Nehemiah 2:4b-5a So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said unto the king…
Snap Prayers
I suppose the most earnest, heartfelt prayer I have ever prayed was when I had a blowout on my fifth wheel in the middle of nowhere on the Arizona-California border. I had pulled over on the shoulder, and I did not have much room. I decided to pull back onto I-40 and limp down to the next abandoned exit where I would have more room to change out my tire.
As I began pulling out, all of a sudden there was traffic bearing down on me and I had nowhere to go. I was trapped between fast approaching traffic and a guard rail that pinned me in on the other side. I heard someone say, “God, help!” As it turns out, the guy saying, “God, help!” was me. Now most people wouldn’t think of that as a prayer, but that is exactly what it was.
Sometimes we think of prayer as something that requires a list and many hours. To be sure, there should be seasons of prayer, but prayer is to be more than just a time in your day. It is to be a life. We are to live in prayer.
Nehemiah was a man who lived in prayer. He was burdened about his people in Jerusalem. He was burdened about the way Jerusalem had been torn down and burned.
One day, when Nehemiah was before the king, the king noticed that he was sad. Now this was a dangerous thing because the job of everyone in the king’s world was to make the king happy. Servants were not to be sad in the presence of the king. So when the king asked, “Why are you sad?”, Nehemiah was “very sore afraid.” At that point he had no choice, so he told the king what was on his heart.
Verse 4 says, “Then the king said unto me, For what dost thou make request?” What a wonderful question for a king to ask! This king’s heart was in the hand of God. It was merely a reflection of what God Himself was offering to Nehemiah. Verse 4 says, “So I prayed to the God of heaven.” Then verse 5 says, “And I said unto the king”
How long could this prayer have taken? We are talking about split seconds. He was sitting there in the hot seat, and the king said, “Why are you sad?”, Nehemiah replied, “I’m burdened about my city, Jerusalem.” The king said, “What do you want?” Then Nehemiah immediately, in the snap of a finger, prayed to God and spoke to the king.
Snap prayers are the overflow of seasons of prayer. Nehemiah had been in seasons of long, earnest prayer that God would do something and use him. He was willing not only to pray, but also to trust God and take action.
Snap prayers are the unconscious response of living in prayer. God wants to hear from you, and He wants for you to depend upon Him. All day and every day He wants you to be in a praying frame of mind. When we are, we are submitted to the ownership of God and we have the peace that comes from such a life.