Oh Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name. And give success to your servant today and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.
– Nehemiah 1:11
I don’t have time to go into all the context behind Nehemiah 1, but Nehemiah is about to take a major step of faith. He’s about to go to the king to ask for permission to leave his post as cupbearer to the king and to go and rebuild the walls around the city of Jerusalem. And there’s a lot of risk involved in what Nehemiah is about to do. So he prays.
Nehemiah 1:11 teaches us to look to God for help.
And really the whole first chapter of Nehemiah is him praying. He gets to the end of this prayer and he says, “Lord, please let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, to the prayer of other servants who delight to fear your name. And give me, your servant, success today. Grant me mercy and the side of this man, this king that I’m about to go to.”
And I want to combine this with Nehemiah 2, which we’ll pray tomorrow. So this will just be part one, but the picture here is Nehemiah, knowing what he’s about to do, and spending concentrated time in prayer as he is looking toward what’s about to happen for God’s help and what he’s about to do.
And this applies certainly to big decisions we make in life or big steps of faith that you or I take to spend concentrated time in prayer, in fasting, which is part of what Nehemiah is doing in Nehemiah 1, in preparation for taking certain steps and preparation for making certain decisions and taking steps of faith in our lives and our families and our work, whatever it might be, spend concentrated time in prayer and in fasting before you take those steps.
Nehemiah 1:11 encourages us to spend concentrated time in prayer.
And then also in little ways, this is where I would just encourage you in your time alone with God, specifically in the morning, just to spend concentrated time in prayer thinking about your day. So maybe you’re not taking some major step of faith, but just to pray through your day as best as you know. Obviously there are things that are going to happen in each of our days that none of us sees coming, that only the Lord knows is coming.
But to the extent with which we have a schedule for the day or plan for the day, okay, I know I’m going to be in school. I know I’m going to be at work. I’m going to be around these people. I think I’m going to be around those people. I think this is what my day’s going to look like. Spend time, concentrated prayer in the morning, just praying for God’s leadership during those specific things to come in your day and praying for the people you’ll be around and praying for the things you’ll be doing.
This is a practice I try to do every morning in my time with the Lord, just kind of pray through my day, and pray for God’s leadership in it all and for my sensitivity to God’s Spirit in it all.
This verse encourages us to imitate Nehemiah’s prayer habits.
So God, teach us to pray like this in light of this example of Nehemiah in Nehemiah 1 when we’re taking big steps of faith. God, help us to pray fast, to be as in tune with you and your Spirit as possible as we step into those moments dependent on you and desperate for your help for success in what you’re calling us to do.
And God, we pray that you would help us to pray like this on a daily basis… To spend concentrated time in prayer at the beginning of our day… Looking to whatever lies ahead that day so that we walk into our days dependent on you… Looking to you, trusting in you for success in our days… No matter what that means for faithfulness to do all that you call us to do.
Oh God, today in our lives we pray for success. We pray for faithfulness to your Word and your Spirit all day long. If we’re praying this at night, we pray this over our lives tomorrow. God, we pray for your merciful leadership in every moment of our lives.
Prayer for the Hui People
And God, as we pray this out of the overflow of relationship with you, we pray for people who don’t even know that relationship with you like this is possible through Jesus. We pray specifically today for the Hui people of East Asia, from China to Malaysia many different places. This Muslim people group, God, we pray for the 14 million Hui in the world, very few followers of Jesus.
God, we pray for the spread of your grace and your mercy and your glory to them. We pray that you would lead more and more laborers from your church to go to the Hui. That you would give them success in sharing and spreading the gospel among the Hui. We pray that for the few Hui believers. God, we pray that you would give them success in sharing the gospel today. That more and more disciples might be made among the 14 million Hui in the world. We pray all of this according to your word in Nehemiah 1:11. In Jesus’ name, amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
