It could be Today

Nehemiah 2

When we were newly married and fresh out of college, Nate accepted a job as a pastoral intern. Apparently we didn’t hide our age or naïveté very well, because the pastor looked at the two of us and said kindly, "Being in ministry is the ministry of preparation.”

I’m not sure how many times over the past two decades that phrase has been both motivating and consoling to me. It’s motivating, because it begs the question, “What ministry are you preparing for right now?”, and it’s consoling, because when there is no tangible position, title, or opportunity that I can see, God is preparing me. Often, my own act of preparing and God’s act of preparing me, coincide.

Without preparation, there is - at best - less to contribute. 

With preparation, there is - at best - a life to contribute.

Chapter 1 of Nehemiah closed with his expectant prayer, “Give success to your servant today…” 

I wonder if Nehemiah prayed that prayer every day during the four months that passed between the end of chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 2. How many days did he wake up thinking, “it could be today that God gives me success”? And 120 days went by. 

No doubt, expectation was building, and as it did, preparations for rebuilding took shape. This was Nehemiah’s ministry of preparation: untold hours calculating supplies, manpower, and legalities; late nights, distracted daydreaming, and the risk of being misunderstood when it all started to show.

Since it could be today, let’s embrace the ministry of preparation like Nehemiah did:

Pray to God

Plan the details

Present the idea

Discerning a Calling

Maybe you’re familiar with the concept that whatever breaks your heart could be the difficulty, situation, or topic where the world needs your voice and presence the most. It’s the idea that when you find yourself deeply grieved by a situation, and you hear yourself saying, “It shouldn’t be like this”,  God might be calling you to change things.

I see this process at work in the life of the Old Testament prophet, Nehemiah. 

Nehemiah was exiled a thousand miles from his Jewish homeland, serving a Persian king. If you’ve ever lived far from your native country, your hometown, or your family, you know that distance stirs up questions about the people and places you love. These questions range from curiosity to concern, random to persistent.

Question marks are heavy. Not knowing what’s going on, not having an answer, and not hearing a word, are burdens hard to bear. Whether questions linger about physical, spiritual, or emotional matters, they feel like carrying around a backpack of bricks or walking under storm clouds, thick with rain.

For Nehemiah, the only way news traveled was by foot - a reality we can barely imagine today - so when a band of brothers arrived in Susa from Jerusalem, he went straight to them for updates about escapees, survivors, and the capital city. 

What they shared only weighed Nehemiah down further, as they unloaded on him all the trouble, shame, brokenness, and destruction in Jerusalem. But how Nehemiah responded to the news, can serve as a template for us; when our hearts cry out, “It shouldn't be like this”, Nehemiah shows us what to do about it:

He sat down

He wept

He mourned for days

He fasted

He prayed

If you’re bearing a burden of “it shouldn’t be like this,” follow Nehemiah’s five-fold response, found in chapter 1, and see how God might actually open doors to a calling on your life.

For more on fasting, check out this article.