You can watch this sermon at https://www.christianworldmedia.com/watch?v=wr4nhf4VsDU9. The sermon begins at approximately 20:57 and lasts about 27 minutes. If you would prefer to read a manuscript (not a transcript) of the sermon, you can read it below.

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We have spent the last month-and-a-half in a series on prayer. Prayer is such a big subject that we could spend years on it, but we haven’t been trying to treat it comprehensively. I have instead been trying to look at prayer from angles of approach that are not usually taken. I have a strong sense that we don’t fail at prayer because we lack proper techniques. Technique is important in communication, and prayer is a form of communication, so I don’t want to minimize it. But communication is more than technique, and it’s the “more than” that we’ve been focusing on.

Last week, we looked at how strands of prayer can be woven through daily life. Our teacher was the biblical hero Nehemiah. We left him in a crucial conversation with King Artaxerxes. Well, actually he was carrying on two crucial conversations simultaneously: one with the great Artaxerxes and the other with the greater king of heaven. Chapter 2, verse 4, says: “Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. ⁵And I said to the king…” We saw how valuable it is to be able to talk to God and to someone else at the same time. To talk and listen to God while we are talking and listening to others can transform both our relationships and our prayer lives.

We also saw that the “spontaneous” prayer of verse 4 was launched from a platform of prayer that Nehemiah had built over the previous five months. Both kinds of prayer – intentional and emotional, planned and spontaneous – must be kept in balance for a prayer life to be effective. People who try to live on spontaneous, as-the-mood-hits-me (or as-the-crisis-erupts) kinds of prayer are not good pray-ers. That kind of praying – what people used to call “arrow prayers,” the kind you shoot toward heaven in a time of crisis – lacks powers when it is unconnected to a daily, disciplined prayer practice.

Trying to shoot a prayer to heaven without the strength generated by a discipline prayer practice is like trying to shoot an arrow from a bow that is only strung from the upper limb. That arrow is going to fall to the ground. And so do many spontaneous prayers because they have no connection to an ongoing prayer life.

One more reminder of what we learned last time from Nehemiah, and then we’ll move on. If you aren’t willing for God to interrupt your life, you might want to think twice about praying, because when we call on God with a request, he often returns the call with a command. When Nehemiah prayed, he ended up taking a leave of absence from his job and moving out of the country. Prayer is not a practice for people who are committed to the status quo. If you don’t want your routine interrupted, you might not want to pray.

Successful pray-ers have the kind of attitude the prophet Isaiah had. He said to God, ‘Here I am, send me!” But if we say to God, “Here I stay. Send someone else,” we’re not going to see many answers to prayer.

So, let’s pick up Nehemiah’s story in chapter 2, verse 4: “(Nehemiah 2:4-12b) Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ graves, that I may rebuild it.” And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.” And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me. Then I came to the governors of the province Beyond the River and gave them the king’s letters. Now the king had sent with me officers of the army and horsemen. But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard this, it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel. So I went to Jerusalem and was there three days. Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me. And I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. There was no animal with me but the one on which I rode.”

So, five months after Nehemiah had begun asking God to intervene for Jerusalem, he found himself asking the king to do the same. If you’re like me, you are more comfortable asking God for something you need or want than you are asking someone else. We know God will understand and want to help, but we are not so sure about our boss, spouse, friend, neighbor, or fellow-church member.

But when you ask God for something, he may tell you to ask someone else. That was the case for Nehemiah. And make no mistake: It can take faith to ask people, especially people in authority, for help. But when asking comes out of praying, good things happen.

Did you notice that Nehemiah didn’t ask the king for just one thing, but for many Send me to rebuild Jerusalem (verse 5). Write letters for me to the governors of Trans-Euphrates (verse 6). Order the king’s forester to provide timber (verse 7).

Do you know what that means? Nehemiah had not only been praying for Jerusalem; he’d been thinking about Jerusalem. He thought about what needed to be done. Prayer is a phenomenally important part of the Christian life, but it is not a substitute for thought. We want to pray and then forget about it, as if we’d done our duty; that’s a mistake. We need to pay attention to the thoughts that come to our minds during and after our prayers. Write those thoughts down. Think them through. Have a two-way conversation with God; give him the chance to speak to you.

Very many times, while in the act of praying, unexpected ideas have come to my mind. I don’t immediately assume that those thoughts are from God, but I do think about them. I remember them. Sometimes, I write them down so I won’t forget. I may talk with other people about them. I believe that God does communicate to us in this way.                                                                                   

We see something here that could have hindered that two-way conversation with God, the same kind of thing that can prevent us from hearing him or recognizing the answer he wants to give. Call it the “We’ve-never-done-it-that-way-before” syndrome.

You see, when an earlier group of exiles returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple (you can read all about that in Ezra), the leaders decided to make the long journey without any military presence. They thought that asking for protection demonstrated a lack of faith. So, they went without military escort. But later, when Nehemiah went to Jerusalem, he welcomed a detachment of cavalry. Sometimes we get the idea that the only way to do something is the way it was done before. We get it in our heads that God will only do it the way we’ve always done it. But don’t tie God’s hands. He is amazingly creative. Too often, we can’t see what he’s doing and can’t hear what he’s telling us because our own expectations are blocking our view or drowning out God’s “still, small voice.”

When Nehemiah reached Jerusalem after what would have been a two-month journey, he did not call a meeting or arrange a press conference. Verse 11 says that he settled in and stayed for three days. That is reminiscent of something the prophet Isaiah wrote: “Whoever believes will not be in haste” (Isaiah 28:16). When we know that God is working in the details, we can take time to look and think and pray. But when we think it is all up to us, we panic and rush in. That’s the “We have to do something now” syndrome. I know about this from personal experience. But Nehemiah, who had been in an ongoing conversation with God, took his time. He didn’t panic.

But he could have. When God answers (or is about to answer) our prayer, it is not unusual for opposition to flare up. You can see this clearly in what happened to the Israelites in Egypt. The time finally came for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham. People were praying. God heard them. So, what happened next? Their troubles got worse! They were on the edge of experiencing God’s answer when opposition flared, and they wanted to give up. Spurgeon said something like, “The devil roars loudest right before we experience a victory.” If we give up then, we give up too soon.

Don’t be surprised if things get worse after you have prayed! Nehemiah prayed, and (verse 10) “…When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites.” They were disturbed and they did everything in their considerable power to oppose Nehemiah and prevent his prayer from being answered. The rest of the book chronicles that opposition.

And that leads us to something else we need to know about prayer. If you only pray in order to get out of uncomfortable or painful situations, it won’t be long before you give up on prayer altogether. Prayer is not a way to get around conflict. Prayer is a way to join God in his work, and his work is accomplished in a broken, conflicted, and often hostile world.

After three days passed, Nehemiah had a look around. Neither during those three days nor during his inspection did Nehemiah try to sell anyone on his plan to rebuild the walls. He didn’t even mention it. Verse 12 says, “I had not told anyone what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem.” That may have been because Nehemiah did not trust the people in Jerusalem. As we learn later, some of the nobles had aligned themselves with the opposition. Had Nehemiah told them what he was thinking, they would have done whatever they could to hinder him.

But I think there is more to it than that. Nehemiah had learned to talk to God first, and only then to talk to others. He’d learned to spend more time talking to God than to people. Nehemiah let God speak to people’s hearts before he tried speaking to their minds. Just because you believe God wants to do something doesn’t mean that other people will believe it. You need to give them time and allow God to convince them.

I’ve seen pastors make this mistake. They come to a new church, diagnose all its ailments, and then set about changing everything. But even if their diagnosis is spot on and their course of action is well chosen, they make a huge mistake because they are going about things in the wrong order. They are speaking to people first when they should first speak to God. And they compound that mistake by trying to push their ideas rather than asking God to show people the things they’ve seen. It takes faith to talk to God first. It takes faith to wait.

Did you notice the phrase in verse 12, “… what God had put in my heart”? That’s interesting: God puts things in people’s hearts. All that time Nehemiah was praying – those four or five months we talked about last week – he was not just talking to God, God was talking to him. God was putting something into his heart. If we are going to be effective at prayer, we need to learn to recognize when God has placed something in our hearts. That something will energize our prayers and sustain them.

But how do you know when God has placed something in your heart? How do you know it is not just your imagination? Even more importantly, how do you know that it is not the devil, for Scripture teaches that he can also place things in people’s hearts? How do you know when God has placed something in your heart?

That is not an easy question to answer because it is concerned with a relationship, and relationships are not comprised of simple questions and answers. I know it would be nice to have a five-step process to accurately discern whether or not God has placed something in your heart, but if we had that kind of process, we’d skip the relationship, which is where almost everything God is doing in your life is based. There are principles to go by, but there is no substitute for knowing God.

There are times when I will know what my wife would like before she has even thought of it. She says, “How did you know I wanted that?” I know because I’ve lived with her for 45 years. More than that, I know because I have loved her for all those years and more. In the interactions of a loving relationship, we come to understand each other … at least a little. I admit that there is still much about Karen I don’t (and may never) understand, and there is even more about God I don’t understand. Nevertheless, it is in relationship that I will understand them, not in a sheet of bullet points.

That being said, let me share a few principles for discerning whether the idea in your mind and the burden on your heart comes from God. But remember: these principles can’t be reliably applied outside of a healthy relationship. That cannot be stressed enough

First, if the idea in your mind and burden on your heart is all tied up with your self-image, go carefully. If the pastor who comes to a church with a grand plan to make it successful is tangled up in anxiety about his own reputation, it will be very easy for him to mistake his own thoughts for what God is saying. Ask yourself: who gets the glory if this idea works – God or me?

Second principle: when God puts something in your heart, it stays there. There is a weight to it. It is not effervescent, not here today and forgotten about tomorrow. You can’t get away from it. It took Nehemiah four or five months to act on what was in his heart, but it didn’t go away. In fact, if was still there ten years later!

Third principle: you have to have room in your heart and mind to receive the things that God wants to put in there. This is one of the biggest problems we face, and one of the main reasons we don’t see more answers to prayer. If your heart and mind are filled with what Jesus called the “worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth” (Matthew 13:22) or with unforgiveness or pride, you won’t have room for what God wants to put there. This was the case with the Pharisees to whom Jesus bluntly said, “…you have no room for my word” (John 8:37, NIV).

There are other principles, but I’ll just mention one more. Whatever God puts in your heart will be consistent with what he’s put in the Scriptures. No hidden word from God in our hearts will ever contradict his revealed word in our Bibles. You can count on that.

I think God puts things in our hearts regularly, when we have room to receive them, and the thing he puts there becomes one of principal drivers of our prayers. But we must have room in our hearts.

With that in mind, I close with this prayer from A. W. Tozer. If it echoes your desire, make it your own: “Father, I want to know You, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from You the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that you may enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shall You make the place of Your feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for You will be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”