This Is Too Big For Me

Giving a Lifeless Life, Life

The Reason for a Thirty Thousand Foot Prayer – Part 6

You can only imagine how Nehemiah must have felt at the enormity of the problem he was facing. Maybe you can’t until you compare your biggest, unsolvable problem to Nehemiah’s. Listen to this statement Nehemiah makes following his initial prayers.

“In those days I was the king’s cup-bearer.” – bible.com/116/neh.1.11.nlt

“I was the king’s cup-bearer.”

I like his statement. It tells us that Nehemiah was no one important. He had a simple job to do. He was a behind-the-scenes worker. His position didn’t qualify him to a major leadership role. In fact, he could easily have been replaced. You might think of what you do as having little significance and maybe that’s true, but that’s about to change. It all changes when you handle your thirty-thousand-foot prayer in an uncommon way.

Let’s look at his statement with a different perspective.

“In those days I was…”

Nehemiah says in those days I was, past tense. Before he took an uncommon approach to his thirty-thousand-foot-prayer problem, he was nothing more than the kings’ cup-bearer. Oh, but afterwards (implied), he stepped into being the problem solver for the thirty-thousand-foot prayer problem, Nehemiah became much more. Today you may be flipping burgers, washing cars, cleaning toilets, attending to patients, programming software, processing transactions, selling merchandise, or teaching students, while it might seem simple, a thirty-thousand-foot prayer will change all that. In fact, it will give a lifeless life, life even in devastating times. Your thirty-thousand-foot prayer problem is the doorway waiting to take you from where you are to some place much greater.

A problem too big to handle without God
Recall when this all started for Nehemiah, his brothers delivered the bad news to him about his hometown in ruins. His people were in great trouble, not a little trouble, and it seemed as if the problem was too big for any one person to do anything about it. This problem touched Nehemiah unlike anyone else. It’s recorded that he wept and prayed for months. What problem has ever caused you months of agony? Surely this would qualify for a thirty-thousand-foot prayer.

“How you pray will determine what type of life you will have.” – Joel Osteen

So Nehemiah prays for days, then it finally comes to him to do what this book is designed to teach, bring the prayer from thirty-thousand-feet, down to ground level. The easy thing to do is to see from thirty-thousand feet, leave it there, ignore it, and leave it for someone else to handle. Most people do.

“One reason why we don’t see God do great things is because we only ask for small things.” – Joel Osteen

Ordinary (common) prayers get ordinary (common) results. They’re the ones we pray over our food, we pray for our protection, we pray to bless someone, and the ritual prayers we pray before bedtime. While these are okay to pray, you need to learn how to pray God-sized (no-longer-common) prayers, not man-size (common) prayers. A man-size prayer is Lord help me to get by this month; help me to pay my rent. A God-size prayer is Lord, increase me in such a way that I will not only pay off my home, but I will be able to help someone else pay off their home. A God-size prayer is a request asked when you are unable to accomplish it under normal circumstances using your own strength, resources, and might. It’s a prayer that’s too big for you to accomplish without God’s help. If you can do it yourself, you don’t need God.

I need the king, my boss, to be kind to me. – bible.com/116/neh.1.11.nlt

It’s this last phrase that caught my attention. Nehemiah brings his request to a person that’s at ground level. It’s a request that impacted him or that he himself could see the results.

Nehemiah realized that the only way he could make an impact was to have favor with the king. When we have a prayer concern, we’ve been put in a place to do something. It’s not by chance that Nehemiah worked for the king. It was this relationship that started the thirty-thousand-foot prayer to begin its work. By bringing the prayer down from thirty-thousand feet to where he was, before the king, he initiated a prayer that would work. He initiated a prayer he could see. He initiated a prayer he could believe.

Now it’s your turn, bring your largest request from soaring thirty-thousand-feet in the air down to where you are on the ground.

Join us next week to see where it takes us when we have a prayer we can believe in. Until then, share this web-post with anyone who needs to hear this. Thanks for visiting NoLongerCommon.com.

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