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Nehemiah - Man with a Mission
by
Lt.Col. Raymond
Finger
Officer Training College – Spiritual Day
We are
living in at a time of the greatest spiritual challenge and
opportunity ever to confront the Christian Church. If I were
to be given the chance to select the period in which I desire
to live and minister I would elect this generation.
There have been other periods of time in history, when the
world was much more religious than it is today - but I do not
believe there has ever been a time when humanity has groped
and searched for spiritual meaning like we are seeing today.
Some time ago Aylene and I went to Ackland St St. Kilda in
Melbourne for coffee one Sunday afternoon. In that short
stretch of shops I counted nine card tables set up in shop
doorways, offering, tarot card reading, palm reading, and
fortune telling. And do you know what was more amazing? At
eight of the tables, people were seated.
Some time after that, we went to Lygon St Carlton for lunch,
in the four small book stores I went into, I have never seen
the range of new age spirituality like I saw in those shops,
including voodoo dolls that came with pins and instructions.
While we lived in Perth, our office was in Williams St
Northbridge, a cosmopolitan community of eclectic lifestyles,
which included the seedy sex industry. The dine-out set who
ate at the plethora of alfresco eateries, the trendy after
dark groupies who moved with the nightclub crowds.
And in the midst of this high-powered, energy-charged affluent
scene, lived the park dwellers, the homeless, the
drug-affected, who too would emerge under the cover of
darkness, but for different reasons.
These are all people who are searching for reality, truth and
meaning and who believe they find it through their private
pursuit of fast lane destinationless living.
You and I have been called for a purpose and despite the
nature of our appointments, the ultimate nature of our
covenant does not change.
I will live to win souls and will not allow anything
To turn me aside from seeking their salvation
as the first great purpose of my life.
In the last session I spoke about rebuilding of the temple,
the spiritual heart, the ‘centre’ out of which flows all else.
But it is also the heart that is the plum line and keeps us
true, convinced and committed to our covenanted living.
You and I not only have a mission, but we have dedicated our
lives to live for the mission and one that at times may seem
and in some situations to be both impossible and unachievable.
But we live by faith, in that, this thing we do, we do not for
ourselves, but for God and with God and therefore it is God
who leads us, empowers us, enables us, and makes us, what by
human nature we could never hope to be or to do.
The Bible says, 2 Corinthians 12:9
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made
perfect in your weakness.”
Let’s have a look at Nehemiah 1, the city of Jerusalem had
been destroyed by the Babylonians and the inhabitants taken as
slaves to serve the Persian King. His job was ‘cup bearer’ to
the King, tasting the wine before it was given to the King.
Nehemiah 1:1-4
There are three things I want you to understand about the
servant leadership of Nehemiah that characterised him as a man
with a mission.
CONVICTION
When he heard about the state of the people who had
returned to Jerusalem, their great trouble and disgrace, the
walls of Jerusalem broken down and the beautiful gates
destroyed and burned.
The Scripture says, Nehemiah ‘sat down and wept’, he
‘mourned, fasted and prayed for days’ v.4.
A person does not necessarily set out to be a leader, there
comes a compulsion that rises within them, often out of
circumstances. One of the principle characteristics of an
effective leader is that he / she has a passion, an inward
burning to see something happen, or something change. I am yet
to see an effective leader whose heart does not burn within
them.
Illust: Recent conversation with an officer who was talking
with me about leadership, leadership as a position or
leadership as influence. 506 commissioned officers 13
executive leader positions, someone will be disappointed.
‘Future Now’ brought with it, the image and idea of
TRANSFORMATION, that has ignited a flame in the hearts of
Salvationists around the territory.
This very idea of peoples lives being changed from glory to
glory, has brought conviction that has seen people decide to
stand up and step forward.
The thought of his city in ruins, people disgraced and
humiliated, the magnificent gates destroyed and left in ashes,
tore at something within Nehemiah with an image that was
reflected by Christ when He came to Jerusalem.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem 500 years later, the Bible says,
“He wept over it” Luke 19:41
During the time I was in the Training College in Victoria Pde
East Melbourne, the state of the art, St Vincent’s hospital
private hospital had just been completed and emblazoned on the
front of the building was a bronze shield inscribed with Latin
that translated:
THE LOVE OF CHRIST DRIVES ME OUT
Conviction drives, motivates and energises people to do the
very thing that God lays on their heart and to do it with
abandonment because, nothing worthwhile ever gets achieved
without a conviction to make it happen.
VISION
Nehemiah 2:5
“I asked the king, if it pleases the king and if your
servant has found favour in his sight, let him send me to the
city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can
rebuild it.”
Where did this notion to rebuild the city come from? In
Jerusalem Nehemiah was no one, so what made him think he could
do what the prominent city fathers seemed incapable of doing?
Who knows and who cares! The fact is that Nehemiah saw a
picture of what a rebuilt and restored Jerusalem could look
like again. He saw the possibility of what could be done and
his heart burned with a passion to rebuild his City.
VISION IS BORN WITHIN THE LEADER
At that time he had no idea how he would do it. There were
significant obstacles before him, not least of all being that
he was a slave to the King whose nation had conquered
Jerusalem.
But let me tell you this, when God gives birth to a vision
within you, nothing will stand in the way of its achievement -
Nehemiah told the King what he wanted to do and he was
released and given support to go do it!
My question today is, whether or not we will believe enough, I
do not doubt we are a people of faith, but having faith does
not necessarily imply that we believe enough.
The real strength of spiritual leadership is the confidence
you have in God. Look at chapter one and see the prayer he
prayed, in it he honoured God, he confessed the sins of the
people along with his own, he recalled the commands of God and
he asked for God’s favour.
The vision to rebuild the desolation of his city came to him
from God and not from a wild imagination of grandeur,
self-seeking or self-serving. There are those who actually
think that leadership is about them and sadly these are the
people who become the most disappointed and disillusioned,
when their expectations do not become realized.
Chapter 2:12, Nehemiah says,
“ I had not told anyone what my God had put in my heart to
do for Jerusalem.”
And so the vision is born and the task waits!
The third factor that marks the leadership of Nehemiah is
strategy:
STRATEGY
Nehemiah 2:11-14
He went to the City, stayed there a while and then left to
see for himself the destruction and damage and to see what
needed to be done.
If you plan to make a difference and want to be an effective
leader, then you need to be prepared to walk where it’s
happening. Leadership doesn’t happen from the Executive
Office, nor does it happen in the Board Room, or from the back
of a chauffer driven car. You’ve got to be prepared to walk
the streets and lane ways of the people we serve and see the
destruction and the damage and to see what needs to be done.
Diana, Princess of Wales, won the world when Royalty walked
into a ward of patients infected by AIDS and HIV and touched
then, held them and spoke with them. When she walked through
the mind fields of Bosnia where others had walked and had
their limbs blown apart.
Do you see verse 14-15:
“Then I moved to the Fountain Gate and the King’s Pool, but
there was not enough room for my mount to get through, so I
went up the valley by night”
It’s tough and at times leadership has to get down from the
mount and do it just as tough as the people who you try to
serve.
The Chapter 3 is the strategy chapter, where Nehemiah
delegates sections of the walls repair to teams of people. He
knew what needed to happen and he knew how he could make it
happen and do you know, the wall was completed in 52 days
(Neh.6:13).
And we have said nothing about the opposition that this man
had to manage in his task to rebuild the walls, opposition
that came from the people who should have known better, people
who lived inside the City.
Nehemiah was a man with a mission, who never saw himself as
being a leader only some one who :
• Had a CONVICTION
• Saw a VISION
• Designed a STRATEGY
We may all be Nehemiah’s but are we all prepared to do it?
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