willing to see ourselves honestly?
4
By Nehemiah 1:10–11, the prayer has shifted from confession to a bold, specific request — not for Nehemiah's comfort, but for the resources to do what God was calling him to do. What does that shift tell us about how a broken spirit shapes the way people pray?
5
Pastor Bill challenged us to notice whether our prayers tend to ask God to bless what we have already decided, or to align us with what He is already doing. How might a community — a church, a small group, a family — pray differently if they took that distinction seriously?
6
Pastor Bill invited Rock Point to begin praying now about a coming building campaign, and he connected courageous generosity directly to this kind of broken, surrendered heart rather than to circumstances being favorable. What does it look like, practically, to let prayer come before action rather than after a plan is already set?

Pray together

Ask God to give your group the kind of high view of Him that produces honest hearts and courageous, surrendered prayer

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Courage

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