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Faith Bible Church SermonsAuthor: Faith Bible Church
Sermons from Faith Bible Church in The Woodlands, Texas. Language: en Genres: Christianity, Religion & Spirituality Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Nehemiah Chapter 2
Sunday, 22 March, 2026
On Sunday, Pastor Russell Johnson continued through the book of Nehemiah, covering chapter 2 and the remarkable sequence of events that followed Nehemiah's four months of prayer. Pastor Russell opened with a personal story from 2015, when he was leading a church plant in San Saba, Texas — "the Pecan Capital of the world" — and needed a teaching job to support his family of seven. He and his leadership team prayed specifically for a job matching his teaching certificate, for an interview despite having no experience, and for a house big enough for five children in a tiny town, and God answered every one of those prayers in rapid succession. Pastor Russell then walked through Nehemiah 2, showing how prayer, planning, and the providence of God work together. When the king finally noticed Nehemiah's sadness — four months after his initial grief — Nehemiah was "very much afraid," because displaying sadness before the king was a serious breach of court etiquette and he was about to ask Artaxerxes to reverse his own official decree halting the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Pastor Russell highlighted the split-second prayer in verse 4 between the king's question and Nehemiah's answer, explaining that "these normally are the overflow of sustained prayer" and that "we expect God to steady us in the moment of crisis if we have no time with Him before the crisis arrives." Nehemiah's bold, detailed requests — for permission to go, letters of safe passage, and timber from the king's forest — revealed that he had spent his four months not only praying but planning, because "clarity of vision produces clarity of request." After arriving in Jerusalem with a military escort, Nehemiah conducted a secret nighttime inspection of the walls before making his pitch to the people — naming the shared reality plainly, standing with them in it as "we" rather than "you," and sharing the testimony of God's providence. The people responded immediately: "Let us arise and build." When the enemies Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem countered with ridicule and accusations of rebellion, Nehemiah's response was short and decisive: "The God of heaven will give us success; therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no portion, right or memorial in Jerusalem." Pastor Russell concluded by observing that "prayer, planning, and trusting in the providence of God produce boldness and courage.
