What Breaks Your Heart? | Nehemiah
Nehemiah 1:1-11
What BREAKS your HEART?
Vision: A picture of what you HOPE the FUTURE will be like.
Vision adds PASSION to life. Vision gives DIRECTION to life. Vision gives MEANING to life.
Nehemiah 1:1-11 pg. 750
v.4: “When I heard these things, I sat down and WEPT. For some days, I MOURNED, and FASTED, and PRAYED before the God of Heaven.”
God-given heart break should drive you toward PRAYER, before it drives you toward ACTION.
v.5: “I said, Lord, the God of Heaven, the great and awesome God who KEEPS His COVENANT of LOVE with those who love Him and obey His commands”
v.6: “I confess the SINS we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family have committed against You. We have acted very wickedly toward You.”
Divine heart break produces HUMILITY, not SUPERIORITY.
v.9: “But if you (Israelites) return to Me and obey My commands, then, even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will GATHER them from there and BRING them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my NAME.”
v.10: “They (Israelites) are your servants and Your people whom You REDEEMED by Your great strength and Your mighty hand.
Three things that Nehemiah understood that are critical to discovering God’s vision in our lives:
- Nehemiah KNEW what GOD was up to in history.
- Nehemiah was CONCERNED with the things that concerned GOD.
- In the TENSION of what WAS and what COULD BE a VISION was born in the heart of Nehemiah.
We are like Nehemiah in ONE way. We KNOW what God is up to in history.