Getting Personal

April 8, 2019

When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. Nehemiah 1:4

When you hear the news that something has gone wrong in your family, on your team, or in your community, what’s your typical response? For many of us the first response is disbelief and sorrow; maybe anger, but it’s not unusual to move quickly to assign blame. We want to make sure we establish the fact that whatever is wrong is not our fault. We look for people to shoulder responsibility for the problem, and for making it right. The problem is, virtually everyone else is doing that as well, so we get bogged down in the quicksand of fixing the blame instead of fixing the problem.

Nehemiah didn’t allow himself to get caught up in that. When he heard the news, he didn’t look around for a target to blame. He sat down and wept. He let what was broken become personal to him. He identified with his community and their sins and brokenness. Their needs became central to him, and he prayed “day and night” for God to hear and act. It wasn’t a “me vs. them” thing, it was a “we” thing. He asked God to forgive all of them together, as he also took personal responsibility for the sad state of his people.

It was often said of the famous preacher D. L. Moody that he never referred to hell without tears in his voice. It was those tears that compelled many to repentance. Great evangelist Leonard Ravenhill said, "We ought to weep because we have no tears for the lost. We ought to blush that we are unashamed. We ought to get down before God and repent that we have no broken heart. A wet-eyed preacher can never preach a dry-eyed sermon."

The same can be said of us. The sad state of our communities and the lostness of an entire generation should be breaking our hearts. If we are going to make a difference, it must get truly personal to us, not just stats we hear and stories we sigh over, then move on.

Are you willing to get personal?

• Can you name, describe, and feel what is wrong in your community?
• Is your heart broken? Commit to pray every single day about the next generation in your community. Put some faces and names on your list.