Have a prayed through plan in place and take responsibility for it

Lesson 5 from Nehemiah for church communicators

In spite of his fear, Nehemiah expressed his concern for the situation of the Jews who had returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. To no doubt his great relief, the king did not rebuke him or ignore him, he asked him what he wanted and Nehemiah replied:

"The king said to me, 'What is it you want?'

Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king, 'If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it' (Neh. 2,:4,5)."

Lessons from this passage:

1. Nehemiah was prepared with an answer and as the following verses show, it was a detailed plan on what he planned to do about it. This is incredibly significant because:

2. Anyone can point out problems. The ability to see what's wrong may just be the result of a bad attitude or a critical spirit. Nehemiah didn't stop at just seeing the problem, as the previous chapter showed, he took the problem to the Lord and spent time praying, fasting and as this passage shows, planning what needed to be done.

3. Nehemiah took personal responsibility to accomplish the daunting task of rebuilding. Nothing is worse for a leader than to have people who point out problems (again, not difficult to do) and then expect someone else to fix them.

A good application guideline for anyone in church communications, either in leadership or doing the work--don't bring up a problem until you also have an idea for the solution and are prepared to do the work to make the needed improvements.

4. Accepting responsibility doesn't mean you have to do all the work alone. Nehemiah needed help to do it and the passage goes on to show that he asked the king for supplies and support. The response:

"And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests (Neh. 28)."

5. Nehemiah acknowledged that the reason for the positive response from the king was not his brilliant insight or planning, but the favor of God. No matter what the response when proposing a new vision, we must always remember we are doing our communication work, not to be the most cutting edge or impressive visually, but to do all we can do so people can see Jesus, come to know him as savior, and grow to maturity as disciples. Those are the goals that win the favor of God and that, if our plans are pleasing to him, give us favor before people.