Pray.Plan.Build.

It was late in history. The walls of Jerusalem were down and the gates were in cinders. There was much rubble. But Nehemiah, caught up in a ‘divine appointment’, offered servant-leadership, with prayer and vision, with courage and determination.
 
Nehemiah’s memoirs of the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem come at the very end of the Old Testament historical narratives, and woven into the fabric of his story are these honest cries of prayer… grieving, wrestling prayers, sometimes formal, liturgical, at other moments, short ‘arrow-prayers’, silent, right-in-front-of-the-king prayers.  Nehemiah the Israelite slave, cupbearer to the Emperor of Persia, has flashes of awareness that this is ‘the hand of God’ at work, fulfilling prophecies and covenant promises.
 
It should have been common knowledge among the Jews in the Captivity; why was it such a shock to Nehemiah that ‘the walls are down and the gates are in cinders’? Let’s consider this as an implicit form of revelation; he is blind to the situation, has a comfortable job; the LORD lays a burden on his heart, he fasts and prays, and the burden becomes a calling…a risky calling to partner with Yahweh, The-God-of-Heaven, to fulfill a chapter in the destiny of His people. Part of the calling was to overcome inertia and fatalism, defeat and shame, not only for the restoration of honor for the people of Israel, but primarily, ultimately, for God’s honor and glory!