Prayer Fuels Bold Action for God’s Work (Neh 2:4)

Then the king said to me, “What do you request?” So I prayed to the God of heaven.

What is the connection between prayer and action? Between God’s actions and our responsibility? This story of Nehemiah and his prayers gives us the answers to those questions.

Background

Nehemiah was struggling with the news of his people in Jerusalem and had been praying about it for a month. One day, when he appeared before the King and Queen during his duties, the King noted that he seemed sad, and asked him what was wrong. Nehemiah told him of the troubles that his people were experiencing in Jerusalem. When the king asked him what he would like to do, Nehemiah prayed to God and then told the king that he would like to go and help his people rebuild the wall.

The king granted him leave to go. Emboldened, Nehemiah asked him as well for letters of passage, and letters to obtain wood from the king’s forest, he did that as well.

Meaning

When the king asked what was wrong, Nehemiah did not ask him to help him, he merely told him what made him so sad. Was this a sign of his trust in God? That he would not ask right now because he was not sure what God wanted him to do? So he simply told the king the facts.

When the king asked what he wanted, Nehemiah prayed to God, as he had been for weeks. Notice the connection between this mention of prayer and the prayers he had already been offering: “the God of Heaven” (1.4, 5). He’d been preparing for this moment for a month.