Let’s take a look at the other four parts of Nehemiah’s plan.

2. A simple confidence that God was involved from the start.

This may be the hardest truth for many of us. We don’t know whether God is talking to us. We aren’t sure whether an idea is from God or from our own imagination or from somewhere else. We don’t understand how God gives ideas.

So, let’s look at the story from the first two chapters of Nehemiah’s memoir:

• Nehemiah’s brother brings him news.
• Nehemiah spends time praying, fasting, mourning.
• Nehemiah talks to God and ends that prayer with this request: “Give me favor with that man.”
• And then, Nehemiah goes to work; the King asks him what he wants to do, and we read, “I prayed and said to the king…”

I think that Nehemiah had a pretty clear picture of what he would say if the king ever asked. He had spent four months thinking and praying. And I think this reflects his belief that God actually answers prayer. Nehemiah assumed that if he was asking God for wisdom and opportunity, then the ideas that came, the plans that were laid out were the wisdom. When the king asked the question, that was the opportunity Nehemiah had asked for.

3. A simple proposal of what to do.

When the king asked Nehemiah what he wanted, Nehemiah said, “Send me to rebuild the walls.” When Nehemiah told the people what they were going to do, he said “Rebuild the walls.”

Yes, in every project there are details. There are strategies. There are all kinds of plans that need to be laid out. But Nehemiah had distilled everything into a simple statement: “The city is in ruins. The gates are burned. Let’s rebuild the walls.”

+++

Reflecting on Nehemiah 2. Taken from A Great Work: A Conversation with Nehemiah for People (Who Want to Be) Doing Great Works.