Following God’s Call: Nehemiah and Godly Leadership – by Janet Epp Buckingham

The name William Wilberforce is legendary. It is one of those names, like that of great evangelists or missionaries, that inspires us as Christians. Wilberforce inspires because he took on a righteous cause at great personal cost. And while we look back, with 20/20 hindsight, and see that he was ultimately successful, at the time, Wilberforce did not know whether he would be successful at all.

One of the things Wilberforce questioned was whether political action was Christian. Could he be a faithful Christian and a politician? Does God allow his people to serve the state, as well as himself?

To answer these questions, one need only turn to the Old Testament. There we find several examples of God's people serving foreign kings and kingdoms. Joseph, Esther, Daniel and Nehemiah all had high positions serving foreign kings, some of whom were the enemies of the nation of Israel .

While there are important lessons to be gleaned from any of these, today I want to focus on Nehemiah because his story most closely parallels Wilberforce. Let's read Neh. 1:1-4.

There are a few things we notice here immediately. Nehemiah is in the foreign capital of Susa . This is the capital city of Persia . At this point we do not know why he is there. Nehemiah tells us that some men from Judah come to the capital. One of these is his brother Hanani. Nehemiah takes this opportunity to ask about the conditions under which the Jews are living who are still living in Jerusalem after the exile.

Hanani and the others give Nehemiah bad news, “Those who survived the exile are in great turmoil and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire.” Here we see the important role of the messengers who bring reports. Yet we still do not know what Nehemiah can do about this.

We do know that Nehemiah is very troubled and distressed by this. Rather than take any immediate action, however, we see him take action with God. He mourns, fasts and prays “for many days.” How many of us have ever done this? God does touch our hearts. We find ourselves weighed down. Like Nehemiah, we are “very troubled and distressed.” Is it over those poor women and children who are trafficked into sex slavery? Is it over the children who are orphaned in Africa by AIDs? Is it over the thousands of babies that are aborted by their mothers and never have a chance at life? Has God grieved your heart?

I can tell you from experience that God does allow our hearts to be grieved by the things that grieve his heart. And when we feel this, it is a holy sign from God. But our response is usually either to try to fix it or be overwhelmed and try to get over it.

Nehemiah's response is the right, and righteous one. He prayed and fasted and sought the Lord. We know we have a God who cares, a God who acts, and a God who expects his people to act. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that we are His workmanship, created to do the good deeds that he has prepared us for.

Well, at this point, we do not yet know how God has prepared Nehemiah. Was it through being sold into slavery and spending years in jail in a foreign land like Joseph? Was it through spending years in the desert as a shepherd like Moses? When we skip to the end of Nehemiah 1 we see that he was the cupbearer to the king. God has prepared Nehemiah well for his is in a position of great influence in the king's service.

Already, we can see parallels between Nehemiah and Wilberforce. God laid a heavy burden on Wilberforce's conscience. He did it through messengers who brought this issue to his attention but it captured his heart and he was weighted down with it. He was in a position of influence. So he prayed for how God would lead him to deal with the issue.

Let's look further at how God led Nehemiah. In Nehemiah 2:1 we read that Nehemiah decided to do something very daring. He was sad in the presence of the king. Remember that Nehemiah already spent many days mourning and fasting. But up to this point, he had hidden his heaviness of heart from the king. There was a good reason for this. It was potentially cause for death. And Nehemiah confesses in verse 2 that he was very afraid. He had prayed for favour before the king before and at this moment he prays for favour again.

Aside from the problem of looking sad in the presence of the king, Nehemiah knows something else about the king that makes him afraid. King Artaxerxes had already ordered that any repairs on Jerusalem cease. The king believed the Israelites were a rebellious people who should not be allowed to rebuild.

After all the mourning, praying, fasting and praying again, now is the moment for Nehemiah. He tells the king his problems but is very careful how he does it. Read Nehemiah 2:3: “Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried likes in ruins, and its gates have been burned and destroyed by fire?” Notice that he does not say which city this is. Nor in which country it is located.

The king responds favourably and asks what Nehemiah wants. Nehemiah asks for everything he could possibly need: a leave of absence, safe passage and supplies. In verse 8, Nehemiah says, “And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests.” Wow! What an encouragement! Nehemiah has asked for a great big, audacious goal and it has been granted! God is surely with him.

But remember that he has not actually started yet. He has taken the first step and God has given him favour. But he is still in Susa , not in Jerusalem . His goal, as we shall see, is to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem . So far he has a leave of absence, safe passage and supplies. A good start, but only a start.

Nehemiah is a man of action and gets to work. He gets supplies and is off to Jerusalem . When he arrives, he does a tour of Jerusalem to assess the job. From the very beginning, he faces opposition from Sanballat the Hornite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab. This is a triumvirate of opposition that plagues Nehemiah at every turn.

Nehemiah certainly has his work cut out for him. He has to motivate the Jews to rebuild the wall with him. He must supervise the work. And he must deal with discouraged workers and attacks from his enemies.

By the time the walls are half built, the workers are exhausted. They are discouraged. “There is too much to do,” they moan. “We will never get it done.”

Anyone who has run a marathon know that the real half way point is far past the geographical half way point. A marathon is 42 kilometres but it is kilometre 30 that is the physical and psychological half way point. It will take as much energy to run the last 12 kilometres as it did the first 30.

So it is with any large project. It is always darkest before the dawn.

When the work is half completed and the workers exhausted and discouraged, the triumvirate of enemies decides to attack. So Nehemiah must take half the workers and make them soldiers, to guard the work. And all the workers must carry swords and be prepared to defend themselves. This is obviously not the best way to improve staff morale.

Meanwhile, the complaints start that people do not have enough to eat, taxes are too high and they are having to sell their children into slavery. Nehemiah must challenge the rich Jews to stop charging usury contrary to God's laws, and free the slaves. But he must do all this while keeping everyone motivated to keep going with the work on the walls and defending the city. And Nehemiah did this for 12 years.

What we learn from all this is that even when God has set something on our hearts, when he has put us in a unique position to accomplish his goals, when he has made sure that we are equipped to do his purposes, it is not all just going to come easily. There will be opposition, sometimes even from those on your own side. There will be setbacks. There will be problems with morale.

We see this as clearly with Wilberforce as with Nehemiah. Wilberforce was born into a wealthy family. He had a fine education. He was well placed for a distinguished political career. Then God laid ahold of his life. God brought messengers to him with stories of injustice that gripped his heart and would not let him go. God had put him in the position to accomplish his goals of ending the slave trade and then slavery itself. He made sure that he was equipped to do his tasks. But there was huge opposition. And days of discouragement. But Wilberforce pressed on.

There are many examples of people like Wilberforce around the world. Some are well-known, others are not.

One example in Canada is Nellie McClung. She is famous for working for the ability for women to vote and is seen as an early feminist. But many are not aware that her motivation for women voting was that she was certain that they would vote to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages, in Canada this was known as Prohibition.

McClung was born in Ottawa , Canada , in 1873 but moved to Manitoba as a child. She joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which was concerned with the social and health problems caused by alcohol. She married a pharmacist that she met through the WCTU. She campaigned tirelessly to ban alcohol and to improve working conditions for poor women. In order to achieve these goals, she campaigned to gain the vote for women. In 1916, she, along with her fellow women reformers, gained the vote in four provinces but it was McClung who was given much of the credit.

She served a term elected to the Alberta legislature where she fought for social reform, including women's rights, prohibition of alcohol and factory safety legislation. She went on to join four other women in what has famously become known as “The Person's Case.” The issue was whether women were considered legal “persons” in order to be able to be appointed to the Canadian Senate. In October, 1929, the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, then the highest court of appeal for Canada , ruled that women were persons and could be appointed to the Senate.

All McClung's actions were deeply influenced by her Christian faith. She believed that if women were equal to men in the eyes of God, they should be equal in civil and political rights. She was active in the Presbyterian Church which became part of the United Church of Canada.

Another Canadian example is Tommy Douglas, recently voted the Greatest Canadian. Douglas is best-known for establishing universal, government healthcare. This was a huge innovation that everyone said was impossible. But Douglas campaigned tirelessly and was ultimately successful.

Douglas was the son of Scottish immigrants and grew up in Winnipeg . In his profile in the Greatest Canadian competition, the CBC says he was raised “in a home where politics, philosophy and religion were side dishes at the dinner table.” His ideas solidified into what has become known as the “social gospel,” or religion-in-action, when he attended Brandon College , run by the Baptist Union of Western Canada. He became the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Weyburn , Saskatchewan during the Great Depression. As a pastor, he worked to help those living in poverty. But after five years as a pastor, he believed he could have more influence to help the vulnerable if he traded the pulpit for politics.

He was first elected to the federal Parliament in 1935. After nine years he moved to the provincial legislature. It was in the province of Saskatchewan that Douglas instituted universal medicare, along with a host of other political reforms. He faced widespread scepticism but his plan was successful. The medical community was particularly opposed to medicare as doctors were concerned that it would affect their incomes.

Douglas moved back into federal politics to try to push universal medicare nationally. While his party never won an election, another political party introduced universal medicare for all of Canada in 1962. Douglas introduced other radical ideas such as old age pensions, mothers' allowances and social welfare into Canadian politics. He believed that Christian principles of caring for the vulnerable could be adopted by governments to help all those in Canada .

Let me finish with an example from another country, that of Colombia . And this is a current example. Vivian Morales became a Protestant Christian because she saw evangelical pastors living with the people and suffering with them. She was impressed with the way these pastors lived out the gospel.

But Morales soon became aware that Protestants were facing discrimination in Colombia . In university she got the best results in several tests and was the candidate to get a big scholarship. But when they found out that she was a Protestant they said that she could not get the scholarship. That was a painful lesson for her. Later, Morales was elected a Senator. She realized that Protestants as a group faced discrimination. Protestants could not be buried in certain graveyards due to their beliefs, there was discrimination in schools and they could not work in prisons or hospitals even if ten percent of the population were Protestant.

She responded to this issue by writing a law to give Protestants equal rights. This law passed in the Senate and was later enacted to give equal rights to all. Vivian Morales is an example of someone who saw a need and felt called by God to use her position to meet that need.

It is easy to say, “This is all very interesting but God has not laid any huge, audacious goal on my life.” That may be true. But remember all the people that helped Wilberforce in achieving his goal. Or how many helped Nehemiah achieve his. For any great thing that is accomplished, there are many others whose names do not make the papers. Is God calling you to be a messenger, a worker to rebuild the walls, a warrior to defend the work, or someone who brings the coffee to the workers? Every one of these is important in achieving the goal, or building the walls.

We can all help in achieving great things for God. The goal may be political, but it may be something else. Nehemiah was rebuilding walls. Could God be calling you, or someone you know, to deal with problems in your own community? And there are those who are working to alleviate the effects of extreme poverty around the globe. And others are working to end trafficking in humans, usually for the sex trade.

What could God be calling you to?

Phil Callaway, humorist, tells a story that brings home what happens when we ignore what God may be calling us to do.

Many years ago as the body of David Livingstone, celebrated missionary doctor to Africa, was carried through the streets of London on its way to a final resting place in Westminster Abbey, thousands of people the world over mourned his passing.

One man in particular wept openly.

A friend gently consoled him, asking if he had known Livingstone personally. “I weep not for Livingstone, but for myself,” the man said. “He lived and died for something. I have lived for nothing.”

Make sure you live and die for something, for someone. His name is Jesus. Listen for his voice and follow his call on your life.

by Janet Epp Buckingham