How Can I Know Where God Is Already Working in My Life?
What Does Nehemiah Teach Us about God's Calling?
The book of Nehemiah is told from Nehemiah’s perspective—which may seem obvious to you, but is actually rare, biblically speaking. We don’t get many books written exclusively from the first-person point of view. We are put in Nehemiah’s shoes, experiencing with him all of the triumphs and tragedies of the attempts to rebuild Jerusalem.
What’s interesting about this perspective, though, is that by the time Nehemiah arrived on the scene, actions had been happening all around him that profoundly shaped his story. In many ways, Nehemiah stepped into a story that God was writing, long before Nehemiah was even born.
How Was God Working before Nehemiah Arrived?
Case in point: Nearly 100 years before Nehemiah, when Zerubbabel began rebuilding the temple, some Persian governors in the region objected, and official memos flew back and forth between Persia and Jerusalem at the speed of a camel (hat tip to Kathy Keller for that little turn of phrase). In the midst of this political squabble, the Persian King Cyrus made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he wanted Jerusalem rebuilt. So he established it as a firm, irrevocable decree.
Why Did Cyrus Help Rebuild Jerusalem?
Cyrus wasn’t a Jew. He didn’t follow Yahweh. So why would he care about the temple in Jerusalem?
Historians tell us that Cyrus authorized the rebuilding of Jerusalem because he was paranoid about losing his power. So he did what many of us do when we’re in a pinch: He diversified his religious portfolio. He figured, “I don’t really know—or care—which of these gods is the right one, but I need something to help me out, so I might as well try them all.” To get on the good side of all the potential gods out there, he authorized the rebuilding of many temples during this period. The temple in Jerusalem just happened to be one of them.
Cyrus’ motives were mixed at best. But God often uses mixed motives (or worse) to advance his mission. Cyrus certainly didn’t care about God’s global mission, but God was happy to use his crooked heart to accomplish his purposes.
Nehemiah, watching all of this happen, discerned that behind Cyrus’ power play, God was up to something. He realized that God was on the move, so he hopped on the train.
How Can Christians Discern Where God Is Working?
The same principle can be true for you, too. You begin by discerning God’s will from His Word, but you can also discern God’s activity in the events around you. It’s not going to happen for you, of course, the same way it happened for Nehemiah—though plenty of crooked rulers have been God’s pawns throughout history. But the broader principle is this: When God calls you to something, you’ll see evidence of his activity around you.
What Is a Holy Burden in Christian Calling?
That can take the shape of a recurring burden in your heart, which is precisely what we see in Nehemiah. Some burden grips your heart and won’t let you go, a holy discontent that burns in your bones. Or it might occur through divinely open doors. Or it might be through God bringing other people in your life who share the same Spirit-prompted vision he’s put into your heart. The pattern has a thousand variations, but if you’re walking in step with his Spirit, you’ll recognize him at work in the world.
How Can a Church Join a Mission God Has Already Begun?
God did this in our church, giving us what I call our “Nehemiah Moment.” Years ago, God gripped my heart with the conviction that we were supposed to plant 1,000 churches worldwide in our generation. It was a conviction that gripped me and wouldn’t let go, and it kept resurfacing in my own prayer life. It didn’t seem to matter that, at the time, it felt impossible. It burned in our bones, so we began pursuing it.
Well, lo and behold, in 2012 our church was preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary, and I did a little research into its founding in 1962. I learned that the founder of our church, Sam James, was still alive at 86 and living in Richmond, VA. I called him and asked him to tell me the story.
Sam shared that in 1961, he’d applied to the International Mission Board to serve as a missionary to Vietnam, but they’d discovered his newborn son had a hole in his heart that required serious medical attention before they would send him. They moved to Durham so their son could receive care at Duke Hospital. It was going to be at least a year, and Sam and his wife were discouraged at the delay.
When they got here, they attended Grace Baptist Church in downtown Durham, where some laymen approached him about starting a new church on the city’s north side. Sam worked with the core group for eight months, and they set a launch date for March 1962. Just a few weeks before the launch, Sam’s son received a medical release and was cleared to go to Vietnam. Sam was scheduled to leave America on the day the church was supposed to launch, so he preached that morning the only sermon he’d ever preach at this church—Homestead Heights Baptist Church—then boarded a plane for Vietnam, where he and his family would spend the next 40 years.
The text the Spirit led him to that morning was Isaiah 54:2, William Carey’s famous “missionary text,” in which God commands his people to expand their vision to include the ends of the earth. He told this small group of believers that he believed God was calling them to be a place that reached the nations, literally minutes before he responded to the call to go himself.
I became pastor of this church forty years later, in 2002. In our conversation, Sam confided to me that he had kept tabs on the church while he was in Vietnam and had gotten pretty discouraged by it, because, like many churches, it turned inward, focused a lot on its own needs, and didn’t think much about the nations. But then he told me, with tears in his eyes, “Now, seeing this church with a vision of planting 1,000 churches in 40 years, having sent out 700 people overseas to plant churches, I see that God has fulfilled what he told me 50 years ago.”
Why God's Mission Gives Us Confidence
What I realized in this moment was that this vision of “ours” was something that God had set into motion long before us. We were stepping into something God had started years before. Which has given me incredible confidence in what we’re doing. Because this is not the Summit’s vision or my vision, it’s God’s vision, and we’re just joining him in it. We’re not making waves for God in ministry; we are riding a wave that he created.
These are the deeds of our God; this is the God calling you to serve him. He’s inviting you to step into what he’s already doing!
Pastor J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Chick-fil-A, serves as a Council member for The Gospel Coalition, and recently served as the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor J.D. and his wife Veronica are raising four awesome kids.
"Editor's Note: Pastor JD Greear's "Ask the Pastor" column regularly appears at Christianity.com, providing biblical, relatable, and reliable answers to your everyday questions about faith and life. Email him your questions at requests@jdgreear.com."
