Holy Discontent, Part 2 | J.D. Greear

0:01 If you got your Bibles with you this morning, and I hope that you do, Nehemiah chapter 2, one of the questions that we all ask, all of us, if we have even the slightest belief in God, is what does God want from me personally? Does God have a special assignment for me, and how do I know that I am fulfilling that assignment? I think I've told you, sometimes I've thought it would be so cool if we received mission assignments from God the way that Tom Cruise received his in Mission Impossible. Remember how that worked? Ethan Hunt, that's the character Tom Cruise plays, is out somewhere random when he hears a phone ringing in a phone booth. And by the way, when I say that, I know if you were born after 2005, you have no idea what a phone booth is, okay? Think a square box like a port-a-potty, but with a phone in it. And about the same number of germs, am I right? Yeah, okay, well, when Ethan would answer the phone, he would get specific instructions for some mission that he was supposed to go on, ending with the words, always, as always, should you or any member of your team be caught or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Ethan. And then the phone would start to spark and smoke. And I just always thought that'd be cool if we got assignments from God that way with your name on it, specific instructions. But that's not how it works, is it? It was actually a kind of Mission Impossible spin-off series that came out a few years ago, a TV series called Chuck. Anybody ever see that?

1:28 Yeah, okay. That actually, I know this is going to sound crazy, but that's a little closer to the biblical model. In that show, the main character, Chuck Bartowski, receives an encoded email from an old college friend who now works for the CIA. When Chuck opens the email, a series of rapidly flashing images download the CIA's secret database into Chuck's brain with instructions about missions and targets and the whole lot. And so in the show, some opportunity or person presents itself to Chuck and the opportunity corresponds to a mission that's been pre-implanted in his head. Now, I want to be clear. While God does not send us any emails with flashing lights, I think there are some things in that pattern that are a little closer to what we see in the Bible. Let me show you what I mean, okay? Nehemiah chapter two, let's begin in verse one. in the month of Nisan, which comes right after Toyota and just before Chevrolet.

2:21 Just kidding, okay? That's actually nice saying. That's how you say that. It's similar to our march. In the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up wine and I gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence. And so the king said to me, Nehemiah, why is your face sad? Seeing you are not sick, this is nothing but sadness of the heart. If you were a servant in those days who served in the presence of the king, Whatever was going on in your personal life could not affect your performance before the king. He didn't want to be bothered by your menial personal problems. Nehemiah had served the king for years. And in all those years, I'm sure he had been sad at different points, but he had never let stuff in his personal life affect his mood before the king. But now, deeply troubled by the decaying state of Jerusalem, he just can't control himself. He wears his sadness on his face.

3:14 And so the king asked him about it. Nehemiah said, when he asked me about it, then I was very much afraid. You see, kings had no patience for servants with problems. The king would either replace you or more likely he would have you killed for failing at your job. So I said to the king, let the king live forever. Why should not my face be sad when the city, the place of my father's graves lies in ruins, its gates have been destroyed by fire. Then the king said to me, what are you requesting? So I prayed to the God of heaven, And then I summed up my courage and I said to the king, if it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you may send me to Judah, to the city of my father's graves, that I may rebuild it. And so the king said to me, the queen was sitting right beside him, how long are you going to be gone and when will you return? So 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.

4:12 and a letter to Asaph, who was the keeper of the king's forest out there, that he could give me carte blanche to take as much timber for the beams of the gates of the fortress of the temple as I want, 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, also known for us as the Alamance campus, okay? So Alamance, we love you guys out there, but I 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 heard this, it displeased them greatly that somebody had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel. Sanballat and Tobiah. You're going to want to remember those names. These rascals are going to feature quite a lot in the coming story.

5:05 They basically function as Nehemiah's nemeses throughout the rest of this book. So I went to Jerusalem and I was there for three days. Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me, and I told no one what God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. That is a very important verse. And here's why it is important. Listen, unlike other prophets and divinely called leaders in Israel, as far as we can tell, Nehemiah never received a prophetic word or a dream or a vision from God. The closest we have to that kind of revelatory experience is right here in verse 12. Nehemiah perceives a divinely placed burden in his heart, a broken heart for something unfulfilled in God's kingdom, a holy discontent with the situation as it is. In these 12 verses in Nehemiah 2, I see five things that are necessary for you in discerning God's call on your life.

6:14 Here they are. Number one, you're gonna see a burden. That's there in verse 12. Then you're gonna see, secondly, opportunity. That's gonna be verses one and two and verses seven and eight. Number three, you're going to see preparation and prayer. That'll be verses four and five. Then you're gonna see boldness. that's verses five through nine, then you're gonna see persistence. That will be verse 10, okay? Here we go. Number one, burden, verse 12. As I noted, nowhere in the book of Nehemiah, nowhere, do we have an account of God speaking to Nehemiah through a dream or a vision like we do other prophets. Nehemiah simply recognized God's call in his life through a divinely placed burden into his heart. And I wanna suggest to you that this is the primary way God calls people today. If you are walking with the Holy Spirit, he will put into you a burden, a holy discontent about something in his kingdom.

7:16 He downloads part of his heart into you. Nobody, you see, nobody, and some of you need to hear this, Nobody can be responsible for everything in the mission of God. It's just too big. Early on in my Christian life, I'm not sure if it was the kind of sermons I was getting preached at me or if it was just because of my personality. But early on in my Christian life, I assumed that every assignment in God's kingdom belonged to me. I'd hear a message about Christians' responsibility for poverty relief, and I would assume that that was what I was supposed to give my life to. Then I'd hear one about the need for overseas missions, And so I'd assume that's the one I'm supposed to give my life to. Then I'd hear one on the need for good discipleship in the church or the need for apologists to defend Christ's name in the public square. And I was like, well, obviously I got to do that. Then I'd hear one on racial reconciliation or the needs about foster kids or restoring prisoners. And I'd assume, well, that's got to be my life's work.

8:11 And I want to be clear, Christians should care about all of those things that I just mentioned. And in some way, your church should be involved in all of them. but there's just no way any one person can take on all of those things as a life calling. That's why we often say at the Summit Church, not everything that comes from heaven has your name on it. It may indeed come from heaven. And so you should care about it and you should support it. It's just not for you personally to focus most of your attention on. But hear this, something does have your name on it. You got to figure out what that is and get after it. If you say, well, J.D., I don't really feel a special burden for anything. That means you've either just started walking with God or you're not really listening to him because he will definitely have something for you. God places his burdens.

9:05 He downloads his burdens onto the hearts of his people. He opens your eyes to some need. He makes you start caring about it. He downloads part of his heart into you. That's his call for you to get involved. And that means, by the way, some of you need to hear this. That means when you see something broken in the kingdom of God, something that needs attention, it means your first impulse should not be to write a strongly worded email to your pastor to ask him why he and the church don't really care about that need. I am always open to your feedback. I really am. But when people send those kinds of notes to me, I usually ask them, have you considered that maybe God put that burden into your heart because he's calling you to do this. Big part of my job here is helping you identify what God's calling you to and encouraging you in it and helping equip you for it, not to do all those things in your place.

10:00 Some of the most important ministries in our church started this way. Members of our church saw a need in our community. They felt a burden. They started ministries to prisoners or refugees or shut-ins or ministries on particular campuses or in particular neighborhoods or focused on a particular community. that is primarily how God calls people today. Number two, opportunity. Nehemiah had not only a burden about the situation, God gave him an opportunity to do something about it. I explained this when we went through chapter one, but Nehemiah discovered that God had set the plan for rebuilding Jerusalem into motion long before Nehemiah ever came on the scene. Nearly a hundred years before Nehemiah, King Cyrus had authorized this building project through another Jewish leader named Zerubbabel, and he had guaranteed funds for it with official documentation. So Nehemiah felt not only the burden to do this, when he stepped into it, he recognized the activity of God all around him, and he realized God had put him in a position to do something about it, and that he was already working.

11:03 Burden was matched with opportunity, and Nehemiah recognized, verse eight, that the good hand of my God was upon me. That's just another way of saying, And I recognized that God was already at work in this. Whenever God is calling you to something, he will not only put a burden in your heart, he will give you opportunity for action. Let me reintroduce you to one of my favorite tools for discerning God's call in your life. It's a little tool that I've adapted from others that we use a lot here at the Summit Church. We say that knowing the will of God for you personally is found at the intersection of three circles. Those three circles are ability, affinity, and opportunity. You find these three circles, you figure out where they come together, that little shaded area right there, that's God's will for you. Ability simply means what you're good at, what natural abilities you have, what others see in you and affirm and call out on you.

11:58 A lot of times they can see your spiritual gifts before you do. What spiritual gifts have you received? That's your ability. Affinity is just a fancy word that means something you're passionate about. what God's given you a burden about. That burden might come like Nehemiah's through something that God just supernaturally breaks your heart for, might come through experiences that you've had, painful valleys that you've walked through. Do you remember when we studied through 2 Corinthians a couple months ago that we saw that Paul said God had let him walk through certain kinds of pain so that he could comfort others with the comfort wherewith he'd been comforted? It's like we often say around here at the Summit Church, God often turns your misery into your ministry. That's where that comes from, these passions and desires. The third circle is opportunity. That means that God has given you an open door to do something about this burden. Sometimes you got a burden.

12:50 Sometimes you've even got the ability, but the door is not open. And so you've got to wait on God's timing. That's what Nehemiah did, right? He prayed about this burden for four months, never mentioning anything to anybody waiting on God to open the door. You see, listen, when something is of God, you won't have to force the door open. A friend of mine once pointed out to me, he said, hey, Jesus said he would open a door before us that no man can shut. That means if a man is able to shut the door, then the door wasn't really from Jesus. If I feel burdened about something and I start pursuing it and the door shuts and I can't get it open, well, then I assume that door was not really from God. You can trust that if God has put something on your heart and he wants you to do something about it, he'll open the door and he'll keep it open. Like Nehemiah, you'll start to sense, verse eight, that the good hand of my God was upon me. And if that's not happening, don't push it. Look for God's calling at the intersection of those three circles, affinity, ability, opportunity. If any one of those three is missing, God is likely not in it. I know people, for example, who are passionate about leading worship. They have an affinity for it, but they can't sing. They got no ability. And so when they say to me, pastor, God's given me a song for our congregation. I use my position to deny them opportunity, right? On your behalf, I take one for the team, okay? Which means that person can conclude, at least for right now, that leading worship at the summit is not God's will for them. Okay, you'll get to do that in heaven when God gives you a different voice. But the place that you find God's will right now for you is affinity, ability, and opportunity. By the way, this Venn diagram right here is way more reliable, in my opinion, for figuring out God's will for your life than spiritual gift tests are. Right? If you're unfamiliar, spiritual gift tests, and I don't hate them altogether, but they're basically just like personality tests where you answer a series of multiple choice questions, and then it spits out

14:56 to you what your spiritual gifts are and what God's will likely is for your life. Those can have a little value. Now, admittedly, I think I've told you this, I might be jaded against them because Veronica and I, my wife and I took one right after we got married and her number one spiritual gift came back as celibacy. That is a true story. And I was like, I don't even know what that means. So I might be jaded. I will admit that. But even so, I think this is a more helpful and more full orbed biblical paradigm for discerning God's call on you. Now, let me make one observation, very important before I move on to number three. This whole process right here of discernment is supposed to be communal, meaning that you should be seeking wise, godly counsel as you seek to discern these things. This is not, some of you need to hear this, this is not you and a prayer journal and one night alone in a cabin in the woods with a Bethel worship album on repeat, and then you conclude that whatever wild hair idea you had in your heart has the authority of God behind it.

15:58 Please spare us that, okay? And you're like, are you describing an actual situation? I'm not going to tell you, okay? But God wants us to submit our discernment to others in the church and let them advise us on it. Proverbs says, the way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. Then he goes on to say, without counsel, plans fail, but with many advisors, they succeed. Does that say without counsel, plans fail? Unless you've had an amazing night in the woods in the cabin with a Bethel worship album, then you don't have to have, no, he didn't say that. It says you always are getting counsel, please, for the love of all that is good and holy. Put away this idea that because you had some warm, fuzzy feeling that you'd now have the authority of God in all that you do. Even the apostle Paul did not operate that way. When Paul got called into ministry, Acts 13, 2 says, the Holy Spirit said to the church, set apart Barnabas and Paul for the work I have for them.

16:54 The Holy Spirit said it to the church, not just to Paul and Barnabas. Even Paul's calling came in part from people on the outside, not just hunches on the inside. So get wise counsel about your passions and then submit your burdens to God and wait for a door of opportunity, an open door that no man can shut, a place where you sense the good hand of my God is upon me. Burden, opportunity, number three, preparation. and prayer. Nehemiah may have been waiting for God to open the door, but he was not idle. Did you notice verse four, when I read it, that the moment the king asked Nehemiah, what are you asking? Nehemiah was ready with an answer. He wasn't like, oh gosh, I hadn't even thought about this. Like give me an afternoon. No, he didn't say any of that. Nehemiah rattled off what he needed, like he'd been thinking about it for months, because that's exactly what he had been doing. He had been thinking about it for months and praying about it. While waiting on God to open the door, he had been preparing. Being patient and waiting on God to open the door, I'm not telling you to be idle in preparation. When I sensed God first calling me into ministry when I was a teenager, nobody wanted me to preach anywhere. I had no invitations. Back in my early 20s, I had no invitations. I made a little business card that advertised me as a speaker.

18:10 I gave them out everywhere. Nobody ever called, but I read every book on ministry I could get my hands-on. Every time I listened to a sermon between the ages of like 16 and 25, I would rewrite that sermon in my notebook, how I would preach that passage one day. I would preach anywhere and everywhere somebody would listen. I preached in rest homes, rescue missions, prisons. Sometimes I would preach to audiences of two and three people. That is not a joke. It was awkward. I'm up there just getting after it in front of an audience of two. The point is I wasn't idle. I was waiting on God to open doors, but I was busy preparing at the same time. Patience in waiting doesn't mean idleness and preparation. Second thing Nehemiah did in his time of waiting was he devoted himself to prayer. We learned in Nehemiah 1.4 that he prayed between the months of Chislev, which would be November, and Nisan, which is March, which means he prayed for nearly four months before saying a word about this burden to anybody. And then verse four, when the king finally asked Nehemiah what he wanted to do. Nehemiah said, so I prayed again. He'd spent four months on his face talking to God about this. And when the moment of opportunity finally came, he one more time drew in a breath and very quickly breathed out a prayer to God. In Nehemiah, every pivotal moment hinges on prayer. The book is saturated with prayer and be encouraged.

19:33 These prayers were not long, flowery, theologically rich prayers. This one in verse four is what we call a breath prayer. Nehemiah didn't have time to run to a prayer room, light some candles, pull out a theology book. He just prayed, God, this is your work, not mine. So make these next words your words, not mine. You got to open this door. I can't do it. When you got a burden for something, here's the question, where do you turn? Many of us get out our notebooks and our calculators and we get our friends on the phone and we try to figure out how to get stuff done. That is never how great miraculous works of God get started. They start with people turning to God in prayer and waiting on him to do something. Think about what the apostles did after being given the great commission. The great commission, Matthew 28, go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creatures. That was said to a bunch of blue collar fishermen, most of whom had never left Israel.

20:32 I would argue never has a more important assignment been given to a less qualified group of people. What do they do? What do they do? I did exactly what most of us would have done. We'd have pulled together a committee, a task force. We'd have gotten out of whiteboard. We said, all right, we got to raise some money. Peter, you do that. We got to plan some conferences. John, that's going to be on you. We're going to need some apologetics resources. Thomas, why don't you pull those together? They didn't do any of that, did they? No, Jesus told them what to do. I want you to go and do nothing. Acts 1, go and do nothing except pray and wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon you. Hey, can't you hear, can't you hear some of their objections? You can't tell me Peter wasn't like, do nothing. You want us to start a movement? If you want us to start a movement, we got a plan. We got to fundraise. We got to get out of this train. We got to get t-shirts printed. You can't start a movement without a t-shirt. Everybody knows that. But Jesus is like, no, no, no t-shirts. Do nothing, nothing until my Holy Spirit moves you out. Because until that happens, nothing you do is going to make any difference anyway. This thing that I gave you evangelizing the world, it's not something you can just go and do. I got to do it through you. So pray and wait for me to open the door. So that's what they did. They prayed for 10 days, 10 days. Then the Holy Spirit came upon them. Peter stands up, Acts 2, preaches for about 10 minutes. 3,000 people get saved. I told you nowadays we plan for 10 days, right? We pray for about 10 minutes, three people get saved. It's amazing what happens when you just move your zeros around.

22:09 The pattern in scripture, the pattern in Nehemiah is you take the burden to God, take the burden from God to God and wait for God to open the door. Nehemiah said, I didn't force this door open. I didn't try to manipulate others into making it happen. I just talked to God and I waited on him to open the door. I'm not saying you never talk to anybody about what God puts in your heart. I'm asking you to consider whether you're depending on God to make it happen or if you think you're the one ultimately that opens the door. I read a biography in college that really impacted me. It's a biography of George Mueller. George Mueller was a 19th century British pastor who ran a huge orphanage in England with over 300 kids and 300 orphans. George Mueller was famous for only ever taking his ministry needs to God. To the point, honestly, that I think he overdid it. But I think God used his example to make a point. George Mueller tells several stories like this, but the one that I most remember went like this.

23:07 One morning, they'd run out of supplies at the orphanage and they literally had no breakfast food. He's got 300 hungry orphans to feed and no bread and no milk. So the workers come to him and they're like, Pastor Mueller, what are we supposed to do? We don't have anything to serve these kids. He said, just set the tables. Let's just do it in faith. And let's just pray and thank God for the provision that's not there. So they set out 300 cups, plates, forks. They all sit down. George Mueller stands up and thanks God for the provision. Like it's all on the table. Well, just at that very moment, he said, the baker knocks on the door and said, hey, last night we overcooked. I got 300 servings of bread here. Could you use them? Almost the same time, he said, the local milk delivery wagon broke down right in front of their orphanage. The milk wagon guy walks up to the front door and he's like, hey, all this milk is gonna spoil. Could you use it? George Mueller has a ton of stories like that in his autobiography.

24:00 You should read it. It's a great summary. When you have a God-sized dream, when you have a divinely placed burden, before you take it anywhere else, you take it to God in prayer because what God originates, he orchestrates. Through prayer, God opens impossible doors. Through prayer, he moves pagan kings to supply incredible provisions. You wanna see what you can do about a situation? Then you just take it on and use your amazing business skill. You wanna see what God can do? Then you give yourself to prayer first. Prayer should not be an afterthought. It shouldn't be something you tuck in around the edges. At a lot of churches, prayer is primarily something you do to give the production team time to change the setup here. You bow your heads, we rearrange stuff up here. You open your eyes, bam, it's all ready for the next part of the service. or it's something that you do to get the real work of ministry started.

24:54 You do an introductory prayer and then we get after the real work of ministry, which is planning or preaching or whatever. But in Acts, you find the church praying in 26 out of the 28 chapters. For them, prayer was not an introduction to ministry. Prayer was the center of the ministry. Now, again, the question is not whether you ever get to planning and working. Of course you will. The question is whether you believe prayer is your primary weapon or your introductory weapon. But my friend, Pastor Charlie Dates, told me the story of a bar owner in Mount Vernon, Texas, who was trying to build a risque bar right next to a church there. Well, the church thought the new bar would really cause problems for their community. So they prayed publicly against the bar and held a prayer meeting one night that God would frustrate the bar owner's plans. That very night, lightning struck the new bar building and caused a ton of damage. The bar owner sued the church, claiming that the church had destroyed his bar through its prayers. The church's lawyer responds, they can't be held responsible for that. True story. The Texas judge appointed to decide the case said in his opening remarks that he wasn't yet sure how he was going to rule, but one thing was clear. The bar owner believed in the power of prayer and the church didn't. My point is we need to be a church that does more than just give lip service to prayer. We need to actually believe in it. So while you're waiting on God to open the door, give yourself to preparation and prayer. And then when God does open the door, respond number four with boldness, boldness. As I pointed out, as I pointed out, verse five, when King Artaxerxes asked Nehemiah what he needed, Nehemiah asked for the moon.

26:43 He asked for permission to quit his job. He asked for the permission to go home to Jerusalem for a license to build guaranteed by a royal seal for carte blanche access to timber in the royal forest. That is quite a request for a servant. Verse six, the king agrees to all of that. King says, why not? And he goes even beyond what Nehemiah had asked for. He not only gave Nehemiah all that he asked for, he sent along some of his army for protection, verse nine, which Nehemiah hadn't even asked for. So number three, prayer. And number four, boldness, they always go together. In fact, when I was writing this message, I originally thought about giving you a little sermonette here about the need to be bold in your request and then some examples of what that kind of boldness might look like. But instead, y'all, I just sense God saying that our greater need summit is just to give ourselves to prayer. Because see, if we were more mighty in prayer, instinctively, we would be more bold in our request.

27:40 because prayer always takes your eyes off what you can do and it puts them on what God wants to do. South Korean church, which has experienced revival over the last hundred years in ways that very few places in Christian history ever have, is known for its fervency of prayer. I have been in prayer meetings with some of them and their leaders, with one and one over Christmas. And it's just the craziest thing. It's amazing. A leader gives a direction for prayer. Here's what we need to pray about. And they just say, let's pray, right? there's not always a pad. There's not like a prayer points on the screen, but everybody just stands up and starts praying out loud simultaneously. Stephen Chan, who's a South Korean pastor explains why they do this. He's like, well, Jesus said my house should be called by reputation, a house of prayer, not a house where we get ministry done. American churches are known as places of preaching and worship. Jesus wanted them to be known as houses of prayer because we're weak in our prayer, we're weak in our dreams.

28:39 So I want you to ask God, what does he want you to do? And then I just want you to expect his power. By the way, this is how you explain the history of our church summit. Our summit in Espanol campus began, has several hundred people at and out, began as lay people praying about the local Hispanic community in the area and then inviting Spanish speakers to church. First thing we did, we started translating me preaching through headphones. There had multiple reasons that did not work. One is I talk way too fast for anybody to try to translate. but eventually that led to this campus that's now seeing all kinds of people come to faith in christ same is true about our mandarin service over at chapel hill we have an egyptian member here his name is john messiah who recognized that the triangle was filled with international people from muslim countries so he's like what if we were just to invite them to a dinner on church grounds we would serve halal food and share the gospel with him he said could we do that i was like will that work he said we can try it right so i was like yeah sure you can try it now that multicultural Fellowship has literally hundreds of people who attend. It's amazing. You should come and just hang out sometime. We want to plant a thousand churches by 2050. We always say that. We have a burden to see a movement of 100,000 college students going to the nation. It's not just from our church, but from these churches we planted. These are visions we believe God has given us in prayer, and we are boldly asking him for them. My question is, what is he putting into your heart? It might be personal things for your family or your kids. Hey, that's where it starts.

30:02 That's great. Maybe you would say, for example, God's leading our family to be completely debt-free except for our mortgage within two years so that we can be freer for generosity. Hey, that's a great place to start. That's a great application of a Nehemiah dream. I've heard somebody say this, God is leading me to have a personal conversation about Jesus with every student in my class before I graduate. I heard one person say, God is calling me to invest a million dollars into his kingdom by the time I'm 50. For some of you young adults, maybe the dream is moving together into an apartment complex to share the gospel there, one apartment at a time. I have personally asked God that every kid of every staff member at our church grow up to love and follow Jesus. This week, this week, I asked several of our leaders for examples from their lives. I said, hey, tell me some things that you're praying about, things that God may have put in your heart. One of them said, God is calling me to surrender my previous plans for ministry. The next few years as a part of the summit and become a part of one of our next church plans. Now they're super comfortable here. They love their job here, but they feel like God's calling them to go. Another one said, God has been calling me to start a G4 group for families who have incarcerated loved ones because I have that same experience.

31:20 Another one said, God has been calling me to share the gospel at my cancer treatment center. I spent a couple of days a week getting treatment and building relationships with mostly stage four cancer patients. She says, every time before I go, I pray for God to give me opportunities to share the gospel, and he always does. That's the boldness that comes out of prayer. Here's the last one, persistence. Persistence. Verse 10, Nehemiah brings up Sanballat and Tobiah, the two rascals who are going to make stuff really difficult for Nehemiah. why is there always a Sanballat and Tobiah? Y'all, I've asked this so many times. Why couldn't God just take them out? If God can move the heart of a pagan king to pay for this whole thing, certainly he can, I don't know, he can do something with Sanballat and Tobiah, right? Why doesn't he just marginalize them?

32:14 I don't know. But what I do know is that Sanballat's and Tobiah's don't mean that God is not in something. In fact, they prove that he is. The apostle Paul once said, a wide door for effective ministry has been open for me. I love this. And there are many obstacles. Not but there are many obstacles, but and there are many obstacles. The presence of difficulties doesn't prove that God is not in something. The presence of difficulties proves that he is. God leaves trouble in your path to keep your dependence on him. The path between your burden and its fulfillment always lies through opposition. The question is whether you're gonna quit or not. Y'all, even in the secular sphere, right? Even in the secular sphere, a lot of our society's greatest accomplishments happen through perseverance.

33:08 For example, the New York Times saw this this week. New York Times tells the story of a 69-year-old South Korean woman named Cha Sa-soon. who was determined to get her driver's license. The only problem is that she couldn't seem to pass the license exam. Apparently, it is much harder over there in South Korea than it is here. But this sweet old lady would not give up. She took the test repeatedly over several years. Finally, and this is not a joke, I link to the article in my notes if you wanna see the verification. On her 960th try, she passed. the New York Times article concluded by saying, and by the way, this is a sentiment I think we can all agree with. It said, perhaps Miss Cha should content herself with simply getting the license and not endangering others on the road by actually driving. Amen. Even in the natural world, persistence through difficulty is what enables you to accomplish the impossible.

34:07 Well, if it's true in the natural world, it is definitely true in the spiritual world. persistence is how God tests whether or not you actually trust him now we're going to explore that more in later messages but for right now I just wanted to introduce the concept to you because Nehemiah alludes to it already in the beginning before he starts anything he brings up these two guys Sam about and Tobiah because they're going to become a major theme in this book and I want to encourage those of you right now who are experiencing difficulty to keep going a great door has been opened to you and there are many obstacles. It's like the great missionary Hudson Taylor said, there are three stages to every great work of God. First, it is impossible. Then it's difficult. Then it's done. Now, one word of caution here before I close. Do not interpret Nehemiah. Listen, I'm gonna say this over and over again till you're sick of it.

35:03 Do not interpret Nehemiah as some kind of rah-rah pep talk about boldly stepping out to fulfill your own dreams. This is not a Disney story. It's not about you self-actualizing or finding your inner child and manifesting. This is a book about kingdom dreams, Jesus' dreams. The rebuilding of Jerusalem was not about Nehemiah's desire to build a cool city for himself or exploring his inner architect or even restoring his homeland for nostalgic reasons. No, Nehemiah knew that God had promised to bring salvation to the whole world through Jerusalem. Out of Jerusalem, God promised would come a Messiah who would bring redemption and forgiveness of sins to the whole world. Nehemiah's dreams were about Jesus and his salvation extending to the ends of the earth. That's the kind of dreams we're talking about. A dream that God sent his own son for and a dream he invites you to pursue alongside him. I wanna end this message by actually bringing up a summit member who sent me a note this past week after the first Nehemiah sermon with the subject title, Nehemiah Ruined My Life.

36:05 I wanted you to hear his story because I think God might do something similar with many of you over the next few weeks. See, it's one thing to hear me teach about these things. I want you to hear from somebody, a Summit member who's actually been living them out. So Summit, would you put your hands together and welcome here to our stage, one of our church members, Steve Noble. Steve, why don't you come up here? All right, Steve, why don't you just tell the church the story that you told me in your rather brief email.