This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back to our look to the book of Nehemiah. We're in week chapter 3, day
4, and we're looking at how you, this principle of how you organize a success.
Once God gives you a success, then you have to manage that success.

And some principles that Nehemiah teaches us for doing that. The first one we
looked at yesterday, the principle of protection. He set the doors in place.

He secured his investment that he made in building the walls. A second key to
organizing your success is, second thing that Nehemiah did is he appointed
workers and that's the key of delegation. You don't do it alone.

If God has given you a success, it's not just for you. It's not just for you.
God wants other people involved in what God is doing.

In Nehemiah chapter 7 verse 1, "After the wall had been rebuilt and I'd set the
doors in place, the gatekeepers and the singers and the Levites were appointed.
" He delegates people who can help to deal with all the jobs that had to be done
in the city and with the walls. Delegation, delegation keeps a great success
from becoming a great burden in your life.

It is easy to become overwhelmed by your successes. What started out as a great
success in the end can become a huge burden in your life if you try to manage it
all by yourself. Because all of a sudden other people want to learn, "How did
you have that success?

" And the success that you had, maybe it's in a ministry, it begins to grow
beyond what you can do all by yourself. The success that you had begins to touch
people's lives in ways that you never imagined and you begin to think, "How can
I do this? I can't do this.

" Now that feeling, don't run from it. Don't run away when you have that
feeling. Look for someone else to involve.

When you're feeling overwhelmed, remember you are not supposed to do it all
alone. God didn't make you to do it all alone. So that feeling says, "Who else
needs to be involved?

" Nehemiah understood this. So immediately after the wall is completed, the
doors are in place, he appoints gatekeepers. If you got a door, you got to have
somebody to open and shut the door.

If Nehemiah didn't appoint that person, he would have been running from door to
door to door in the morning and at night opening and shutting the doors. He made
sure they were set in place. He took responsibility for that, but he knew he
couldn't open and shut them every day.

He had to have a gatekeeper, so he asked for gatekeepers. He also appointed
singers, people to add joy every day, to add joy and worship to God all the way
around the wall. He also added Levites to serve in the temple, to serve the
people of God.

The city of Jerusalem was there to be a place of worship for the people of God.
So he made sure people could get in and out through the gatekeepers who made
sure that people could worship God through the singers and the Levites. He made
sure that the city would fulfill the purpose that it was made for by the people
that he delegated.

Who do you need to delegate to help you in this ministry? Nehemiah had his list.
What's your list?

What's number one, number two, number three in your list? God has given you this
success. He wants to do some great things out of it.

Who needs to join you in this? Third lesson we learned from Nehemiah is he chose
leaders. This is the lesson of designation.

He designated some leaders to serve alongside of him. Nehemiah 7 verse 2, "I put
in charge of Jerusalem my brother Hanani along with Hananiah the commander of
the citadel because he was a man of integrity and feared God more than most men
do. " Now I want you to notice what happened here.

Nehemiah has this great project in mind. He's the one who takes the risk to go
to the king, the risk of his life and ask if they could go back to Jerusalem and
rebuild the wall. And he's the one who leads the people in the rebuilding of
this wall.

He is the one who defeats the opposition by his faith and by his prayers and by
his encouragement of the people. He is the one who makes sure that this project
happens. So at the end when this wall is rebuilt, Nehemiah is the one who is led
in this rebuilding project.

And once it's rebuilt, once the wall is built, Nehemiah, listen to the wisdom in
this, puts someone else in charge of the wall that he had built. Nehemiah puts
someone else in charge of the wall that he had built. Instead of looking at it
and saying, "It's my wall.

No one else is touching that wall. I mean, I built it. I'm going to make sure
I'm in charge of it.

" He realized he had to put someone else in charge. He appointed helpers and he
designated leaders. Nehemiah wisely took into account two important factors when
you put somebody else in charge.

You delegate tasks but you designate leaders. You don't see any names attached
when he appointed gatekeepers and Levites. Those names aren't there with the
singers.

There are probably a number of people that could have done those tasks. With
Levites, obviously they had to be from the right tribe. There are a number of
people who could have done those tasks.

So he delegated the task to numbers of people. But when it came to the leaders,
he designated the people that he wanted to lead. It wasn't just anybody who
could lead.

Everyone's responsibility is no one's responsibility. And Nehemiah made sure he
put someone in charge who would take responsibility. Many times great beginnings
fizzle into unnoticed ends because no one assigns responsibility.

And Nehemiah took time to assign responsibility for the wall. Now, I don't know
why it is. Sometimes when we remember this in games that we have to assign
specific responsibility, we forget it in life.

In baseball, there aren't just fielders and basemen standing out in the middle
of the field figuring out where they want to play. No, you've got a right
fielder and a center fielder and a left fielder and that's where they're going
to play, not just fielders. Nehemiah had people that he delegated for the task,
but then he designated these men to be leaders in making sure that everything
that had been done in completing the wall, everything that had been done for
Jerusalem was going to go forward.

Now, as Nehemiah designated these leaders, he wisely took into account two
important factors, giving responsibility to somebody else from turning into a
nightmare. Some of you have this nightmare where, "Well, yeah, I turned over the
responsibility. They couldn't do it.

Then it came back to me and it was worse than it was. I had to build it all back
up again. I should have just kept doing it myself.

" That's not the lesson you should have learned from that. The lesson is you
designated the wrong leader. Now, guess what?

I've designated the wrong leader. I don't know anybody in leadership who hasn't
designated the wrong leader at times because we're all human beings and we
struggle with this, but how do we do better at this? How do we more often
designate the right leader?

Well, two simple things that Nehemiah teaches us. You get the right person and
you give clear instructions. First, you get the right person.

Look at what Nehemiah teaches us about this. How do you get the right person? He
got his brother to do this, so you get somebody that you know.

Hennany, his brother, was one of those that he chose to be a part of the
leadership. Get somebody that you know. If you're going to get somebody to lead
something that's important to you, it's probably going to be somebody that you
know.

Either you're going to get to know them by a lot of time spent with them as
you're designating them as the leader, or it's somebody you've known and worked
with for many, many years. You get somebody that you know. He also appoints the
ruler of the citadel, Hananiah, and as he talks about this ruler, he says he was
a man of integrity.

You get somebody that you know, but you also get somebody that you can trust, a
man of integrity. Skill is important in a leader. There's no doubt about that,
but there are thousands of stories out there about people who had great skill
but no integrity, who ruined a business, who ruined a family, who ruined a
church, a ministry.

Make sure that they have the skills you need, but even more, make sure that they
have the integrity that's needed. A man of integrity who, it next says, feared
God more than most men. You want to get somebody that you know you can trust,
but you also want to get somebody that you know can trust God.

One of the keys to great leadership is great humility. The place that great
humility comes from is our trust in God. One of the keys to great leadership is
great wisdom, and great wisdom comes from great trust in God, for great leaders.

You get the right person, somebody that you know, somebody that you know can
trust, somebody that you know can trust God. Somebody that is going to not be
that person, that two months from now, two years from now, you have to go back
in. But somebody that two months from now, two years from now, you look at and
you think, they've built that into something I never could have.

Look how God has blessed them to take the wall that I started, the business, the
ministry that I started, and build it into what God wanted. You get the right
person. And then you give clear instructions.

That's one of the keys to designating the right leader. Listen to what happened
in chapter seven, verse three. I said to them, these leaders, "The gates of
Jerusalem are not to be opened until the sun is hot.

While the gatekeepers are still on duty, have them shut the doors and bar them.
Also appoint residents of Jerusalem as guards, some at their posts and some near
their own houses. " Nehemiah gives very clear instruction, and you can see the
wisdom in all of his instruction.

Obviously, near their own houses, people are going to be more interested in
protecting their own house. They're going to do a good job. Shut the doors and
also bar them.

He's very specific. Don't just shut them. Also put the bar across them.

What's the use of shutting the door if it's not really protected? He gave him
instructions for gates and for gatekeepers and for guards and for families. And
if you've ever been given a responsibility without instructions, you understand
the value of instructions.

Nehemiah clearly says, "Here's the job that needs to be done. " Don't ask for
help. Don't designate leaders unless you're willing to train them how to lead.

If you're designating a leader over something that God has allowed a success in
your life and you're not training them how to lead, training them how to take it
to the next step, you're essentially saying, "I'm done. Now it's up to you. "
But God gave you that success for a reason.

God put that success, whatever occurred, into your heart, into your mind. And he
knows through your life where he might want to take it next. Now, you can't
control what's going to happen 20 years from now, 30 years from now.

But you can, through instruction, clear instruction, help the next leader to
launch out with the greatest possible success. As we talk about the successes
that God has given into your life and how to make the most of those successes,
the two lessons Nehemiah has taught us today are delegation and designation.
Let's talk to God about them.

And just say, "Lord, forgive me for those times when I tried to do it myself. "
Out of fear or out of some false pride or some false idea of not bothering other
people. You want me to be involved with other people.

You want other people involved in this success that you've given because it's
not mine. It's yours. And you want others involved.

So show me how, Lord, to delegate, to let go of the tasks so that other people
can be involved and show me how to designate, to designate the right leaders,
the right kind of leaders that can carry this to places I never could have
carried, the next person, the next generation. Show me how to do that, Lord.
Give me wisdom in that.

I need your wisdom. I ask for it. In Jesus' name, I ask this.

Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look together at one final way to manage the
successes that God gives into your life.