Welcome to Big Valley Grace Community Church. If you’re new, we’re super glad you’re here. My name is Joel. I’d love to meet you. Normally after the gathering, I stand right down here. But today after the gathering, I’m going to be in the Fireside Room because we’re doing Discover BVG.

So whether it’s your first time, you’ve been a few times, or you’ve been coming for a little while and you need to get connected, come over to Discover BVG right after this gathering. Just go through those doors and hang a right. The room is right over here. There’ll be food in there. The time will be less than an hour that we spend together, and we’ll have a great time just sharing about Big Valley Grace Community Church. So, if you’re new, warm welcome on behalf of all of us.

We’re going through the book of Nehemiah together. So, if you have a Bible, I want to challenge you to take that Bible and turn to the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is about a third of the way through your Bible. So, if you’re just getting familiar with Nehemiah, you can also use the table of contents to help you find where it is in your Bible.

If you don’t have a Bible, we want to give you one. Come to the prayer room after the gathering. We have Bibles in there. It’ll be our gift to you. We want to make sure everyone has a copy of God’s Word.

When my wife and I said yes to the call of God on our lives to welcome children through our front door, into our hearts, into our family, to be a part of our home, when we said yes on the front end, we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into along the way.

There were many times where my wife and I found ourselves in situations that were just absolutely overwhelming. The situation was too confusing, too much chaos. We didn’t know what to do. We really felt desperate.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation that seemed impossible and was out of control. Well, the question we’re going to use to get into our time together today is: What should we do when facing seemingly impossible situations that are out of our control? What should we do when we’re facing seemingly impossible situations that are out of our control?

Well, church family, I want you to know we are in for an incredible treat today because today two of my dear friends are going to share part of their testimony. As Big Valley Grace Community Church, we’ve got the opportunity to welcome back Pastor Scott and Susie Miller. Will you welcome them with me?

Hello, church family. It’s really good to see you all.

Thank you, Joel, for the opportunity to tell of our impossible situation and what God can do through His power in a life and in a family through the local church. We hope you’ll hear, to His glory, the power to change this particular life. But also, it’s all through the local church that we’re standing here today.

In 1990, Scott and I had been married for eight years. We had two sons, and they were six years old and four years old. On the last Friday night of November, we were going to take the kids and go to the Parade of Lights in Denver. It was downtown Denver’s way of kicking off the Christmas season.

There was a sense of excitement in our home that morning as we all left and went to our various places of work and school. I was at work, and about 11:00 in the morning I got a phone call. My phone rang a lot, so that was no big deal. But when I picked up my phone, the man identified himself as a police officer and said, “Does your husband drive a brown MG?” My heart fell because I thought he’d been in an accident.

Well, it was no accident.

You see, I grew up in the ’60s, and I didn’t know the Lord. In fact, I was very anti-God through most of my youth. That led me to the hell of drug addiction. So, I was arrested, and the house of cards that had been my life up to 38 years of age fell to pieces.

I felt hopeless. This was my impossible situation.

You’ll face yours. It’s probably more situational. Mine was self-created. You would sit here and say, “Well, why didn’t he just quit?” Well, those of us who struggle with drug addiction know we can’t just quit. It makes no sense to the common mind, but I was controlled by my need for drugs for 20 years. I didn’t want to quit. I didn’t know how to quit. But I had to quit.

It’s called rock bottom in our world.

I got released from prison and got a lawyer, but life was never going to be the same as we ever knew it before. Praise the Lord.

I was out of control, and the court took control of my life. I now know those people who were way wiser than me loved me more than I loved myself because they knew what I needed. I had no idea what I needed out of this situation.

They told me I had to do three things.

The first was to be drug tested because people like me are liars, and they knew it had to be proven that I was sober, which was my greatest need—to start operating with a sound mind for the first time in my life.

They also told me that I had to go to this thing called 12-step recovery groups. I didn’t know what those were. I probably had heard of them, but I certainly didn’t want to go. They said, “You have to go to 90 meetings in 90 days, or jail is your destination.” That isn’t an uncommon term. It’s called 90-in-90 in the world of recovery.

But what they knew in Denver was that addicts don’t get well in 90 days. It’s too deep. It’s too ingrained. They were brilliant there. As far as I know, it’s the only county in the world that does it this way. And God knew what I needed.

They said, “You’re going to five meetings a week for a year, or you’re going to jail.” So that first year in recovery, I went to over 300 meetings, and I started to do the work.

At the end of every recovery meeting, the addicts stand up, hold hands, and say, “Keep coming back. It works if you work it.” That’s a true statement.

So I started feebly in the beginning to work the program. As I grew along, I grew more and more to work the program.

The third thing they told me I had to do was to get psychological counseling because I was a wreck emotionally and physically and certainly spiritually.

I was appointed a court-ordered therapist who did drug addiction therapy. On the third meeting, she said, “You bring your wife in with you next time.”

Before Scott was arrested, I pretty much thought I was self-sufficient and in control. Some people might say I was controlling. But I was hoping that day when I went to the counselor that she would tell me a plan for fixing all our problems.

My other thought as I went there was that I was scared because I was afraid she would tell me, “You need to put together a plan to leave.” I was not in a position that I wanted to leave our marriage.

Well, she did tell me what to do, but it was neither one of those things. She said, “You need to start going to 12-step meetings. Get yourself to Al-Anon.”

I left there angry and confused. After all, Scott was the problem. He blew up our marriage and our life, and she said that I needed to go sit in some weird meetings with a bunch of losers.

That was not for me. I was not like them.

It really does work.

I was getting better. If you can imagine the relationship between a husband and wife when somebody’s wasted on drugs all the time, we had no relationship. It was very, very broken.

But I was getting better, and slowly I began to see the world more clearly and found out that being sober was better than being loaded.

We began to get closer, and our family began to slowly heal, but there was one huge thing missing: I still didn’t know God.

Well, Scott was starting to get better. It was a process, but he was certainly making a lot of changes and working hard. I could see that he was getting better, but I was getting bitter.

In desperation, I finally dragged myself into an Al-Anon meeting. I want to say it was the best choice of my life because it was an act of humility, and it saved my life.

With the loving support of all those other “losers” there, I began to put into practice the 12 steps. As I did, I received the blessing of true surrender, and I rededicated my life to Jesus. With God and Jesus as Lord, I was able to release my husband into His loving care.

With that, we both really began to get closer, and our family began to heal even more.

But I couldn’t get a job. As I went to meeting after meeting after meeting, I was desperately looking for a job because we needed the money. God knew what I needed because He wouldn’t provide a job.

Finally, after a year, He provided a job, and it was a great job. I’m so thankful for it. I rose quickly because now I’m operating with a sound mind and a clear conscience for the first time as an adult. I became a leader in this corporation, and they transferred me from Denver, Colorado, to become a regional manager in California.

The only place we could afford to live was Modesto, so we ended up here. We moved just right down here off Union. God knew what we needed.

This is huge evangelism. You hear it all the time, guys. But how do people come to church? Because they get invited.

Everybody in our little community just kept coming to us saying, “You’ve got to go to this great church up the street.” I ignored them. I couldn’t care less.

But one day, she finally said, “We should go check this place out. Everybody’s telling us to go to this Big Valley Grace Church.”

I said, “Okay.”

So we and our two little kids pulled into the parking lot. I’m like, “This isn’t my model of a church. I thought it was a little building on a corner. This was a city.”

We walked in here without me even wanting to be here, but the music touched my heart, and then the preaching touched my soul.

Sitting right back there, Jesus came into my life, and I was changed in an instant.

If you’ve been an addict and an atheist and Jesus comes into your life, it’s shocking. I was shocked. But I knew something happened inside of me that I couldn’t explain. It wasn’t emotional. It wasn’t physical. I guess I heard it was spiritual.

So I had to ask questions, and I began to ask questions. “Tell me. Explain this thing, because it’s good, but I don’t know what it is.”

The pastors got to know me. She went to work here. I got in the choir because I love to sing, and we became involved in the church.

Two years after my salvation, the pastor she was working for invited me to come into his office on a Monday. I was in town that week, so I went into his office.

It’s a day I’ll never forget because I sat there and he said these words: “Scott, we’ve been watching you and Susie for a while, and we like what we see. Have you ever considered becoming a pastor?”

When I picked myself up off the floor, I’m sure I said something like, “You’re crazy,” because I knew myself as a drug addict who barely knew this person called Jesus. I was on fire for Him, but that doesn’t add up to pastor.

He said, “We want you to interview for the job.”

I went through four different interviews. I told them the truth, and they either were not listening or they did not care because they hired me.

That was October 1, 1996.

I became a singles pastor. We had a huge singles ministry here at the time. Six years later, the singles ministry kind of died off because of the internet.

All the people around me were starting to tell me, “Hey, there’s a recovery movement within the walls of the church in America.” I wasn’t really even listening, but they said, “Can we go explore maybe starting a recovery ministry here?”

As weird as it is, as much as I believe in recovery, I wasn’t the person who was pushing this. It was my team around me.

We sent them off to conferences, and they came back and said, “We need to start Celebrate Recovery here.”

I said, “Let’s go for it.”

On March 3, 2003, we started Celebrate Recovery out in the Ark, and people just poured in.

It was totally an act of God.

It’s a unique act because Celebrate Recoveries are all over the United States, but there aren’t any like these. We grew and we grew. We went from the Ark to the Fireside Room to the YAC to this room, and God was changing thousands of lives.

Really, the most important story is my family because when I got saved here, I was a newbie, to say the least. Two years in Christ and they’re making me a pastor.

This church poured into me. Pastor Lonnie became my mentor, and the church surrounded me and educated me and poured into me and believed in me more than anything.

This church took my boys and discipled them. Through Rick Countryman’s connections with Liberty University, which were intense in those days, both of my boys decided to go back and graduate from Liberty University.

Today they’re both pastors, and they’re raising godly families—the third generation of Christ in our Miller family—with seven grandkids who are growing up in godly homes themselves.

They left to go back to North Carolina, so we left in ’21 to go back there. We’re now involved in a fantastic local church, serving and giving back there.

But most importantly, our family’s healthy, out of the sickness of who we once were, through the power of Jesus Christ and the power of the local church, His bride, to support and disciple people.

So in 1990, we faced what seemed like an impossible situation.

But nothing is impossible with God.

Thanks for letting us share.

Well, there’s even more to come because on Tuesday night, right here at 6:30, we have Celebrate Recovery, and Pastor Scott Miller is going to be doing the teaching this Tuesday night. So come back. Come back on Tuesday night and hear a great message from Pastor Scott Miller. Celebrate Recovery, 6:30 Tuesday night, right here.

Nehemiah chapter 1, verse 1.

What should we do when facing seemingly impossible situations that are out of our control?

Well, God gives us an ancient example in a leader named Nehemiah. Though it’s an ancient example, it is absolutely still relevant for all of us right here, right now.

“The words of Nehemiah the son of Hakaliah. Now it happened in the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, that Hananiah, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem.

“And they said to me, ‘The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.’

“As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and I wept and mourned for days. And I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

“And I said, ‘O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments, let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open to hear the prayer of Your servant that I now pray before You day and night for the people of Israel, Your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against You. Even I and my father’s house have sinned.

“‘We’ve acted very corruptly against You and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that You commanded Your servant Moses. Remember the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, “If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen to make My name dwell there.”

“‘They are Your servants and Your people whom You have redeemed by Your great power and by Your strong hand. O 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.’

“Now I was cupbearer to the king.”

Let’s pray together.

Father God, Lord, thank You for this text, and thank You for the biblical character of Nehemiah, and thank You for the example that he sets here.

God, I pray specifically right now for the person who is here who is right now facing what seems to be an absolutely impossible situation, and they are not in control.

God, I ask that You would use Your Word to speak directly to them right now, that they might see the hope in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is real, and it’s available to them right now in the situation that they’re in.

So God, would You please be at work? I pray this in Jesus’ name. And all God’s family said, amen.

Nehemiah is someone that God used as a leader, a great leader. God raised him up to be an incredible leader.

As we look at these first 11 verses, I already taught on the first four verses last week, so I’m not going to be teaching through those again. If you missed last week’s message, you can watch it online for free.

But we’re going to be looking at the four marks of a competent leader as displayed in Nehemiah in these first 11 verses.

Immediately, you might be thinking, “Okay, this teaching is going to be about leadership. I’m not a leader, so I don’t have to keep listening.”

I want to challenge you: Don’t count yourself out.

You can have absolutely incredible leadership in your own life, and God can use you to significantly influence the people that He has purposefully placed around you.

So before you count yourself out as a leader, I would challenge you to hear the Word of God today and to consider these four marks of a competent leader.

Mark number one: A leader has a clear recognition of the needs.

A leader has a clear recognition of the needs.

My wife and I grew up in this area. We lived in Modesto for the majority of our lives.

When we were in high school and young drivers—which everybody knows, high school young drivers, you’re super good at driving—it was nighttime, it was wintertime, and we were heading out to a friend’s house out toward Oakdale off a Mil Road.

The fog was so thick we couldn’t see past the car. So we drove the street and didn’t find the house out in the country. We turned around, drove the street again, and didn’t find the house out in the country.

So we decided, “Well, let’s drive down as far as we think the house might be.” We did, and then we got out of the car and just started walking to see if we could find the driveway and the house where we were going.

It was that foggy.

Anybody here ever driven in fog like that around here? Hey, for all of you who haven’t, welcome to town. Winter’s coming, and we’ve got a treat for you. It’s going to be really great and really scary. It’s going to be awesome.

Well, in the first four verses here, it says, “The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hakaliah. Now, it happened in the month of Kislev in the twentieth year as I was in Susa, the citadel, that Hananiah, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah.

“And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, ‘The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire.’”

Again, I’ve already taught through those verses, so we’re going to pick it up here again in verse 4.

He says, “As soon as I heard these words.”

As soon as I heard these words.

He listened to the report that was given.

You do not have to be a classic storybook leader to have incredible leadership in your life and to influence other people. But you do need to hear the words of the people around you, and you do need to be paying attention to what’s happening in your life because a leader has a clear recognition of the needs.

Nothing clears away the fog like facts.

The facts we have available to us are right here in the Word of God. As you take in the facts of the truth of the Word of God into your life, it’s going to help you understand the truth about who God is, the truth about who you are, and it’s going to help clear away the fog of the situations that you face.

So I would challenge you to get serious and investigate.

We hear right here from Nehemiah. He says he hears the report. “I heard the report. It was bad, but I heard the words that they had to share.”

A leader has a clear recognition of the needs.

A leader also is personally concerned with the needs.

This is like saying they have an owner mindset. Whatever situation a leader is in, the leader looks at the situation and sees themselves as a part of the situation and that they have the opportunity to be a part of influencing and changing the situation that they’re in.

A leader is personally concerned with the needs.

Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. He described it this way: As a member of the body of Christ, “If one member suffers, all suffer together.”

So Nehemiah, though he is many miles away in a totally different country in exile, hears about his kinsmen and his homeland, and he suffers along with them as they are suffering. As he hears the words in the report, he’s personally concerned with their needs.

In verse 4, he says, “I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.”

There’s a difference between crying and weeping.

You know that you’re crying when tears are rolling down your face. You know that you’re weeping when your entire body is convulsing and you cannot make it stop because your entire body is in the process of crying.

He said, “I sat down and wept and mourned.”

I worked through the process of grief in hearing about the destruction of my homeland and my people. I mourned, and it was not a short process. For days.

“And I continued fasting.”

Fasting. Now, that’s not referring to how some of you drive. It’s different.

It’s about abstaining from food for the purpose of seeking the Lord in prayer for a specific purpose and duration of time.

He’s saying, “I stopped eating so that when the hunger was felt in my person, it reminded me to pray again for my people and my homeland,” and praying before the God of heaven.

A question that I find challenging for myself, and I’m just going to share it with you, and may it be challenging for you as well:

When is the last time the gospel of Jesus Christ brought me to tears?

When is the last time the gospel of Jesus Christ brought me to tears?

Because Nehemiah hears the needs of what’s happening in his homeland and with his people, and he weeps.

If one member suffers, all suffer together.

A leader is personally concerned with the needs.

Mark number three: A serious leader goes first to God with the need.

A serious leader goes first to God with the need.

This week I looked up: What are the most common responses people have to an emergency that are wrong?

Here’s the top four incorrect responses that people have toward an emergency.

Number one, panic.

Number two, freezing—doing absolutely nothing.

Number three, ignoring environmental hazards that they are actually in danger of as they experience the emergency.

The fourth most common response that is inaccurate that people have toward an emergency is poor communication. They say nothing, or they say a whole lot that’s not helpful.

What does he do here?

He prays.

He prays because a serious leader goes first to God with the need.

He says in verse 5, “And I said, O Lord God of heaven.”

O Lord God of heaven.

Every impossible situation that we face, every seemingly impossible situation that we face that is absolutely out of our control, is underneath the authority of O Lord God of heaven.

Nehemiah knows that his Lord, the God of heaven, is over the situation he’s hearing about.

Though it is horrible, it is distant, it is destructive, and his homeland and his people are being destroyed, he understands that even with how bad it is, it is below O Lord God of heaven.

As he prays, we see him praising God.

Praising God.

If you want to learn how to praise God, I would encourage you to use the Psalms in your Bible.

We went through the Psalms. We taught through eight Psalms in June and July, but we challenged our church family to read all 150 Psalms in June and July.

Read the Psalms. They will teach you how to pray, praising God. The Psalms are the songs and the prayers for the follower of Jesus Christ.

He says as he praises God, “the great and awesome God.”

You know who I’m praying to? You know who I’m praising?

The great and awesome God who keeps covenant.

He makes a commitment and a promise, and He never breaks it. He always does what He says He’s going to do.

I’m praising the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love.

He loves again and again and again and again and again, and He never stops loving, and His love never runs out.

I am praising the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments.

There’s a practice I use. I write in a prayer journal. I’m not perfect at this, but it is a daily practice.

Almost every time I use the prayer journal, the very first line in the prayer journal is, “Dear Lord, thank You for yesterday.”

The way God made me, God made me to wake up, be full of energy, and I go as hard as I can, as long as I can, and then I crash and I fall asleep.

So at the end of the day is a really bad time for me to think clearly. But in the morning, man, I’m ready to rock and roll.

The first line is, “Dear Lord, thank You for yesterday.”

I begin to think through all the things that happened in my life the day before. I thank God for the people and the situations, the things He’s doing in my heart, the things He’s doing in my mind, how I see Him at work.

I thank Him.

As you take from the example of Nehemiah’s leadership, maybe you’re going to have the opportunity to start a daily practice of praising God.

Use the Psalms. It will prompt you to praise God.

Thank God for something. Thank Him for one thing every day and see how that grows your life in praising God.

He’s also confessing sin.

Sin is anything that is less than the holiness of God, anything in us that doesn’t meet the standard of the holiness of God.

There is unintentional sin—sin we didn’t mean to do.

There’s intentional sin—sin we absolutely wanted to do and did it on purpose.

There’s sin that we do privately, and it just involves us.

There is sin we do corporately, and we get a whole bunch of people together and go and do the wrong thing together.

Well, I don’t know what flavor of sin you prefer, but the point is that we would learn to be a people who are confessing sin.

Nehemiah here brings it all the way up to the national level.

In verse 6: “Let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open to hear the prayer of Your servant that I now pray before You day and night for the people of Israel, Your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against You. Even I and my father’s house have sinned.

“We have acted very corruptly against You and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that You commanded Your servant Moses.”

One of the things I do as I’m in my prayer journal is I ask God to help me discover my blind spots.

They’re called blind spots because I can’t see them about myself.

So I’ll write this line often in my prayer journal: “Lord, what do You want to show me? What do You want to show me?”

Because I’m not going to see it unless You show me.

So, God, what do You want to show me?

Maybe you need to pray. Maybe you need to pray to confess your own sin.

Maybe you need to pray to confess the sin that has led to brokenness in your home.

Maybe you need to pray and confess sin that has led to brokenness in your neighborhood.

Maybe you need to pray and confess sin that’s led to brokenness in your city.

Maybe you want to be a leader like Nehemiah and you want to raise your confession to the national level, and you need to pray and confess the sins that have led to the current reality of the United States of America.

Not only is he confessing sin, but he’s claiming promises.

He’s claiming promises.

Claiming promises is understanding what God’s Word teaches to be true, but seeing that it has not yet come about and trusting God will do it.

“God, this is what Your Word says. I don’t see that it’s come about yet, but I trust that You’re going to get it done.”

In verse 8 he says, “Remember the word that You have commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen to make My name dwell there.’

“They’re Your servants and Your people whom You’ve redeemed by Your great power and Your strong hand.”

Nehemiah read his Bible.

Nehemiah read Deuteronomy.

Nehemiah knew the promises that God had made to Moses.

He said, “Okay, God, we’re living in Your promise. You told us if we disobeyed, You were going to exile us.”

Well, that happened.

“But God, You also said that there was going to come a time where You were going to remember us, and we were going to humble ourselves, and You’re going to bring us back.

“God, I’m asking that You do it now. May now be the moment where You keep Your promise to restore our people and our land.

“God, would You do it now? I trust You to do it now.”

And he believed God.

We have to read God’s Word before we can remember God’s Word and use it as we pray.

So I want to challenge you to read God’s Word.

As you read God’s Word, you’re going to come across the promises of God. Then you’ll be able to remember the promises of God as you go to God in prayer, claiming the promises of God for your own life and applying them to your own life.

But you’ve got to read God’s Word to be able to remember God’s promises and apply them to your life.

The last thing we see him doing in his prayer is he’s bringing requests.

I don’t know what type of requests you have, but I’m guessing you have some requests that you need to bring to the Lord.

Well, here’s an example of a request from our Global Reach partner in prayer before the Lord. Check out this video.

When Nehemiah heard about Jerusalem’s state from far away in Persia, he felt the heavy burden of distance. His experience reminds me of some of my experiences serving as a physician with Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Hi, I’m Keith Campbell.

One morning, I received an urgent WhatsApp video call from a Wycliffe family in Indonesia. It was about midnight for this family, and their five-year-old son was in life-threatening respiratory distress.

Where they serve, there are no ambulances or emergency rooms or 911 services.

I could see this little boy struggling to breathe on my phone screen, and I could sense the parents’ fear. Honestly, I was afraid, feeling utterly helpless so far away.

But together we used the few medical tools they had on hand, and we prayed together. The best treatment was calling upon the power of God for both healing to this precious child and for peace for the parents.

Over the next 12 hours, we stayed in close contact on video calls, carefully tracking his breathing and medication.

By God’s grace, he made it through the night.

That family eventually returned to the U.S. for specialized medical care and is now back in Indonesia once again serving in Bible translation and fully equipped to manage his asthma.

Thank you, Big Valley Grace family, for partnering with my family and with Wycliffe so that we can serve the missionaries that are translating the Bible around the globe.

Nehemiah brought his request, and he was very specific.

In verse 11: “O 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.”

“Now I was cupbearer to the king.”

He’s saying, “God, I need You to hear me. I’m going to pray, and God, I’m asking, would You listen to what I’m praying?

“God, we actually have something we need to be successful in doing, but we’re not going to be successful unless You make us successful.

“So God, will You make us successful because we have an important job to do?

“Lord, we’re going to need mercy in the sight of this man.”

Who’s this man?

This man, he’s referring to the king, who is the conquering king of the foreign nation where his people are in exile, underneath subservience to him.

He’s saying, “Yeah, I can see that this man is in human authority and human power, and he’s the number one guy here. But God, You’re above him, and I’m going to need You, God, to show mercy to us as we go before him.”

This week, I made a list of all the people I’ve got a problem with.

I wrote all their names down.

I wrote all the names down of the people I’ve got a problem with, and then I wrote the reasons I’ve got a problem with them next to their names.

Then I took the list and I gave it to God.

“God, I’m giving You all these people and all their problems, and I’m giving it to You.”

A very specific request I gave to the Lord.

“Here’s all these people’s names and all these problems that are associated with them. God, I am giving this list of people to You.”

The fourth mark of a leader: A leader is available to personally meet the need.

This is where we see faith is accompanied by works that display action based on belief.

For us, following Jesus actually impacts our day-to-day lives and interactions with other people.

So in verse 11, we’re going to look at it from another perspective.

“O 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. Now I was cupbearer to the king.”

That word “servant”—he’s talking about being a slave. He’s talking about being a servant, a slave of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the God of heaven and earth.

He sees himself as in service to God.

So as a follower of Jesus Christ, we understand that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that He is the Master.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, we submit to the Master, Jesus Christ.

Whatever Jesus Christ wants, it is our job to submit to the Master and to serve Jesus as He wants us to serve Him.

Something I would challenge you to do is let God’s truth decide what you should do.

If you’re trying to figure out what to do, let God’s truth decide what to do.

One of the things that I pray often as I’m praying in my prayer journal, I’ll pray this:

“Lord, what verse do You want me to obey today? God, what verse?”

It’s a big Bible.

“Lord, what verse today is the verse You want me to make sure I don’t miss so that I will obey You today? What from Your Word do You want me to obey today?”

As we’ve looked at these four marks of a competent leader, a leader has a clear recognition of the needs. A leader is personally concerned with the needs. A serious leader goes first to God with the need. And a leader is available to personally meet the need.

Which one of these is stirring up in you as God’s calling you to raise your level of leadership for Him?

Which one of these is stirring up?

Which one of these four marks of a competent leader do you need to take some action on this week?

Maybe you’re going to have an opportunity to invite somebody to church.

Maybe you’re going to have an opportunity to invite somebody to a small group.

Or you’re going to have the opportunity to invite somebody to serve with you.

Or you’re going to be able to invite somebody to Neighborhood Sunday.

How might God want to help you take some action this week to put your faith into action as a servant of Jesus Christ?

You know, we live in a culture that sorely lacks biblical leadership.

Well, guess what, church?

As we grow, as we grow in being competent as godly leaders, we’re going to influence many people toward Jesus Christ and obedience to God and His Word.

We intend to do that.

If you are here and you are recognizing that God is moving in your heart and mind through His Word, through the biblical character of Nehemiah, understanding that there’s an opportunity for you to grow as a leader—if you’re here and you know God’s tugging on your heart, that you might step up as a leader and you need prayer for it, I challenge you to stand right now, and I’ll pray for you.

If you’re here and God’s moving in your heart and mind and He’s doing something to help you understand that there is an action step you can take to follow Him, to grow as a leader for God, that you might have influence in the life of someone else, I challenge you to stand right now, and I’m going to pray for you.

Father God, Lord, I thank You for all the men and women and young people who are standing right now.

God, You know exactly what You have placed on their heart and mind. You know exactly what’s stirring in their heart and mind. You know exactly their situation and their scenario.

Lord, You know from Your Word and by Your Spirit what You have moved in their heart today.

God, I ask You that You would meet them right where they are, and You would help them put their faith into action.

That they would take action as a follower of Jesus Christ, a servant of the Master, fully trusting in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

God, that You would use them to change this church, to change this city, to change this county, to change this state, to change this nation, to change this world.

You’d use the men and women and the young people who are standing right now, and You’d use them to change the world for Jesus Christ.

God, I pray You’d raise them up as godly leaders.

Help them have incredible bravery, boldness, and courage in You, trusting in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

I pray this in Jesus’ name.

And all God’s family said, “Amen.”

If you need further prayer, our team would love and be ready to pray for you. Come over to the prayer room.

If you’re new, we’d love to see you at Discover BVG. We’re going to head there right now in the Fireside Room.

Church family, we love you, and we’re going to see you again real soon.