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Strong Tower Radio

Steven Conway

What Do You Want?

Fresh manna fell to the ground as a gift from God while the Israelites were in the wilderness.

It was fresh from the ovens of heaven, baked by the master baker himself.

How the Israelites must have anticipated the taste and the smell of each morning's delivery.

Just like the Israelites, you too can now experience the taste and the smell of fresh manna.

Today, you'll be listening to Stephen Conway, pastor of the Troy Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

Let us bow our heads together for a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we are thankful for the privilege to be alive today, and we are grateful for the opportunity you've given us to be here in this place together.

We trust that your spirit has been with us, not so much because we have invited you into this place, but because you know how desperately each 1 of us needs you.

There are a variety of things that are going on in each of our lives, and the smiles on our faces do not always tell the story.

But I am grateful that you are well acquainted with the deepest desires, the longings, and our deepest heart cries.

So we pray that you would minister to us as you understand each 1 of us needs you.

Encourage us, nurture us, instruct us, correct us, and love us is what we ask.

And we will be careful to give you and you alone the praise, the honor, and the glory.

It is a wonderful blessing to be here with you all.

Anytime that you can come into the house of the Lord, you have that sense that David said, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.

But this week is special for me because I was teaching and doing some stuff over in the Lansing area.

And I was headed back, and I was coming across 69 and merging onto Interstate 75.

I wasn't going too fast, but I was merging from 69 onto 75, and some of you have been here where you experienced for a split second, my car just lifted.

And if any of you know that on-ramp from 69 to 75, you're going downhill.

And I could feel my car begin doing this.

And it was just a second and I thought to myself, I'm getting ready to spin and go out of control And I just knew in my heart of hearts that I was going to spin right into this oncoming traffic that's going on 75 South But God And I cannot explain to you everything that happened, but the fact that I am here today in 1 piece is a testament to the goodness of God.

And anyone who thinks that I do or you do or any of us do, no, no.

And I also understand the difficulty with a testimony like that because everyone didn't make it home.

Everyone wasn't able to give or praise God and so forth and so on.

And when you think about all of that and it comes together, I don't know about you, but for me, it is humbling.

I want to continue something that we started a few weeks back, our study in the book of Nehemiah.

We looked at chapter 1 the last time that we were sharing and we will look at chapter 2 today.

I love the Bible because you can never exhaust what's there.

Peter Grieg writes in his book, How to Pray, A Simple God for Normal People, He says that he was stranded in Chicago.

Some of you may even recall a volcano in Iceland had erupted.

Now, Peter lives in England, but he had been here in the United States and he was getting ready to fly home, but all international flights had been grounded.

He just happened to have several friends who were here in the United States, and he began to think about which 1 he could spend some time with.

And as his mind is racing, he finds himself drawn not to those who are nearest to him he's in Chicago O'Hare Airport but his mind goes 150 miles away to Madison Wisconsin And he thinks in particular of a friend of his who is there.

What he didn't know is that his friend, whose name was Joe, had just received terrible news.

He also didn't know that his worried wife had asked him this specific question.

Who do you wish you had on your couch right now?

Nor that he had replied, I wish Pete was on my couch.

But I know that's crazy because he's in England and he's never even been to our home.

A few hours later, Pete materialized on Joe's couch.

Pete suggests this, the prophet Malachi says that those who feared the Lord talked with each other and the Lord listened and heard, Malachi 3.16.

He goes on to suggest this, sometimes God listens to our casual conversations and receives them as prayers.

Now you may think He's intrusive and you may even consider Him rude, but even when you're not speaking to Him, He's listening to you.

And the reason is none other than this, my dear brothers and sisters, it is that He cares for us.

God, listening intently, Not just to our formal prayers where we get on our knees and we fold our hands or we lay outstretched and we consult and talk to the Lord.

But even listening to our conversations in the hopes that we will pour our hearts out and say something that he will be able to grant us, do for us, help us to understand, explain, give us comfort, give us peace.

In Nehemiah chapter 1, it ends with you and I peering into the life of Nehemiah and seeing that he has begun to pray and he has, I would imagine, begun to fast as well when he receives the news of what's going on in his home country and in the capital city or what once had been the capital city of Jerusalem.

I want to let you know that Nehemiah prays for 5 months.

We know that because when you read in Nehemiah chapter 1, it tells you what month it is.

Kislev or Kislu and then in Nehemiah chapter 2, Nisan.

Now the interesting thing is Nisan is the first month of the Hebrew year and Kislu is the ninth month but he alerts us that this is still the 20th year of the king.

Let's read chapter 2 together and then I'm going to just bring out 4 things And I hope that our hearts can be encouraged from this.

Came to pass in the month of Nisan in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the king.

Now, you and I might think of someone who's just, I'm thirsty, bring me something to drink.

A cup bearer was someone who occupied a much more important position.

The cup bearer was someone who had special access to speak to the king because the cup bearer would not only bear the cup, but the cup bearer would also taste the wine and taste the food, which meant that it had to be someone that the king could trust because poisoning was quite common.

Some would consider it today as the prime minister.

Now, Nehemiah says this, "'Nau had never been sad in his presence before.'" And you can imagine with this type of job, it was important not to be sad in the king's presence.

Because if you're off your game, the king's life could literally be over.

Or perhaps you know something the king doesn't know, which could also imperil his life.

It was not good business to be sad in the king's presence.

Therefore, the king said to me, why is your face sad since you are not sick?

Nehemiah says that I became dreadfully afraid.

I want you to just look around you today.

Turn around, look at the folks around you.

In fact, you and I, we did it when we came into this building today.

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What Do You Want?

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