Nehemiah, A Model Leader
Sunday School makes me really happy right now. We have just begun studying the book of Nehemiah.
After having spent earlier parts of the Sunday School year teaching from Romans and Zechariah, this book feels easy to understand and relate to everyday life. Within the past several years I studied Nehemiah thoroughly for my own benefit. I read through it a number of times in various translations. I filled many notebook pages with handwritten notes.
My past reading of Nehemiah occurred in the middle of some trying circumstances, and I was actually reading the book expecting to feel chastened by it--given the fact that a critic suggested that I needed to do so. Instead I was surprised by joy over and over during the readings. I felt encouraged and affirmed. A picture of Nehemiah's integrity and selfless inspiring leadership emerged, verse-stroke by stroke, and I was often deeply moved as I read. My notebook was filled with observations on Leadership. Nehemiah was an amazing model of Godly leadership.
I told Hiromi at home this morning that one thing bothers me about sharing in Sunday School what inspired me in my earlier reading: making observations on Leadership can easily appear to be a critique of existing leadership--which is a miry clay situation, as we all know. "Then don't say it," Hiromi advised, quickly reversing his own advice after we talked a bit more about the need to be willing to go wherever the Scripture and the Holy Spirit lead us.
Nehemiah's own example shows the way. He took his deep distress to the Father. Mourning, fasting, and praying on behalf of his suffering people occupied his thoughts, presumably while continuing to offer his service to the king who kept some of his people captive. He acknowledged his own sin and reflected on the promises of God. In that four-month-long crucible of distress was birthed a resolve for Nehemiah personally. At the first opportunity and at great personal risk, he asked the king for permission to travel to Jerusalem to aid his downtrodden countrymen.
He would leave his cushy palace job to pursue a project in a dangerous place among a demoralized people--to do a job he seemed not to be well-prepared for. As Shane put it in church this morning, Nehemiah knew a lot more about wine than about construction, but he would undertake the job of building a city wall. Just so the Lord often builds us up in private to prepare us to serve the public in roles which require us to lean hard on Him, because our own smarts and skills are not enough.
Years of working in the king's palace gave Nehemiah an inside look into administration activities that must have been a help to him on his big wall building project. Still, it was hardly those techniques that served as Nehemiah's most important tools. His humility, integrity, compassion, and dependence on God proved more effective than any heathen king's strategies could have been.
I note also that Nehemiah sought good information before he acted. He asked his "brother" (perhaps a flesh and blood brother actually) about the condition of the Jews in Jerusalem--those out-of-sight, but not out-of-mind kinsmen. His brother Hanani offered a first-hand report. A man by that name is recorded elsewhere to have been in charge of Jewish affairs during this time period. Hanani was the expert on the matter, and Nehemiah knew him to be trustworthy, so asking Hanani made ever so much sense.
Today in church when the discussion leader asked for highlights on the first Sunday's study of Nehemiah, no one mentioned Nehemiah as a model of good leadership, although many other worthwhile things were mentioned. It almost made me wonder if I was projecting my own thoughts onto the content. But no. Believing that would be to invalidate what I know certainly to have been hearing from God during the study of His Word. In gratitude for that I wish to be faithful in sharing with others what He shared with me.
After having spent earlier parts of the Sunday School year teaching from Romans and Zechariah, this book feels easy to understand and relate to everyday life. Within the past several years I studied Nehemiah thoroughly for my own benefit. I read through it a number of times in various translations. I filled many notebook pages with handwritten notes.
My past reading of Nehemiah occurred in the middle of some trying circumstances, and I was actually reading the book expecting to feel chastened by it--given the fact that a critic suggested that I needed to do so. Instead I was surprised by joy over and over during the readings. I felt encouraged and affirmed. A picture of Nehemiah's integrity and selfless inspiring leadership emerged, verse-stroke by stroke, and I was often deeply moved as I read. My notebook was filled with observations on Leadership. Nehemiah was an amazing model of Godly leadership.
I told Hiromi at home this morning that one thing bothers me about sharing in Sunday School what inspired me in my earlier reading: making observations on Leadership can easily appear to be a critique of existing leadership--which is a miry clay situation, as we all know. "Then don't say it," Hiromi advised, quickly reversing his own advice after we talked a bit more about the need to be willing to go wherever the Scripture and the Holy Spirit lead us.
Nehemiah's own example shows the way. He took his deep distress to the Father. Mourning, fasting, and praying on behalf of his suffering people occupied his thoughts, presumably while continuing to offer his service to the king who kept some of his people captive. He acknowledged his own sin and reflected on the promises of God. In that four-month-long crucible of distress was birthed a resolve for Nehemiah personally. At the first opportunity and at great personal risk, he asked the king for permission to travel to Jerusalem to aid his downtrodden countrymen.
He would leave his cushy palace job to pursue a project in a dangerous place among a demoralized people--to do a job he seemed not to be well-prepared for. As Shane put it in church this morning, Nehemiah knew a lot more about wine than about construction, but he would undertake the job of building a city wall. Just so the Lord often builds us up in private to prepare us to serve the public in roles which require us to lean hard on Him, because our own smarts and skills are not enough.
Years of working in the king's palace gave Nehemiah an inside look into administration activities that must have been a help to him on his big wall building project. Still, it was hardly those techniques that served as Nehemiah's most important tools. His humility, integrity, compassion, and dependence on God proved more effective than any heathen king's strategies could have been.
I note also that Nehemiah sought good information before he acted. He asked his "brother" (perhaps a flesh and blood brother actually) about the condition of the Jews in Jerusalem--those out-of-sight, but not out-of-mind kinsmen. His brother Hanani offered a first-hand report. A man by that name is recorded elsewhere to have been in charge of Jewish affairs during this time period. Hanani was the expert on the matter, and Nehemiah knew him to be trustworthy, so asking Hanani made ever so much sense.
Today in church when the discussion leader asked for highlights on the first Sunday's study of Nehemiah, no one mentioned Nehemiah as a model of good leadership, although many other worthwhile things were mentioned. It almost made me wonder if I was projecting my own thoughts onto the content. But no. Believing that would be to invalidate what I know certainly to have been hearing from God during the study of His Word. In gratitude for that I wish to be faithful in sharing with others what He shared with me.
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
9:51 PM
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