Like the second half of Ezra, the book of Nehemiah is a first-person account of the restoration of Jerusalem after the Exile. As “cupbearer to the king” (Nehemiah 1:11), Nehemiah was an important official in the court of Artaxerxes of Persia, daily in the presence of the king and queen (2:6): among other duties, it would have been his job to taste the wine to test if it had been poisoned. His heart had been greatly troubled by the account given by Hanani of the long-term devastation of Jerusalem (1:2-4), and he prayed earnestly about this, confessing his sins and the sins of his people, calling on the Lord for the restoration God had promised in Deuteronomy (1:5-11).

Then, when God granted him the opportunity to make his request to the king, he “prayed to the God of heaven” (2:4) – a quick “here we go, help me now” one-second-long prayer – and then asked for permission and supplies to go and rebuild Jerusalem. “And the king granted me what I asked, for the gracious hand of my God was upon me” (2:8).

We should notice from this sequence three characteristics within Nehemiah’s prayer life. We can see an extensive depth of confession and communion, with “fasting and praying before the God of heaven” (1:4). There is also a right-now-immediacy of praying in the moment (2:4). And there is the theological reflection on the sovereignty of God’s decision: the reason the master of the Persian empire gave his permission for Nehemiah’s project was the gracious hand of God at work behind the scenes (2:8).

We today generally have some familiarity with the second of these: in a moment of crisis we will cry out to God for help. Yet we mostly seem to be deficient in the first and third: we do not set ourselves to devote extensive time in prayer and fasting, nor do we give much effort to contemplating – and obeying – the sovereign will of our Lord. As a result our cry for help is often lame: it is as if we pray, “We do not long for you with our hearts, God, and we do not think you should be in charge of our lives: but at the moment we seem to have run into some trouble, and so we propose that you ought to jump up and fix this. Right now.”

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Move our hearts to repentance, O Lord, and teach us to pray with the fervency and insight of your servants of old. Teach us to devote ourselves to prayer daily and extensively; help us to trust in your faithfulness in each moment of crisis; and enable us to recognize your authority over every event in the world.