Nehemiah was a great leader who given an assignment by God to help the people of Jerusalem rebuild the city's walls in spite of great opposition. It is a tremendous book that gives numerous insights of leadership, hard work, dedication, and ultimate success.
The key focus on much of the book that bears his name is PRAYER. Nehemiah based his service to God on the foundation of prayer.
Six times throughout the book of Nehemiah, he uses a repeated word - and one I happen to love.
The word is - REMEMBER.
As he prays, he asks God several times to, “Remember” him or others.
You can look for yourselves here:
5:19, 6:14, 13:14, 13:22, 13:29, and 13:31.
The two centralized “remembers” here are:
remember all I have done, God.
remember the evil done against me, you, and others, God.
The word “remember” here is the Hebrew word “zakerah” and it means, “to mark.”
In other words, Nehemiah is asking God to remember him… to mark him for “all I have done for these people”, “all the evil things they have done”, “my good deeds”, what we have tried doing as others are “defiling the priesthood”, “this, my favor.”
And so it becomes our pattern of prayer we must consider.
Remember, oh God.
Remember all that I have done.
Remember all the evil they have done.
Asking God to “remember” us is understandable. Of course we’d want Him to remember the good we have done. But if I’m being honest, the one that I struggled with at first, was Nehemiah praying that God would “remember” the evil others did.
Nehemiah served so well… so faithfully and so devotedly. And while he did, he struggled as he witnessed all kinds of evil being done - particularly against God. So when he asks the Lord to remember their evil, he’s basically saying - “Remember it, so I don’t have to. Remember the evil doers, that they will ultimately come into conversion for themselves. But I take it out of my hands and into yours, God. It’s too much for me to carry on my own and belongs in your hands of judgement.”
And it’s so much needed in our world today.
When we look around and all we seem to see is evil. Hate. Disgust. Shaming. Blaming. Criticism. Anger. It might be easy for us to point to it while insisting on remembering it ourselves.
But we learn so much by his prayer.
Nehemiah says it best, “Remember the evil they have done.”
Remember it so I can let it go.
You and I were not created to haul around with us the memory of evil.
We can simply acknowledge it and then pray to God, the ultimate Judge, to take care of it.
It might be time to pray differently.
God - remember me.
God - remember them.
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