Nehemiah 2: What God Put in Your Heart

Introduction

At the start of the book of Nehemiah, Hanani comes to report the disgrace that has fallen on Jerusalem: the city lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. By the end of Nehemiah 2, the people rise up and say: "Let us rise up and build." Between those two moments lies Nehemiah's whole journey, in which he manages to turn his sorrow into an energy that serves the rebuilding.

Stéphane Guillet, pastor of the Église protestante de Paris-Alésia, continues the series on the book of Nehemiah that began a few weeks earlier. He reads Nehemiah 2:1-18 and pauses on an expression in verse 12: "what my God put in my heart to do for Jerusalem."

You could see in this account an example of resilience after trauma, followed by a fine collective act of rebuilding. But Nehemiah, as a man of God, tells how God stepped in to bring him to that point. In a way, this text shows how a calling is born.

Outline of the Message

1. What God Put in Your Heart

• In verse 12, a literal translation would be: "what my God gives to my heart to accomplish for Jerusalem." The translation read during the service gives its modern equivalent: what my God put in my heart to do for Jerusalem.
• We still say today: "I have it on my heart to do this." God sometimes puts something in our heart: a thought, a project, an action to carry out. It is close to the idea of a calling, a vocation.
• What God places in Nehemiah's heart gives him the desire to move forward. The question comes to each of us: what is the Lord calling me to? What do I have on my heart to do for him?
• What you have on your heart should not be neglected. It may be a call God is addressing to you, and something great can come out of what God puts in the heart.

2. A Sorrow That Becomes a Burden

• In verse 2, the king asks Nehemiah why he looks so sad. Literally, it is a "sorrow of heart." It has nothing to do with a romantic disappointment: this sorrow was born of the bad news received four months earlier, the distress, the disgrace and the ruin of Jerusalem.
• When he heard the news, Nehemiah sat down, wept, mourned and fasted, then began to pray (Nehemiah 1:4). The pastor sees this as an entirely healthy response.
• That sadness could have eaten away at him until it became depression. But Nehemiah handles it in prayer. Instead of pulling him down, it sets him in motion.
• People used to say: "God has put a burden on my heart." That is exactly what happens here. The burden makes Nehemiah sad, but it becomes a source of energy.
• The preacher wonders whether Nehemiah's sadness was also the sadness God felt for his people, as if God had placed in his servant's heart a share of his own sadness. For God, that sadness moves us to rebuild.

3. Does Your Service Come From What God Put in Your Heart?

• The pastor invites us to ask the question simply: does my service in the church come from what God has put in my heart?
• Another way to ask it: have I pushed away something God put in my heart, out of fear of acting on it? A bit like Jonah.
• Perhaps it is a call to full-time service that you are pushing away. The pastor raises this idea as the Union's vocations Sunday approaches. We have often heard of people who sensed God's call, then gave it up and set the idea aside.
• Nehemiah, for his part, reaches the conclusion that he must act. He ends his prayer in chapter 1 by asking God to make the step he is about to take before the king succeed (Nehemiah 1:11).

4. An All-Powerful King, a Risky Request

• Artaxerxes was the emperor of Persia, the most powerful man of his time. The Persian Empire, founded by Cyrus, had absorbed the Assyrian and Babylonian empires and even surpassed great Egypt. Only Alexander the Great would extend it further, about two centuries later.
• The king's power was not the only obstacle. In Ezra 4:7-23, we learn that a few years earlier, Artaxerxes himself had banned the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls by decree. Could so powerful a king reverse his own decree at the request of a single man?
• Nehemiah was the king's cupbearer. He tasted the wine before serving it to make sure it was not poisoned. The pastor points out that this is no legend: the history of the Persian Empire reports that a cupbearer died after tasting the king's wine during an assassination attempt. Nehemiah was therefore a trusted man, but would that be enough?
• Nehemiah did not rush. For four months he let himself be guided and taught in prayer, in what the pastor imagines as meetings and conversations with the one he calls "my God."
• "Time spent in prayer, if it does not replace action but feeds the desire to act, is far from wasted time." In prayer, Nehemiah lets God turn his distress into a spiritual burden, then he waits for God to open the door.

5. Faith Does Not Prevent Fear

• One day, as his face shows the weight of the burden, the king speaks to him. Nehemiah is then seized by great fear.
• There is reason to be afraid. But perhaps it is also because the moment has come to dive in. This is a door God is opening, an opportunity not to be missed.
• A great fear, because it is a step of faith with no safety net, with no guarantee that it will work, with only trust in God.
• A great fear, perhaps also because, despite his faith, Nehemiah feels alone facing his destiny, alone before the king to say what is on his heart.
• Who has never known that moment when faith stops being theory and suddenly becomes practical? Nehemiah launches out and crosses the threshold by faith.

6. Tact and the Flash Prayer

• Many have noted Nehemiah's great diplomacy. He does not name Jerusalem so as not to provoke the king, who had had the archives searched and found that this city had often rebelled against the orders of kings (Ezra 4).
• He speaks of "the city, the place of my fathers' tombs." The tomb of one's ancestors is a subject any Eastern sovereign could readily understand. Nehemiah speaks a language that wins the king's sympathy.
• For the pastor, Nehemiah teaches that, before a superior or political authorities, form matters: faith does not rule out tact. Faith does not mean charging straight into a wall.
• Immediately, Nehemiah prays to the God of heaven (verse 4). We do not know what that prayer said. The pastor imagines it like this: "Thank you, Lord, you are here with me," or else: "It is not over, Lord, keep walking by my side."
• It is a flash prayer. Some call it a "popcorn prayer": pop, a simple sentence to tell the Lord "You are here, thank you, Lord." Nehemiah now knows for certain that he is not alone facing this powerful king: God is at his side.
• The king grants him everything he asks: letters for the governors, the right to use timber from the royal forest, and even a military escort he had not asked for. The king gives him even more.
• When he arrives in Jerusalem, adversaries appear, Sanballat and Tobiah, a sign that obstacles will not be lacking. Nehemiah first inspects the work to be done by night, before revealing the project to the people and the leaders and testifying to how God has been at his side.

7. How a Calling Is Born

• The apostle Paul writes that we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (Ephesians 2:10). Nehemiah's story gives a glimpse behind the scenes of that verse.
• What God puts in our hearts, we must pay attention to and not set aside, even when it seems difficult.
• Prayer is not only a request made to God: it is time spent in his presence, where God shapes us and prepares us deeply.
• We must know how to wait for the door God opens and seize the opportunity at the right moment. "I don't know about you, but for me, how many missed opportunities!" the pastor confesses.
• Faith does not prevent fear, but it knows how to overcome it. And when fear is overcome, faith is nourished by it and can keep moving forward.
• There is joy in seeing that God is here and that he does not leave us alone. Nehemiah enters into a partnership with God nourished by prayer. This may be the biblical book where prayer is mentioned most often, in all its forms. In short, a walk of faith.

Key Takeaways

• God sometimes puts in your heart a thought, a project, an action to carry out: this is how a calling is born.
• Carried in prayer, Nehemiah's sorrow becomes a spiritual burden and a source of energy to act.
• Time spent in prayer is not wasted when it feeds the desire to act.
• Faith does not prevent fear, but it knows how to overcome it, and it does not rule out tact.
• In the step of faith, you are not alone: God walks at your side, in a partnership nourished by prayer.

Personal Application

1. What has God put in your heart to do for him?
2. Does your service in the church come from what God has put in your heart?
3. Have you pushed away a call from God out of fear of acting on it?
4. What is weighing on your heart right now, and are you carrying it in prayer like Nehemiah?
5. What door might God be opening in front of you, and what keeps you from crossing the threshold?

Verses Cited

• Nehemiah 2:1-18
• Nehemiah 1:4
• Nehemiah 1:11
• Ezra 4:7-23
• Jonah 1:1-3
• Ephesians 2:10

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "what my God had put in my heart" mean in Nehemiah 2:12?

Stéphane Guillet explains that the Hebrew expression literally means "what my God gives to my heart to accomplish for Jerusalem." God sometimes puts in the heart a thought, a project, an action to carry out. This is the idea of a calling, a vocation: something God places in you that gives you the desire to move forward.

Why was Nehemiah so afraid before the king?

Artaxerxes was the most powerful man of his time, and he himself had banned the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls (Ezra 4:7-23). For the preacher, it was perhaps even more the moment of the step of faith, with no safety net, alone before the king. Faith does not prevent fear, but it knows how to overcome it.

What is a "popcorn prayer"?

It is the image used for Nehemiah's prayer in verse 4: a flash prayer, a simple sentence addressed to the Lord in the middle of the action, such as "You are here, thank you, Lord." It shows that Nehemiah lives a partnership with God nourished by prayer, even in the decisive moments.