A true man of prayer puts feet to his prayers. He has learned that God doesn’t do for us what He has already given us the ability to do for ourselves. God looks for people who pray about their work for Him. But He also looks for people who, having prayed, do His work. God found such a man in Nehemiah.
To do a study of prayer as found in the book of Nehemiah, first collect all the references to prayer. Then correlate them into an outline and finally crystallize them into some applications.
In chapter one you have Nehemiah so burdened about the woeful condition in Jerusalem that he is driven to fervent prayer and fasting. There was urgency in his prayer. In chapter 2 verse 4, when given the opportunity to tell the king about his burden, it says, “I prayed to the God of heaven and answered the king.”
In chapter 4 he prays against his enemies, then continues to pray and post a guard day and night to meet this threat. In chapter 6 he prays for strength to continue the work, and also for God to deal with the opposition. In chapters 8 and 9, after hearing God’s Word, the people both confessed sin and worshiped God in prayer. On a number of occasions, Nehemiah calls on God to remember him for the things he had done.
Now looking at all of the information on prayer we collected, let’s correlated it into the following outline: Pray before you start a work, pray during the work you started, and pray after the work is done. We’ll continue this study in our next visit, and develop some applications.
