Story #1 “Brenda” came into my office back in my days at McKernan …walked in off the street
-most depressed, hopeless, discouraged person I have ever met...could not get her eyes off the floor..
-informed me there was nothing worth living for...
-poured out a story of hurt, pain, abuse that made me shudder
-I was calling out to God for wisdom and tried my best to speak words that would give her hope, told her about what God could do.....prayed with her...she left....made no difference…no visible change....
-she left as hopeless as she came, was convinced I would read about her in the paper the next day as a victim of suicid.e
-then 7 yrs. later, I am now pastoring in Wpg., get this call from a lady....”remember me? I’m Brenda. I’m here in town with my husband and would like to see you.”
-I’m blown away. It’s the gal from before but now she is a totally different person.
-we got together and the first thing I notice is that she is looking me in the eye…and there is life in her face, brightness, joy, peace…
-she told me how thru a long process she finally surrendered her life to the Lord and received deliverance and healing and had gotten connected to a good Bible-believing church and group of caring friends and life was going along well…although she still had a long ways to go…
-gave me a long letter she wrote chronicling her journey from brokenness to healing which she hoped could help many other people…
-in all my ministry years, the most dramatic example of God rebuilding an extremely broken life.
Story # 2. I’ll call her ”Mary”, grew up in a conservative Mennonite home in southern Manitoba, as a teenager rebelled against her strict, religious upbringing, left home, got pregnant and was a single mother at the age of 19. She began to see her life turnaround when a group of Christians opened up their homes and lives to her and offered her love and acceptance. Soon she ended up rededicating her life to the Lord and living for Him.
When her son was three, she married a fine Christian man and they had three more sons together. She went on to lead a ministry to single moms in her home church.
-another example of God rebuilding a broken life.
Story #3. “Bob” was about as good a Christian and church member as you’re going to find anywhere. Saved as a young man, raised his children to know and follow the Lord. Served in the church for years as
Sunday School superintendent, Deacon, usher....you name it…
…loyal, faithful, committed...if the doors of the church were open, he and his family were there. Until the Lord began nudging him about the condition of his prayer life....Bob began to realize that his prayer life was something he called “Rote, mechanical, words but no heart, no passion, no fire.”
God began to create in Bob a hunger for something more in his personal prayer life which led him to discover, gradually over time, a deepening, a longing, a life of prayer that started moving from words only to seeking after the heart of God, prayer driven by desire to know Him and connect with Him. Bob became the leader of a prayer ministry in his home church. I know that because it was my church in Wpg, where, among other prayer intiatives, Bob organized people to pray during my sermons…
-another example of God rebuilding a life that was pretty well put together, compared to the other two stories, but still with areas that were broken and needing repair.
All three of these stories have one thing in common: Restorative Grace. God takes lives that are broken in one degree or another and does a work of restoration....God rebuilds lives…God takes people from a place of rubble to a place of restoration…
Why Nehemiah?
We’re going to be spending the next several weeks in the book of Nehemiah. God has been pointing me to this book over and over again in the recent past because He wants to speak a “now word” to us through this story of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem…there is a parallel here between what Neh did in Jer and what God wants to do in all of our lives…
In ancient times, walls were built around a city to protect it from its enemies, which is a picture of some of our spiritual lives…--our sp. lives are like the city of Jer that God wants to be strong, alive, healthy, thriving, a glorious reflection of Him, with solid gates and protective walls built around it…
…not walls that keep people away from us…keep our hearts shut away, safe and protected and untouchable…Lord knows how we don’t need those kind of walls…
…but rather, walls that protect us from the relentless attacks of our spiritual enemy, Satan…how we are told in the Bible is like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour (1 Pet. 5:8)…
…now these walls are at various states of strength and weakness, of health and disrepair...strong in places, broken in others…
-if we want to be really honest, in each of our lives today, there is some degree of damage, parts of our life are crumbling, there are issues that are in need of restoration and rebuilding…there’s rubble…there may be just a few rocks, or a whole pile, but there’s rubble somewhere…maybe some gates to our life have been left open to the enemy…
Indicators of Broken Walls
-how do you know if this is so? consider some of these indicators that the protective walls of your life may be broken:
-joy missing – rubble of anxiety, fear, dread
-hard to deal with anger, jealousy, guilt, shame
-hard to resist temptation -- caught in sin
-heart toward God is cold, indifferent, unresponsive
-negative, critical spirit toward others, rebellion to authority…
-cannot love others like you should – relationship rubble…
-little or no desire to hear God’s voice and be with Him alone
-you have been hurt and deeply wounded by other people and are nursing resentment and un-forgiveness…
-those are just some of the things that indicate there is brokenness in your life....a need for rebuilding....and when our protective walls are broken, gates are left open, we are vulnerable to the enemies attacks…we’re easy prey for him…
* I have my own rubble and brokenness…I’ve shared with you that I struggle with feeling secure in my sonship with my Heavenly Father…struggle with needing to prove myself to Him and people in order to gain approval and acceptance…
-hard for me just to relax in the truth that I am a loved son of God no matter what happens… if I succeed or fail in my work for Him…
* How do our protective spiritual walls get broken?
-“the world, flesh and the devil…”
-sometimes we are broken not by our choice but by something that happens to us, that is done to us, over which we have no control…
eg. sickness, accident, abuse, loss of something or someone dearly loved…
…but even in cases like that, we can still find the strength from God to be an overcomer instead of a defeated victim…
The good news is, God wants to do a work of rebuilding and restoration in your life… He not only wants to, but He will do something about it....as we partner with Him in the rebuilding process…God specializes in restorative grace…
As I have told you before, Jesus did not just die for our salvation; He died for our restoration…
Jack Hayford: “Your salvation solves the problem of your relationship to God; but it doesn't always dissolve the problems in your life.
We are people who need more than rebirth; we need rebuilding. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. If we stop at simply rebirth and the restoration of relationship to God, we miss God's full redemptive purpose in salvation.”
-in this series we will learn how God can bring restoration from rubble and strengthen the protective walls around our sp. life…
I thought I was going to be starting my series on the Setting Your Church Free prayer action plan that God gave us at our retreat last weekend…but I didn’t realize we need to let it form and take shape over the next 40 days or so…the pastors and LC are committed to praying it through everyday for the next 40 days and word-smithing it…
…and then I will be able to present it to you as a declaration of how God wants Northgate to move forward in freedom, being set free from any spiritual stronghold that would want to keep us held back…
But the story of Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the walls of Jer is actually a very helpful prerequisite for our journey into freedom as a church…as you will see as the story unfolds…
-turn to Neh. 1…
Important Background (events in Neh take place about 440 BC)
Almost 100 years prior to the beginning of the book of Neh., King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon invaded Jerusalem and Judah and took captive many of the Israelites.
He took them into exile back to Babylon 800 miles away
-on the way out of Jer. his army destroyed the magnificent temple Solomon built, broke down the protective walls of the city, ruined the city gates and carried off as many sacred articles and things of value as he could
-they left Jer. in a pile of rubble…
-eventually a new King came into power in Babylon and after 70 years, the first group of exiled Jews were given permission to return to Jer. with Zerubbabel as their leader.
-this group rebuilt the temple (recorded in Ezra)
-then 10 years later another wave of Jews returned to Jer. under Ezra the priest (restored the Jewish system of worship)
-but the walls of the city remained in ruins....
-now another 13 years has passed and that is where we pick up the story of Neh, still in exile, in the city of Susa, where we meet Nehemiah who has a very prominent position as cup-bearer to the king......
-prayer…read vv.1-4.....
The Big Question for Today
The big question for today is, “Where does God want to begin in the process of rebuilding the protective walls of our sp life? The answer is two-fold: God begins by inviting us to:
1. recognize our brokenness v.3
(cry out to Him in prayer v.4)
I Recognize our Brokenness – read v.3
-the whole rebuilding process starts with an honest admission that there is brokenness in our lives…that there is a pile of rubble, be it small or large…and we don’t want it to be that way…rather we want to be restored and made whole again…
-as powerful as God is…He cannot and will not be able to restore someone who does not recognize and welcome His help…
-as long as we believe that we have no brokenness…God cannot heal us…as long as we are making excuses for our problems, blaming others, staying the victim, believing we are not responsible for the condition of our lives, but it’s somebody else’s fault…we are not yet ready to be healed…sadly we will stay broken until we come to the place of honest recognition that we are broken and we need God to restore us…
-in each of the stories I opened this message with, despite the degree of brokenness on the part of those people, each of them eventually came to a place where they recognized the true condition of their life…honestly admitted it to God and to other people…sought help…got it…
-that’s how healing begins…
eg. the story of the invalid by the pool of Bethesda in Jn. 5:6…an invalid for 38 years…Jesus asked him, “do you want to get well?”
-of course you’d say yes, but maybe deep down you don’t…want to stay a victim, hurt, wounded, because it has become a safe and familiar way of life and an easy excuse for not having to live fully whole and restored…
-God’s rebuilding process starts with an honest recognition of our brokenness…the true condition of our lives…
Are you willing to admit that today, if only between you and God?
II. Cry Out to Him in Prayer vv.5-11
-our recognition of brokenness is designed to do one thing and one thing only…turn us to God…to connect us with God through prayer that is God-centered, honest, humble, dependent, confessional.....
As we begin the rebuilding process with honest, humble, confessional prayer, this is what happens: we meet with the Holy Spirit and we begin a partnership with Him that is essential for the restoration process.
This series / process is not about self-improvement, not a counseling course or some man-made psychology that gives you and I new things to try to get it together.....this is not a self-help course…
This series / process is all about allowing the HS to fill us and control us and rebuild us according to the truth of God’s word…
And the part we have to play is to cooperate with the HS, partner with Him by giving Him access into our lives and letting him enter those broken places and start His work of rebuilding.....and that begins in the place of prayer....(honest, humble, confessional prayer)
-listen to the prayer Nehemiah prayed in vv.5-11…
Prayer is the essential beginning point of the restoration process…prayer that is God-centered, honest, humble, confessional…prayer that says, “HS, bring to my attention the areas of brokenness in my life.....show me the causes / reasons for that brokenness.....and where You reveal any sin on my part that has brot about this brokenness, then Lord I confess it to you and receive Your forgiveness.....HS I commit myself afresh to You and ask You to fill me completely and control me completely....I want to cooperate with you in the rebuilding of my life....so that the Father may be glorified in me...”
-you pray that kind of prayer and I can tell you that you have begun the journey to wholeness, restoration…
-there are people in our church who would love to pray with you/for you…even if it takes weeks, months and years…you don’t have to go thru this process alone…just let someone know…Tuesday nights are a good place to come for prayer…or we can arrange a more personal setting…
eg. Houdini story.....
Through Jesus death and resurrection you are free to be restored.....He has unlocked the jail door....
Prayer…stand to receive prayer…