Praise and confession

And I said: “I pray, Lord God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments, please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father's house and I have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. – Nehemiah 1.5-7

As the book of Nehemiah opens we find Nehemiah working the king’s household. It seems like, from our reading, that he was nothing more than a glorified butler, but the position was probably much more than that. As we will see later he was the ‘king’s cupbearer’ which was more of a confidant or counsellor or maybe something like a chief of staff.

While he was there one day a message came to him. The news from Jerusalem was not good. The Temple was built, but the walls of the city were broken down and the people were discouraged.

That had to be heartbreaking. Being far from your people when bad news comes is hard because you are not there and can’t do anything about it. And Nehemiah really felt it.

So he did what he could do. He prayed. And his prayer is a model for us. We could look at a lot of things about his prayer but I only want to look a couple of aspects today and tomorrow.

In this first part of his prayer Nehemiah did two things – he praised God for His worthiness and he confessed the nation’s unworthiness.

That's where prayer starts. When we talk to God we need to remember who we are talking so and approach Him with the awe He is due. He is the great and awesome God and we are sinners who act corruptly. When we keep that straight we realise that God doesn’t owe us anything.

God is there. He is loving and just and caring and compassionate and all that. He desires to help His people. But He owes us nothing.

When we pray let's remember who He is and who were are as we draw to him and realise that the only confidence we have is because of Christ’s sacrifice for us.