Pray, and take action

“But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat.” Nehemiah 4:9
In the book of Nehemiah we learn some interesting things about how we should live with respect to prayer. Nehemiah was a man of prayer. He spent several months praying that God would enable the city of Jerusalem to be rebuilt, and for the opportunity to be given for him to speak to the king about it and find favour with him. When that time came, Nehemiah shto up a quick, silent prayer, before presenting his request (Neh. 2:4-5). Throughout the building process, we see Nehemiah praying often. Here in ch. 4 we see the very real threat from the peoples around Jerusalem coming to attack them, led by Sanballat and Tobiah (Neh. 4:7-8). Nehemiah’s first response was to pray. But he didn’t stop there – he also took action.
Often we do one or the other. We pray for things, and then wait for God to do it. Or we try to fix the situation ourselves, without including God in our thought process at all. We need to be like Nehemiah, and strike a balance. For example, when we are sick: we should pray for healing, and we should also take medicine. At the end of the day God is the one who heals us: He might do it supernaturally, He might do it through medicine, or He might do it through the natural processes that He put in our bodies. Another example is seeking a job. We should pray, but we also need to send out letters and applications. There is nothing wrong with being practical, so long as we remember that God is the one who provides, through whatever means that provision comes.