Leadership Lessons From NehemiahSample

Day 2: Taking Action

Yesterday, we ended the devotion by asking "what breaks your heart?" Observing the things that break your heart are often the adventures to which God is calling you.

I hope you took time yesterday to think and pray about what breaks your heart. If something has come to mind, great. If not, keep praying for God to reveal the adventure he's calling you to as you progress through this study. I believe that God desires each of us to have God-sized adventures in our lives.

Today, we’ll look at what comes next. How do you operationalize the adventure to which you’ve been called? The next part of Nehemiah’s story shows us how he used his position of influence to start a conversation with the King about going to restore Jerusalem.

Most bible translations use the Hebrew calendar, so you might assume that this exchange we’re studying between the King and Nehemiah happens quickly after his brother's conversation. Not so – in reality, four months elapse between when Nehemiah hears about the condition of Jerusalem from his brother and when he approaches the King.

When you read Nehemiah 2, it's obvious that he doesn't waste those four months sitting on his hands. Instead, he uses what I will call “the Nehemiah formula” for operationalizing his vision:

Pray + Plan then Push Forward

Let's look at how it works.

Pray: In the entire 13-chapter Book, Nehemiah specifically calls out stopping to pray 11 times. I’m sure that he prayed many other times but he takes the time to specifically write down 11 different times that his trajectory was changed through the power of prayer. 

Plan: As you are reading through Nehemiah’s exchange with the King today, pay attention to how precise and pragmatic his answers are. Nehemiah didn't simply ask to go to "fix Jerusalem." He had clearly done his homework and had something with enough detail to be seriously considered.

As a partner at an early stage venture capital fund, I spend a lot of time talking new entrepreneurs about their businesses. One question I ask almost everyone is “How much money are you raising?” and “What are you going to do with it?” While the plans we invest in often change significantly after investment (often for very good reasons), an entrepreneur's ability to articulate a vision and plan for the resources we may invest is crucial to establish their credibility. Nehemiah's detailed plans established his credibility to the King. While raising money to operationalize your vision may not be a part of your plan, you should think enough about your plan to know how it could unfold and what resources it would require. 

Push Forward: Finally, the King one day asks Nehemiah, "Why are you upset" and Nehemiah pushes forward to put his prayed-out plan into action. We'll spend more time unpacking this tomorrow, but the point is a simple one – at some point, you have to take action. 

It’s very common to err on one side or the other – we're either all action before we've spent appropriate time praying and planning, or we pray and plan without ever leaving the starting gate. The magic is in striking the right balance.