Come, arise and build

I have a question for you.

Will we worship with eyes closed—content to sing about Jesus, yet blind to His presence in the faces of the brokenhearted? Or will we worship with eyes wide open—following Him into the neighborhoods where His glory still shows up, full of grace and truth?

That is the question Nehemiah’s tears force us to face, and it is the question Jesus Himself presses upon His disciples. True worship, true prayer, and true discipleship are never about retreating from the world. They are about joining God in the world He so loves.

The Sacred–Secular Divide

“Not just the temple, but the street,

Not just the song, but the work of our feet.

All the earth is holy ground,

Wherever His presence may be found.”

When Nehemiah heard the report from Jerusalem—that his people were in “great trouble and shame” and that the city’s walls and gates lay in ruins—he sat down, wept, and mourned for days. What broke his heart more? The suffering of the people, or the destruction of the city?

Perhaps that’s the wrong question. The longer we linger with Nehemiah, the clearer it becomes: both mattered. Both belonged together.

The people’s shame and the city’s ruins were two sides of the same wound.

But how easily we fall into false dichotomies. We divide life into categories—“spiritual” and “material,” “sacred” and “secular”—as though God cares about one and not the other. Nehemiah shows us a better way. He reminds us that God’s concern embraces the whole: the soul and the city, the heart and the home.

This is a lesson we desperately need. God delights in bent knees, lifted hands, and the songs of worship we raise to Him. But He is just as concerned with the streets we walk, the neighbors we greet, and the ways we serve, help, and heal—just as Jesus did.

The danger of “worshiping with our eyes closed” is that we miss where Jesus actually is. We may sing of longing to see His face, but if our eyes are shut to the brokenhearted around us, we will seldom behold Him. Jesus is with them. To follow Him is to learn to see brokenness with His eyes, and to step into it with Him—because, as Peterson puts it, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” (John 1:14 msg)

It was on the dusty streets, not in comfortable pews, that Jesus’ first disciples were privileged to behold “the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth.” They encountered Him as He healed the sick, touched lepers, fed the hungry, and welcomed the outcast. His glory was revealed not in seclusion but in solidarity—out where the pain was.

And we cannot behold Him any other way. Not while clinging to the false divide between sacred and secular. The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. Every street, every soul, every space belongs to Him. And that is where He calls us to worship—with eyes wide open.

Nehemiah’s tears challenge us not to separate what God has joined.

Our inability to be truly present in the world often comes from the wedge we drive between things God never intended to split apart. The invitation before us is to see life as one whole before God—sacred, every part of it. Nehemiah’s tenderness shows us what it means to live with eyes wide open. Though he lived in the comfort of the king’s palace, surrounded by luxury and privilege, his heart was not insulated from the cries of his people. He did not allow the comfort of his position to numb him to the pain of his people. His heart remained sensitive, open, and responsive.

He wept. He mourned. And then he prayed.

That order matters. Nehemiah did not rush headlong into activity, nor did he simply wring his hands in despair. His first instinct was to turn to the God of heaven. But notice also that he did not stop with prayer. The weeping led to fasting, the fasting to prayer, and the prayer prepared him for action.

Prayerless Action and Actionless Prayer

“Hands that move without the knees bowed low Soon forget the way to go. Prayers that rise but never live, Forget that love is what they give.”

When Nehemiah heard the news of Jerusalem’s ruins, he did not rush immediately into activity, nor did he allow himself to be paralyzed in endless mourning. He wept, he fasted, and then he prayed before the God of heaven. His prayer was honest—confessing the sins of his people and his own family—and it was bold, asking God for mercy and favor before the king. From the very beginning, Nehemiah shows us that true action is birthed in prayer.

It is perfectly right to pray for our own needs—Jesus taught us to ask for daily bread. But Nehemiah shows us that our prayers are never meant to be detached from God’s greater purposes. Our needs being met sits under the larger umbrella of His kingdom coming and His will being done on earth as it is in heaven. Do we see the connection between “give us this day our daily bread” and “forgive us as we forgive,” or “deliver us from evil”? All of it belongs together. Prayer for our needs must always be joined to a longing for God’s reign to be made visible in the world.

Too often we live at one of two extremes. Some of us slip into prayerless action: we throw ourselves into work, into plans, into activity, but without pausing to ask what God is doing or how He is leading. Our efforts may be sincere, but they are often frantic and fruitless because they are not rooted in dependence on God.

Others of us fall into actionless prayer: we pray and pray, but never move our feet. Prayer becomes a way of postponing obedience, a pious excuse for inaction. We hope God will fix what He has already asked us to address.

Nehemiah shows us another way. His prayer prepared him for courageous action. His fasting and confession tuned his heart to God’s purposes. And when the time came, he stepped into action—asking the king for permission and resources to rebuild.

Prayer and action are not opposites but companions. They are the feet we are meant to walk in. Prayer-filled action is how we are conformed to Christ—made alive by His life within us.

If we are to follow Jesus faithfully in our time, we must learn to resist both prayerless action and actionless prayer. Either one on its own will leave us lopsided. Action without prayer easily becomes frantic striving; prayer without action quickly turns into pious avoidance. The way of Jesus is neither.

We are invited instead to live in the rhythm of Nehemiah: to bend our knees before the God of heaven, and then to rise and walk the streets with courage, knowing He goes with us. Prayer fuels the courage to act; action keeps our prayers from becoming hollow words. Together they form a rhythm of dependence and obedience that shapes us into Christ’s likeness. This, as Paul describes in Philippians 3, is pressing on to know Christ, of sharing in His sufferings, and of being shaped by His resurrection life. In Galatians 2, he puts it even more plainly: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

When prayer fuels action, our lives become the arena where Christ’s life is made visible. Prayer-filled action accomplishes more than just good deeds—it conforms us to Christ. This process embodies His presence in our world and transforms His people to become more like Him.

Feeling the Weight Before Lightening the Load

“The tears we shed are seeds that grow,

The burdens we carry the Lord will know.

We cannot heal what we will not see,

But Christ bears the weight with you and me.”

When Nehemiah heard the report of Jerusalem’s broken walls and his people’s shame, he did not shrug it off as someone else’s problem. He let it pierce his heart. He sat down, wept, mourned, and fasted for days. Before he ever lifted a finger to help, he allowed the burden to settle deep in his soul.

That is always where true change begins. You will never lighten any load until you first feel its weight. We cannot heal what we refuse to see, and we cannot rebuild what we are unwilling to grieve. Nehemiah’s tears were not wasted—they were the very ground from which hope and action could spring.

This is a word we need in our own time. We live surrounded by comfort, convenience, and distraction. It is easy to let the needs of others skim across the surface of our awareness without ever troubling our hearts. Yet Nehemiah shows us that faithfulness requires tenderness. He was a cupbearer in the king’s palace, surrounded by privilege, but he did not allow comfort to numb his compassion.

To follow Jesus is to do the same. He Himself carried the full weight of our sin and sorrow, not from a distance but on His own shoulders, all the way to the cross. If we want to share in His work, we must be willing to let the world’s pain touch us. Only then will our prayers be more than words, and our actions more than charity—they will be participation in Christ’s own redeeming love.

Walking our streets with Jesus

“He saw the crowds and felt their pain,

Then sent His friends to heal again.

To follow Him is to go His way,

With open eyes and hands that stay.”

Nehemiah’s tears and prayers point us forward to Jesus, who perfectly embodied this rhythm of compassion, prayer, and action. In Matthew 9, we are told that Jesus looked at the crowds and was gripped by their helplessness—“harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” His response was not cold analysis or detached pity. He was moved with compassion.

But notice what compassion led Him to do. He did not stop at feeling deeply; He acted. In Matthew 10, He sent His disciples out two by two, giving them authority to heal, to proclaim good news, and to embody His presence among the people. Compassion turned into mission. Prayer turned into sending.

This is what discipleship to Jesus is all about. To be His disciple is to be invited into His way of seeing, His way of feeling, and His way of being with the world. It means opening our eyes to the brokenness around us, allowing our hearts to be stirred as His was, and then stepping into that brokenness with His healing touch.

Following Jesus is not simply admiring His compassion; it is sharing in it. It is not merely praying about the needs of the world; it is rising from prayer to join Him in meeting those needs. Discipleship is an invitation to live as Jesus lived—eyes open, heart tender, hands ready.

PS:

Nehemiah shows us what faithfulness looks like in a time of ruins: he let the burden pierce his heart, he carried it in prayer, and he rose to act with courage. Jesus takes that pattern and fulfills it completely—bearing the full weight of our brokenness on the cross, and then sending us as His disciples into the world with eyes open, hearts tender, and hands ready to serve.

The temptation in our day is to separate what God has joined: sacred from secular, prayer from action, compassion from mission. But Nehemiah’s tears and Jesus’ compassion remind us that true discipleship is never one without the other. Prayer fuels action, action makes prayer real, and together they form the rhythm of a life conformed to Christ.

The question before us is simple: will we worship with eyes closed, content to sing about Jesus while missing Him in the faces of the brokenhearted? Or will we worship with eyes wide open, following Him into the neighborhoods where His glory still shows up—full of grace and truth?

The earth is the Lord’s. Every street, every soul, every space belongs to Him. And He calls us to walk them as His presence, His people, His disciples—sacred, every part of it.

Come, let us arise and build!