Meditation is the most powerful mind tool ever developed. Meditation has been scientifically proven to improve creativity, intelligence, memory, alertness and improve physical, mental and emotional health. That about covers every aspect of life. What you think of will determine your perception of yourself. This will determine your motive for doing things. Your motive will also determine your passion and your passion will determine your actions and results. (Prov. 23:7, Josh 1:8)

See God’s thoughts—they are His actions towards us (Jer. 29:11; Jer. 23:20; 1Cor. 15:2; Isa. 65:2: Ps. 34:8) Why are you a Christian (2) Are you thinking of heaven? Is that where your passion is devoted towards, or to yourself? If you don’t settle, why are you a Christian, your mental patterns, your passion will be wrongly placed to put Mr. Self as your king.

Nehemiah presents himself a nice case study to help us examine this.

1. He received The Burden

“The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. And it came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said unto me, the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire. And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven.”

Immediately, he felt a burden. No great man crosses this world with so much happiness that we see all around us. Great men of God are burdened men and as for Nehemiah, he cried and cried for a Jerusalem that he knew from stories told by the fathers, for he was born in Exile. God Himself is described as a man of sorrow (Isaiah 53:3). He sees the world in the grips of Satan and sees men going to hell in droves, because they stubbornly refused to accept Him as their Saviour. God’s men who pass through this world leave a mark; they carry a burden too heavy for them, only God supports them. 4 months after, the king was with him and still saw the burden on his face and he said “What’s wrong with you?”  And as you read through the book Nehemiah, you will see he carried the same burden to the end of the book of Nehemiah. I don’t know where our own spirituality is when it is all laughter. God’s men are serious minded people. Bible says don’t let foolish jesting come out of your mouth (Ephesians 5:4; Colossians 3:8-9). God’s Champion, restorers of the breaches in the Church; people who  salve and pray to make sure the true word of god is restored to His body, that’s the hallmark of those heading for the city of God! Great men of “God are burdened men.”

• The Burden of Nehemiah

The importance of a matter to you will determine the weight of the burden you are going to carry. When ridicule was the name of the Jews, he felt the shame that God felt because you can’t divorce God from His children. The Bible says, “A foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her that bare him.” (Proverbs 17:25). Proverbs 23:24 also says, “The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him.” You can’t divorce the child from the father. Luke 11 says, Jesus was teaching the disciples to pray and He said, first “…When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.” “Say our Father.” So He is a father. In the Old Testament He said, Israel is His first born, Israel is His inheritance (Exodus 4:22; Deuteronomy 9:29).

In Ezekiel 16:20-21, we see more proof: Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, That thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them. He was complaining to them. He said you put your children to walk into the fire, you sacrifice them to Molech. The next verse He said, ‘my children’. The verse before that He called them ‘your children’ but the next verse He called them ‘my children’. ‘You put my children in fire’, that means you can’t divorce God from His children.

So, the ridicule of the children of God was the ridicule of God, and that again we would see when David was fighting Goliath. He said, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that is ridiculing the army of God?” He didn’t say the army of Israel. He saw them as God’s servants but they saw themselves as the servants of Saul. And that made the difference, because it is whose servant you call yourself that determines who helps you (1 Samuel 17).

What made David to fight Goliath was because of the ridicule of God. The same way Nehemiah saw the ridicule of the children of Israel as the ridicule of God, so he vowed to build the walls and make the gates. And I said to myself, there were men of valour in the land at that time. He was among the third set of people to go into Jerusalem. There were men who had gone to Jerusalem the first time, the second time, he was of the third set. What were the first and second sets of people doing? They saw what was happening but carnality had taken over their lives. They were no longer seeing the people as God’s people; every man was for himself. Ezra 1:1-8 tells us what happened:

His Motivation

And after doing it, he said, “I did it not for physical gain but to secure a place for myself in heaven.” He was thinking of tomorrow. Nehemiah 5:19 “Think upon me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done for this people.” He was trying to book himself a place in eternity. “I have done it, I have given you a favourable account; Think upon me for good.” What did he do – he spent of himself to do it (Neh. 5:17-18). Comfort and money. The things we crave and live for, he gave up easily.

Nehemiah 13:14 “Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for the offices thereof.” Don’t forget all these things I have done, take account of them. He was thinking about eternity. Why don’t we think about eternity is a question I have no answer to? Why aren’t we thinking about tomorrow? Why do we assume that eternity is sure when the men of old, they didn’t only work for it, they reminded God about it?

The men of old talked about eternity, they prayed about it. 2Timothy 4:6-8 “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”

Paul said he had finished his assignment and he was looking towards tomorrow: a crown in heaven. He was already looking for it, he was already dreaming about it while he was here. Why is ours different? We live life as if it is just passing by? But all the great men of God, they lived for tomorrow, they saw tomorrow, that tomorrow was eternity. Not tomorrow of building houses and having 10 cars. They saw ahead and they pledged allegiance to Christ because of their end, because of eternity. The crown that was waiting for him, he was seeing it, he was talking about it even while he was still on earth.  

See David in Psalm 16:8-11.