Rebuilding The Wall Of Prayer — Carter Conlon

Years ago, I was speaking at a pastor's conference in Argentina, and the Lord gave me a very unusual instruction. He said, I want you to speak the same message three times. He spoke to my heart and said, the first time the pastors gathered will find it interesting, the second time it will begin to move them, and the third time they will get it.

Now, it takes a measure of faith to do that. You've got to be willing to go off the high diving board into a bucket of water a hundred feet down. But I did obey God. And I told him, I said, I'm going to preach this same message three times from John chapter 21.

And you won't really get it until the third time I preach it. And by the third time I preached it, you had to see what happened. You had to be there to see what happened. I couldn't even finish. Pastors were on their feet, shouting, praising, worshiping.

My interpreter was leaned over the pulpit, sobbing, weeping. And that didn't happen the first time, didn't happen the second time. Happened the third time as God said it would. Now I said all that to say this, I've been on a particular theme lately, and I want to share it again with you this morning.

Some of you may have heard this before, even in this church on a Tuesday night, but I want to speak it. It's a similar message to what I spoke in Washington on Thursday night. And it's called rebuilding the wall of prayer, rebuilding the wall of prayer.

The book of Nehemiah, please, if you go there, if you have your Bible or you have any kind of device to get the word of God, book of Nehemiah, we're going to begin in chapter one. Now, father, God, in Jesus name, Lord, I recognize that without your Holy Spirit, Lord, your word is just a letter, but you make it live.

You animate it, oh God. And you make it live in the vessel that speaks it. You make it live in the hearts and the ears that hear it. And by the presence of your Holy Spirit, your word becomes life. And so God, I'm asking for an anointing today, Lord, that we would look at these verses of scripture and every man, every woman without exception in this house would see where they belong and where they fit in this picture.

Lord, take this so far beyond my ability to convey it, cause it to explode in the hearts and minds, in the spirit of those who hear today. Lord, Jesus Christ, I can only say one thing, but you can say a thousand things at the same time.

You can speak to a thousand hearts in different ways. And that's what I'm asking you to do. God, give us a spiritual awakening in our day. Lord, cause us, Lord, to have faith. And I thank you for it with all my heart in Jesus name.

Nehemiah chapter one, beginning at verse one, the words of Nehemiah, the son of Hacaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev in the 20th year, as I was in Shushan, the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brethren came with men from Judah.

And I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, the survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach.

The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down and its gates are burned with fire. So it was when I heard these words that I sat down and wept and mourned for many days. I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

Prayer Movements Must Lead to Action

Now, I've heard a lot of talk over the years that I have been in New York city about prayer movements. And I find an error in the way that people think about a prayer movement. They say, if you can get enough people in one place praying, then you have a prayer movement.

I want to suggest that's only a prayer meeting. A movement, a prayer movement doesn't really happen until the people of God start moving with God as part of the answer to the things that they're praying.

Not just praying and saying, God sends somebody to do something. But Lord, if you have a part for me to play in this, show me what it is and give me the courage to get up and to begin to move in the direction of what you have for my life.

That is a prayer movement. Praise be to God. That is when God begins to move. A textbook case of this whole thing is this story of this man, Nehemiah, who was raised in a place of captivity. He's raised in a time of captivity.

He's raised in a foreign nation. Yes, he's Jewish by lineage, but he's in another land. Ultimately, the people of God, because they had dealt very casually with the presence of God, they became familiar, bored.

They started doing other things, didn't realize that without God, their enemies, the barriers would come down, their enemies would be able to come in and captivate them. Of course, that's what happened to the nation of Israel.

Part of it was assimilated into another empire and the other half or less than half, but the other part was taken captive into a nation called Babylon, which was eventually overcome by the Medo-Persian Empire.

This man's born into this environment. Many of us are, in a sense, we've come into a society that's not really positive about the things of God. They don't much care about what we believe and actually are turning hostile to biblical morality, to a biblical worldview.

It can be deadly to hold a biblical worldview today in some places in this society. He was in this time of being captivated by what had become a dominant society over the people of God, and he had carved out a reasonably comfortable and secure spot for himself.

He actually became a butler, a cupbearer, but it's a butler in a sense to the king. He was in charge of bringing the tray with the king's food and bringing the tray with the king's wine or drink, whatever it was he was drinking.

Now, it was secure, but it was a high risk profession at the same time, because in those days, people were obsessed with poisoning their kings. So as the cupbearer, you got to taste the first sip of everything and the first bite of every sandwich.

May I put it that way? And they would just wait for a little while, and if you didn't keel over and die, then the king would enjoy his lunch. So it was a kind of a high risk profession, but he would have had a nice living, a nice apartment, maybe was raising a family, and he kind of made the best of a bad situation.

Sometimes that's the way we are as the people of God. We recognize the difficulty around us, but we go to work and we try to build and plant and raise a family, and we're kind of just making the best of what's not ideal.

He would have known that this is not the purpose of the people of God. He would have known his own history, his own lineage of his own people. He would know the story of Abraham being brought out of a certain place and given the promise that you're going to be blessed and you're going to be a blessing and through you all the people of the world are going to be blessed.

He would have known about Solomon's temple historically, where the glory of God had come down so powerfully that nobody could even stand to minister. He would have understood when the queen of Sheba came in and her breath was taken away when she saw something in that temple that nothing of this secular world in her temple could produce.

She saw the presence of God, the divine order that comes with the presence of God. Even the way the cup bearers moved took her breath away and the attendance at the throne of Solomon and around about the altar and the things that they were carrying.

She saw such order that she knew in her heart that there's something other than what can be produced by human leadership and human effort is going on here. He knew the heritage of his people and probably in his heart he was glad that there had been groups of people have gone before him back.

Remember Cyrus, the Medo-Persian king, issued a decree saying whoever wants to go back and rebuild this testimony that has fallen down, you're free to do so. He knew that people had gone back. He knew that they were commissioned to rebuild the temple and rebuild the testimony of and in his heart he must have been really glad.

It's like you and I saying, oh God, I just thank you that there's people out there that are leading prayer meetings, people that are fighting at all areas of society to restore this country to her former glory, to restore the house of God to its former glory.

We're aware of that and you can probably name some names that you're aware of and are following. We're just happy that the people have gone before us and he would have been happy. And so one day he gets a visit from his brethren and he said to them, how's it going there back in Jerusalem?

And they said, well, not so good. The people are distressed. They've lost heart. The opposition has been so great that they've lost strength. They have no more plans and they're in reproach. Their enemies are laughing at them.

Saying, where is your God in all of this? Where's this former glory you talk about? Where's this divine strength that God gives to those who belong to him? And not only are they out of gas and they're out of plans, they're suffering the reproach of the society around them.

And he said, the wall of Jerusalem is broken down. Its gates are burned with fire. That which, you know, interestingly enough, if you look at it, the original walls of the temple of the city of Jerusalem bear resemblance to a footprint on the top of the mountain.

May I put it this way? It's like the footprint of God is no longer there. The lines have been blurred. Anybody who wants to can come in and declare themselves part of Jerusalem, whether they are or not.

There's such an absence of God's presence. There's such an absence of the boundaries that define who belongs in this place and who doesn't. It's like a church where anybody can call themselves a Christian, whether they are or not, whether they're living for God or they're not living for God or have ever received Christ as savior or haven't.

And the gates are burned with fire, which means the gates are where the elders of the city would meet. They would form battle plans. They would form strategies for protection, strategies for commerce.

Everything went on at the gates of the city and the gates were burned with fire. In other words, we don't have a plan. We don't know where to go in the future. And that can happen to a nation. It can happen to a people.

And Nehemiah says, so it was when I heard these words that I sat down and I wept and I mourned for many days and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. You see, everything was well in his life.

Everything was more or less undisturbed until he received the report. And when the report came, the burden of the Lord came on him. The burden of the Lord is not something you and I are to try to pray away.

If you're a true believer of God, if you have the Holy Spirit of God in you and you hear the report that our children are being deliberately murdered, we're contemplating murdering our children outside the womb.

Now you hear the report that we're deliberately allowing our children to be gender confused in their grade schools, forbidden to pray in their high schools and radicalized by Marxists in their colleges against both God and country.

And when you hear this report and the burden comes in your heart and we can either, we can pray it and we can either try to pray it away, or we can pray that somebody else would do something about this.

But Nehemiah began to pray. When I heard this, I couldn't put it away. When I heard this, my little apartment next to the King's throne, my job, my paycheck, what I had worked to gain, it couldn't substitute anymore because the burden of God had come upon my heart.

It isn't right that the kingdom of God is in reproach. It isn't right that the people of God are powerless. It isn't right that the testimony of God is diminished in the nation. Sometimes I feel like King David when he came into the camp and this big mouth Goliath is challenging the armies of God to fight every morning.

And David is stirred by the spirit of God and says, why is nobody fighting this giant? What happened to the armies of Israel? Do you not know your history? And they were offended at him. And he kept going through the camp saying, is there not a cause here?

Is not the glory of God at stake? It's not so much about us. It's about the glory of God. It's about the reputation of God. Nehemiah began to pray. And when he began to pray, the first thing that happened to him is he had to move beyond his fear of the unfamiliar.

Nehemiah Moves Beyond Fear Into Spiritual Boldness

We have a tendency, all of us to settle into the familiar. We are just creatures of habit. And we like to park in the same spot. We like to eat at the same restaurant. We like to sit in the same seat when we come to church.

We are all creatures of habit. We know what time we're going to get there. We know what time we're going to go home. We know what we're going to do when we get home. We just like to do everything in order.

But suddenly, Nehemiah starts to pray and he's confronted with his fear of the unfamiliar. In chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, it said, it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, that wine was before him.

And I took the wine and gave it to the king. And now I had never been sad in his presence before. Therefore, the king said to me, why is your face sad since you're not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.

So I became dreadfully afraid. Now you were not allowed by law to be sorrowful in the presence of the king. You had to be happy, happy, happy all the time. You had to be happy when you were sick. You had to be happy when you're down.

You had to be happy when you had to fight with your wife before coming to the throne. You had to be happy, happy, happy all the time. You were not allowed to be sad. And sorrow of heart had a whole bunch of penalties associated with it, all inconvenient up to and including death.

If the king was in a bad mood, he could just lop your head off and that was the end of your job and your ministry. And he had never been sad, you see, but he couldn't shake the burden. When God chooses to reveal something of his heart to you, there's a reason why.

Generally, it's because he's trying to lead you somewhere, to do something that he has assigned you to do in your present day society. And it's something sometimes that's way out of the box of your experience.

I have found through my life that I'm never called where I'm qualified. I find that I'm qualified where I'm called. God does the qualifying. He calls, he gives the burden. You start to move into that calling and then suddenly the giftings to accomplish what you're given to do come to the fore.

Now he had a choice. You see, when we start to pray, God starts to lead and then we are confronted immediately by fear because the leading of God will take us out of the familiar. I want you to really get this.

God does not call you necessarily to do what you think you can do. He calls you to do something you can't do without him, to a place that you've never thought you would ever go, to do something you never thought you would be called to do.

And it produced a sorrow in his heart when the king said, this is nothing but sorrow of heart. Now he had a choice. His whole life was now right at this point. He could have just backed up and said, no, I'm not sorry.

It just looks that way. I'm not sorry. I'm happy. I'm happy. He could have put a smile on his face. Sorry, king. Didn't mean to look sorrowful. Not sorry. I'm happy. And he could have backed away and that would be the end of the story.

There would be no book of Nehemiah. God would have sent somebody else and there'd be a book in the Old Testament with somebody else's name on it. And when you and I have to face our fears, and I remember these things, when God started to call me out of a secular occupation to pastor a little wee group of people in the wilderness, and it was financial suicide, I'll tell you straight out that what they were offering me as a wage didn't pay my electric bill, the house, let alone food, let alone gas and car insurance and all this stuff.

And the Lord said, do you trust me or not? And I had to choose to move in that direction that his heart was leading me in. And I would be a liar if I stood here this morning and said there wasn't trepidation in my heart.

I mean, this whole thing, I mean, could have gone south. I knew it. I had a wife and three children to look after. I had a strong provider instinct. So this was really suicide to leave a successful career with pension, dental plan, might I add, health insurance and go off into a place that I was called.

But the only thing I could say when people tried to turn me away from it was, but God is calling me. God is calling me. I can't explain it. It doesn't make sense, but God is calling me because I was praying.

I was seeking him every day. And suddenly this bird came into my heart and I felt like he was leading me somewhere that only he could to do something that only he could do through my life. And so I understand this moment of fear in Nehemiah's life, because it's something that comes to all of us when we're facing the unfamiliar.

Now he had a choice to make. And when he chose to go forward, the first thing that happens is a spiritual boldness comes into his life. It's from timidity. He says, I was dreadfully afraid. Verse two, verse three, he comes out like a lion.

Verse three says, may the King live forever. Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place in my father's tombs lies waste and its gates are burned with fire? So this, you have to understand this guy has just put his head on the chopping block and he knows it.

He's taken a bold step. You do not talk to the King like that. You don't. You don't. It's not allowed in this season. It's not allowed in this environment, but he takes a step of faith. He decides, well, I can't, I can't deny this burden in my life.

And he goes forward with this burden and he speaks and a boldness comes into his life. And the King saw it. The King had to see this. There was something deeper than just somebody who's just being obstinate and sad in his presence.

And the next thing that happens says, the King said to me, what do you request? Wow. I can imagine everybody else in that court going, did you just hear that? We expected the guards. We expected the King to say, guards, guards, drag this man away and cut his head off or put him in jail for 20 years or feed him with the bread of affliction and the water of affliction, which was common back in those days.

And suddenly the King, I could see the King leaning forward. And this guy is just a butler. Do you understand? And the King leans forward and says, what do you want? And then he says, I prayed to the God of heaven.

Oh God, what do I do now? I can say, Oh God, what do I, you imagine being in that place and you're not quite sure what you even want. And he just prays this quick prayer. Oh God, help me. God help me.

He's, he's just gone over the line and he's got to say something because he's just been bold. And if he doesn't know where he's going, that's where his head's going to get cut off. I prayed and I said to the King, if it pleases the King, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah to the city of my father's tombs, that I may rebuild it.

Oh, come on. This guy's not an architect. He's a butler. And he says, send me to rebuild it. There's no evidence that he knows. Like these walls were high. These walls were higher than light standards.

You see out in the, in this, in the street, they were thick and they were broken down. There was just rubble in this, in the streets. And who's even going to listen to this guy when he gets there? I mean, really, who's going to listen to him?

There've been people that are fighting the battle. There've been people that are trying to build, there've been people trying to defend it, raise strategies. There, there've been all kinds of people with all kinds of, like there's tens of thousands of them.

They've lost heart. And you can imagine the butler comes riding into town. Hey, everybody, don't be afraid. I'm here. We're going to rebuild the wall. Well, who are you? I'm the butler to the King of Medo-Persia.

What experience have you with building a wall? Well, none really, but God has spoken to my heart and put a burden on my heart. And we're going to get this thing done. Don't you love the way God does things?

God Qualifies Those He Calls

You know, when the Lord was training me, you know, my story, many of you, when I, from the age of 15 to 24, I suffered panic attacks. To go to college, I had to take Valium to be in a classroom. And I had no public speaking ability whatsoever.

No confidence. I'd never spoken anywhere to anybody. And if I was in a room where people's attention turned to me, I either had to run out or pass out. It's the only choices I had. There was a huge scandal in the police department where I was.

This is just before God called me into ministry. And there's a huge scandal. And the chief said, get somebody out before the media now. I want somebody on television and radio. I want somebody to speak to civic groups, somebody to represent us.

That is morally clean. And so thank God I was chosen and brought in to one of my superiors, looked at me across the desk. And he says, and he told me these things. We need somebody to go out in front of the media.

We need somebody to be trained. We need somebody to be on television, on radio. And then he asked me a question. He said, are you afraid of public speaking? And I said, no. And I'm thinking, what in the heck, what in the world are you saying?

It's like, I was reaching out to grab the word. You know, you know, you can't speak in front of people. And I feel like Nehemiah when he says, send me. I'm standing there thinking in heaven's name, what are you doing?

You know, you can't do this. And if I, if I told you the journey of how God trained me, I'd have you laughing from now until three o 'clock in the afternoon. But he did send me off to police college and I had to take a public speaking course.

Everyone else is seasoned. I'm the only one who's not seasoned in this whole thing. They're all just there to fine tune their skills. I've never talked to anybody anywhere at any time. And at night, these guys, at night, these guys are all out in the bar.

Of course, I wouldn't go there because I'm a Christian. Some of you might want to take note of that today. I don't, I don't drink as a Christian. And so I'm in my room every night. I remember the carpet was kind of a beigey pink.

You might wonder how I remember it is because my face was on it every day that I had a spare moment. Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus. What have I gotten myself into now? You know, I can't do this and I know I can't do this.

And I remember, so I started taking this course and they start teaching voice intonation and eye gestures and hand movements. And, and I'm the whole time, my heart is just, Oh God, Oh God. Then came the moment where you have to do a three minute speech.

I don't know what to do. So I'm back on that carpet again at night and I know, God, I can't do this. Oh God. So I got up and my first speech was on the peril of any society that rejects God. I didn't know what else to do.

And so, and the anointing would come on me and I would find myself preaching for three minutes. I thought, wow, that was amazing. So then we had to go, then we had to go to a five minute speech and then a 10 minute and every night I'm back in my room.

Oh God. I was able to get through three and five and eight and now it's 10, then 15. And then finally the big test. And all I could do was preach. I could only take passages of scripture and preach on it.

So finally we're coming to the test where you pass or you fail this course. And I'm called in by the leaders of this Canadian police college. And they said, Carter, we are not an evangelistic association here.

They said, now for you to pass this course, you have to speak on a police topic. You have to do your 30 minute on a police topic. Now, and if you don't, you're going to fail. So I guess of course I'm back in my room.

Oh God. Oh Lord, I can't do this. It's only by your anointing. I can do this. Lord help me. God, I don't know what to do. Just help me. And so the next day I get up and I'm, it's my turn. The whole room is going to critique me now when I'm done as to what I've learned.

And so I got up and I said, today, gentlemen, I'm going to speak on a police topic, the Bible. I said, because every time we go into a court of law, we put our right hand on a book and we say that based on the content of this book, I swear that my testimony is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

So help me God. I said, so it's important for you and I to know what's in this book that we're swearing to. I started at Genesis and I went to Revelation and I finished with these King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Not only did I pass the course, they asked if I would be willing to come back and be an instructor in the future. Can you imagine? Only God can do these things. Only God can do these things. Hallelujah.

Prayer Receives Provision, Protection, and Direction

Now, none of that was in my notes. So the next thing that happens to Nehemiah after he reaches out and says, send me, you'll see his prayers become definitive. Boldness becomes now a part of his character.

The King said to me and the Queen also sitting besides him, how long will your journey be? And when will you return? So it pleased the King to send me and I set him a time. Then verse seven says, furthermore, I said to the King, I can just imagine the court like, wow, this guy's going over the edge.

It's enough that the King is going to send him. But he says, furthermore, if it pleases the King, let letters be given to me for the governors of the region beyond the river that they must permit me to pass through till I come to Judah.

Not only am I asking you to let me go, I'm asking you to take your time to write letters for me to all the governors all the way along to issue decrees or orders that I will be protected on my journey.

He's asking now for permission. Secondly, he's asking for protection and he doesn't stop there. And he goes in verse eight and, and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the King's forest, that he must give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel, which pertains to the temple for the city wall and for the house I will occupy.

He says, I, I need timber. I need timber to do the things that I'm called to do for the gates and for the beams. And I'm going to need a house. So if you don't mind, would you also include that they would cut lumber for me to build a house for myself.

And the King granted them to me, according to the good hand of my God upon me. Here's the point. When you set out to do what God calls you to do, God will withhold no good thing from you. Everything you need will be granted to you.

The courage, the wisdom, the protection, the provision, the direction, everything you need. When you take that step and do what God's calling you to do, he's calling you to start a Bible club in your school.

He's calling you to be a witness in your college. He's calling you to run for public office, whatever it is. And there's a whole multitude of things. When you step out to do what God's calling you to do, he will be God to you.

He will be God through you. And even the hearts of Kings, God will show you are in the hand of God. God will move heaven and earth to get you where you need to go. Lastly, in verse 18 of chapter two, he arrives on the scene and he says to those who are there.

And I told them of the hand of my God, which had been good upon me and also the King's words that he had spoken to me. And so they said, let us rise up and build. And they set their hands to this good work.

Rising Up to Rebuild the Testimony of God

I told them that God had sent me. I'm telling you that God has sent me to tell you that he has something for you that's very unique to your life. It will be no less supernatural than it has been for every person all throughout biblical history.

The point being, when we start to pray, there's a movement that's going to come with that prayer. Your life will end up being something you never dreamed it was going to be. You'll end up in places you never thought you could go.

You will do things that you weren't capable of doing apart from the presence of God in your life. And it will be all for the purpose that the testimony of God in Christ will be glorified through you again in your society, wherever it is that you're from, whatever town, city, neighborhood, block, family, whatever it is.

And so the cry of my heart for you, because I've walked this, I've lived this, I've been there, I've seen it. You read the book, It's Time to Pray. And if you haven't gotten a copy, please get one, just read it.

And you'll understand what I'm talking about. This has been my life. And I really feel in my heart that God sent me here for this reason. In one sense, I'm a Nehemiah to this church generation, maybe at least for you, to stand here and say, God has spoken to me.

God's hand has been on me. I've received all the provision that I need to do what I'm called to do. And you are witnesses of that. So now let's rise up and build. Every one of you, God will give you the strength, whether you're building.

Now, some built right where their home was. Some had more strength and went to the corner. Some built around the corner. But whatever your capability is, and wherever you are, just start to build where you are and watch what God is going to do.

Watch. We are not on the losing end. We are more than conquerors through Christ who strengthens us by the grace of almighty God. We will live to see this generation free by the grace of God. We will fight for our sons and daughters.

We will fight for our homes. We will fight for our families by the grace of God. We will rebuild in the strength of our Christ. That which has fallen down into ruin and repair in our nation by God's strength.

We will by God's grace. We will by God's calling. We will live to see our children praising God again. We will live to see a nation turned back to righteousness. We are not going to lay down and let this ruin be the testimony of God any longer in our society.

We are going to stand in the strength of our God. The hand of God has been on my life and I have lived with his presence in my life and I know his power and what he's able to do. It's not just for a select few.

The Promise of the Spirit and the Courage to Stand

That was just in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, God said, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams.

On my servants and handmaidens, I will pour out of my spirit in those days. By the grace of God, we will rise again. By the grace of God, we will build again. By the grace of God, we will not let the enemies of righteousness overrun this nation any longer.

You and I are going to stand. We're going to pray. We're going to move with God. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. Glory to the name of Jesus. The scripture says, when the Sunballot, the Horonite, and Tobiah the Ammonite, and Yeshom the Arab heard of it, they laughed us and despised us.

Let this generation of the godless laugh all they want. Let them despise us. In 52 days, that wall was built, and even the enemies of God had to acknowledge this was a miracle, that the hand of God had come upon his people again.

Oh, thank you, Jesus. Let the hand of God be upon the church of Jesus Christ one more time. Let the glory of God become our portion. Let the grace of God abound in us. Let the praises of God be in our lips.

Let the sword of God, his word, be in our hands. Let the testimony of God be upon our lips. We're not called any longer to be an argument about the reality of Christ. We are called to be a demonstration of who Jesus Christ really is.

Hallelujah. I challenge you. I challenge the young men in this church in particular. I challenge the young women. I challenge the old. Rise up and build. Let God be God in your life again. Don't sit back any longer.

There's a time to leave off serving in whatever it is capacity you're in. There's a time to say, God, send me. Send me. He had no idea what it was going to mean. He had no idea who's going to end up the governor even.

He had no idea. I tell you straight out, you have no idea where God's going to lead, but I'll tell you what's going to happen if you don't get up. Nothing. Nothing. But if you do get up, oh God. Oh God.