This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back for day five of week three of our look through the book of
Nehemiah. We've been talking these last few days about how to organize, how to
manage the successes that God gives into your life. One of the keys to
rebuilding, to not having to build again and again and again, is to recognize
that God gives you a success so that you can build on it.

It's a foundation to build on. So how do you organize your successes? We've been
learning from Nehemiah that you've got to keep working after the success comes,
after the project, the initial project is completed, because that's where much
of the ministry happens.

That's where much of the blessing happens. We've been learning how to take care
of the details that will ensure that the success is not wasted. We've been
learning how to involve other people and how to get the right leaders.

And then we learn a fourth lesson about how to organize your successes from
Nehemiah in chapter seven, verse four, all the way down through verse 73. Fourth
thing he does is he registered the families. This is the lesson of utilization.

You start to utilize the success that God has given for the blessings that God
wants to give, for the purpose that God gave that success for. You start to use
it for His glory. In verses four through the beginning of verse five in chapter
seven, "Now the city was large and spacious, but there were few people in it,
and the houses had not yet been rebuilt.

And so my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles, the officials, and
the common people for registration by families. " Nehemiah sees that there's a
problem. The wall had been rebuilt, but the city inside that wall still needed
to be rebuilt.

They needed to start to use what he had built. There was a protected space
available. Now they needed to build houses.

Now they needed to start to use it. There weren't enough people living there
yet. They needed to get people living there.

Why rebuild the walls if the city wasn't going to be filled? A key thing happens
in verse five. The Bible says, "God put it into my heart.

" God gave Nehemiah the idea that allowed the success of the rebuilding of the
wall to start to be utilized for the blessing of the people of God, so that they
could live in the city, be protected in the city, raise their families in the
city, worship God in the city. It started by registering the families. It
started by God putting into Nehemiah's heart to know the resources that he had
to build with.

Now, before talking about this registration of the families, I want to take a
moment to talk about this thing of God putting something into your heart,
because this is the key moment. In organizing a success, in utilizing it for
God's glory, in building on that foundation of your success, God's going to put
some things into your heart for how to build on it. How does that happen?

What does it feel like? How does God put something into your heart? Well, it
comes out of a listening obedience.

You obey God, and then you listen. God, what's next? You listen with a desire to
obey.

Nehemiah obeyed God. He built the wall. And then he listened.

God, what's next? Now, that listening came out of him noticing a need. The city
was spacious, but there weren't enough people in it.

He noticed that need. He listened to God, and he said, "Okay, we're going to
register the families. " You listen with this desire to obey.

Now, when God puts something into your heart, this is important to understand,
because this is a key moment in building on the foundation of your successes.
When God puts something into your heart, what does it sound like? Well, it can
sound a lot of different ways.

Sometimes it just sounds like a practical idea that pops into your head, all the
way to an audible voice that you hear from God. Some people, you read about them
in the Bible, you hear about them in history, have heard an audible voice from
God. It can be anything in between, that idea that comes into your mind that's a
godly idea to this audible voice, which is rarely heard even today.

I remember when I came to be a pastor at Saddleback Church many, many years ago
now, I heard from God in a very unique way, a way that I'd only heard maybe two
or three times in my life. Pastor Rick was talking to a mutual friend of ours
about his desire to change the structure so that it was structured around the
purposes, and he would get a pastor of membership and a pastor of maturity and a
pastor of ministry and a pastor of magnification of worship. He was sitting
behind me at a meeting talking about this, he wasn't even talking to me, but I
overheard this and I sensed God saying to me, "You need to talk to Rick about
being the pastor of maturity at Saddleback Church.

" Now, it was not an audible voice, but it was such a powerful impression, I've
only had it two or three times in my life, that I knew if I didn't talk to Rick,
I would be disobeying God. And so I talked to him, and now these many years
later, I started as the pastor of maturity at Saddleback Church and have, by
God's grace, been able to serve here for many, many, many years. I've had his
impressions come in different ways.

It's not always through that powerful an impression. What I'm doing right now,
teaching him in drive time devotions, a friend of mine, Buddy, Buddy Owens, was
talking to me one day and said, "You know, you should take the studies you did
at midweek at Saddleback, since we're not doing that anymore, and you should
teach them online in a podcast. " In fact, he said, "You should call it drive
time devotions.

" He gave me the name for it. It was just an idea from a friend. And now I've
been teaching through the entire scriptures because of that idea that came from
a friend, because I knew it was from God.

It wasn't the same powerful impression that I had when I came to Saddleback, but
it was an idea that I knew came from God. What's God putting into your mind?
Whether it's an powerful impression or an idea from a friend, what's God putting
into your mind about how to build on the successes that God has put into your
life?

For Nehemiah, the idea was to register the families. Why? Why register the
families?

Because then he could see the resources that God had given for him to use, the
families that were available to live in the city. He talks to the nobles, the
officials, the common people. He gathers all the available people, all the
available resources, and he talks to everybody about registering the families.

And the rest of this chapter is all about the families that were registered, one
of those boring parts of the Bible that many of us see to read. But for Nehemiah
it wasn't. In every name there was an opportunity.

They could live here, and they could live here, and they could serve here, and
they could raise their family here. Generations could be raised by this family.
That's what Nehemiah saw in those names.

When we get to chapter 10, we're going to see how Nehemiah eventually put these
people, these resources to work through their dedication to God in the city.
When you take a look, when you're building on the success that God has given
into your life, when you take a look and do an inventory of the possible
available resources, you start to move from what if to what now. What resources
has God given you?

What people want to join you or are available to join you if only you'd ask?
What gifts has God given into your life and other people's lives? What building
resources has God given?

What financial resources has God given? You see, many times you'll have a
success in your life, and then you'll start to feel a month, a year, or two
years later, that success is not being really used. We had a great day of
victory, but nothing's really grown out of it.

When your successes aren't being utilized, you have some choices. You can live
in frustration, "Well, I guess it was just one great day, and that's it. " You
can quit in anger, "Ah, no one else wants to do this with me.

What's wrong with them? " Or you can search for solutions. Nehemiah teaches us
how to rebuild.

He searches for solutions. He searched for the solution of how to put the
resources to work. Now, to search for solutions, there's some key attitudes that
we've seen throughout the book of Nehemiah that Nehemiah has.

If you're going to have a solution in building on the success that God gives,
the first thing you've got to do is you've got to praise God for the success. As
long as you think the success is yours, you're not going to be able to build on
it because you're going to either be filled with pride or you're going to be
filled with discouragement because you figure, "I can't build on this. It's just
mine.

" So you praise God for the success. You realize it's His. It's given by Him.

It's a stewardship in your life. Now, what are you going to do with it? What are
you going to do with that success He gave of restoring your marriage?

What are you going to do with that success that He gave of restoring your
relationship with one of your children? What are you going to do with that
success that He gave of building that ministry, of building that business, of
giving you that education? What are you going to do with that?

When you look at your resources and you praise God for the success that He's
given, all of a sudden that praise to God caused you to look forward in
anticipation of what He wants to do next rather than looking backward in
self-satisfaction or self-deprecation of what happened in your life. Praise God
for the success. Second thing to do, and maybe this one is more for me than for
Nehemiah, although I can read it in between the lines in the book of Nehemiah.

When you get a success, you need to prepare for the slump. With every great
success, every great mountaintop, you've got to prepare for the slump. We always
expect a loss of energy after a failure.

We're often surprised by the energy slump that follows a success. Actually, you
lose more energy many times after the success than after the failure. There's
some people who are re-energized by the failure, "I've got to make this work.

" There is a physical, there's a mental slump that happens after every great
success. So be prepared for it. Don't let it overwhelm you.

Let God carry you through that, and once you get to the other side of that, then
begin to do the third thing. Evaluate your resources. Okay, God, you gave the
great success, that great day of ministry, that great notice that we got for the
ministry that we're doing.

You gave it for a reason. Evaluate your resources. What gifts?

What opportunities? What people? What talents?

What are given for you to work with, and how are you going to put them to work?
How are you going to put them to work? One of the reasons that we oftentimes
look back on our successes with some kind of nostalgia for just something that
happened in the past, instead of excitement for what can happen in the future,
is we don't learn this lesson from Nehemiah, the lesson of organization, of
management of your successes.

You may not be the one who can do all the things that need to build on that
foundation. You may have been the great one to build the foundation, and now
your main job is to encourage the people who are going to build on it. Encourage
those people.

Encourage those people. God wants you to learn from your failures and to
organize your successes. Let's pray together.

Our Father, again, we thank you for the successes that you bring into our lives.
And we give you credit, we give you praise, we give you honor. And instead of
just enjoying them, we want to build on them.

Because we realize you've given them for a reason. You've given them so that
lives might be changed and so that hearts might be turned to you. So any
miracle, any success, any greatness and goodness that you've brought into our
lives, help us to see in a new way right now how you can use it.

Help us to see the resources you've given us to be able to use it for your
glory. We ask this, that you give us this wisdom. Give us the wisdom of
Nehemiah, we pray.

We ask for it in Jesus' name, amen. Make sure to join us next week. We're going
to finish our study of the book of Nehemiah as we look at two final lessons for
Rebuilders.

The lesson of celebration and the lesson of dedication.