When Nehemiah led the charge to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, he demonstrated strong

faith and principled leadership. He ruled out bad ideas, even some good options, in favor of the

best choices. Today on Truth For Life we'll hear a challenging message from Alistair Begg that helps

us determine when to say no. Alistair is teaching from Nehemiah beginning in chapter 5 verse 14.

Now I want to suggest this morning that there are five areas in which we see Nehemiah saying no,

and hopefully we can learn from them. First of all, in verses 14 to the end of the fifth chapter,

we see Nehemiah saying no to undue privilege, saying no then to privilege, secondly saying no to pride.

There's nothing reveals our hearts more than our prayer life or the absence of it.

You see, if we think that we're really good at talking, we'll never pray for God to bless the

ministry of His Word. We'll just rely on our ability to talk. If we think we're very good at music,

we'll never get down on our knees and sacrifice our lives to God to fresh and say make my life,

my hands, my music, and offering to you. We'll just get on our feet and let everybody know how

wonderful we are as musicians. If we think that we have all the requisite abilities in this church,

there's no reason to have a prayer meeting. All we'll do is just mobilize people according to

principle. We'll use the management strategies of the world. We'll employ the latest marketing

techniques of the day and we'll go out and we'll reach the world. But if we know that we can do that,

then we'll pray. And now my prayers are the key to the absence of His pride and the absence of His

pride is on the basis of the presence of His prayers. We'll say more about this tonight.

First Peter chapter five, Peter's wrapping it up and he says, you know, if you're going to

lift together in harmony with one another, one of the very important elements is going to be an

absence of pride. And so in verse five, he says, all of you, wear humility towards one another.

Don't be going around bristling with pride and preening your feathers and acting smart.

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