The first step holds the promise of what is to come
Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
Martin Luther King Jr.1
The greatest waste of time is the waste of time in getting started.
Dawson Trotman
For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:13 NLT
Although Julie and Chad still lived under the same roof, the unspoken understanding that their marriage had ended pervaded the walls of their home. The technical details of separation and divorce were still to come, but they had both accepted the reality of a failed relationship.
There had been no single event that had brought their marriage to this point. Instead, they had just gradually begun to live separate lives. Julie’s focus on building a business and Chad’s goals for building a career left no time for their relationship. The result has happened in thousands of relationships. With no time together, they came to feel they no longer needed the other in their life.
They did not know it yet, but just as they had gradually grown apart, they were about to begin to gradually grow together again. It began with an invitation to Julie to give some free consultation on the needs of small business owners to a group at Saddleback Church.
“I’m not a churchgoer or believer in all that,” she told them.
“Your opinion is exactly the one we need,” they replied.
She went once and told herself she had fulfilled her responsibility. But they asked her back and kept asking until she agreed. Over the next few months as she gave advice, she also felt her heart being drawn to the faith she saw in some of the people in the group. Julie began a relationship with Christ and knew immediately that everything had changed.
Without thinking what it might mean for their relationship, she knew she had to share what she had found with Chad. He needed the hope, peace, and joy she was now beginning to experience. She asked him to go with her to church, and at first, he said he didn’t really feel a need for that. But as he began to see a change in her life and she continued to ask from time to time, he finally said yes.
As they drove to church for the first time together, Chad felt overwhelmed by the size of the church. They passed by a tram taking families from a lower parking lot to the children’s building, and that did it. “This isn’t church; it’s Disneyland,” Chad said. They drove straight out of the parking lot without even stopping.
Julie was saddened, yet still felt compelled to let Chad in on what God was doing in her life. She found out there was a smaller worship service at Saddleback, and asked Chad if he might be willing to try that. Again, he said yes—and this time when they went, they stayed.
Chad saw what had been so meaningful to Julie, and he also decided to begin a relationship with Jesus. As two new believers, they now had the somewhat scary opportunity to see what this might mean for their marriage.
It’s vital to pause a moment to recognize that none of this would have happened without someone taking the first step. Julie connected with a church because someone asked and kept asking. Then Julie kept asking Chad to begin to see with her the difference that Jesus could make. For this relationship to be restored, someone needed to ask. And then ask again.
This is the crucial moment when a person is rebuilding. Unless someone initiates a first step, there will be no chance to begin again.
Suppose you’re at the start of a hundred-meter race. You’re settled in the blocks; the starter’s pistol is about to fire. But instead of thinking about the race, you’re considering every detail of the last race you ran. You’re not intently listening for the gun, so of course you’re not going to get started well. To start well, every fiber of your being must be listening for that starter’s pistol.
To rebuild well you must start well. How do you become the kind of person who initiates action? How do you get that relationship, career, plan, or project out of the starting blocks?
Nehemiah gives great encouragement for getting things started. He decides to begin the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls and finds that everybody is just standing around, shaking their heads, and essentially saying, “This is terrible; this is awful.” From this group of nonstarters, he gets things started by making four decisions. These decisions caused him to be an initiator when everybody else was just a spectator. They are simple decisions—decisions you can make, beginning right now.
DECIDE TO TAKE A STAND
Look at how the story unfolds in Nehemiah 2:1–5:
In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before, so the king asked me, “Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.”
I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”
The king said to me, “What is it you want?”
Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king, “If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my ancestors are buried so that I can rebuild it.”
Nehemiah gets things started by talking to the king. He knows that to move ahead he has to have the king’s support. The king will have to allow him to go and provide him the resources.
Nehemiah said, “I was very much afraid.” What was he afraid of? This was much more than fear of public speaking. In that day, if you asked something of a king and he denied your request, it came with a severe consequence. Kings did not like disgruntled subjects in their kingdom, so if they denied a request, they also cut off your head—which ensured there were no unhappy subjects walking around!
To put something together again, you will have to face your fears. One of our greatest fears is the fear of opening ourselves up to further pain. To even think about rebuilding means we are taking the risk of disappointment if it doesn’t work. It seems safer to just accept the failure and move on.
The only way to move past that fear is found in 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” Love is God’s antidote to fear. God’s love for you is the way to see past your fear.
John says that “fear has to do with punishment.” Fear tells us that the circumstances and people in our lives are out to punish us when we take a risk. Fear causes us to take the pain in our lives personally, as if we deserve nothing but punishment. Apart from God’s love, this would be true, but in God’s grace, we are given nothing but love.
So now you can take God’s love personally. You can know that whatever risk you take, he is working to bless you and not to punish you. You can know that no matter what the result of the stand you take is, God will stand with you.
To initiate faith for what God wants done, there must be someone with the courage to take a stand. David exemplified it with Goliath; Deborah showed it when she led Israel to victory; and Paul evidenced it as he preached to the Gentiles.
In history, you see this courage in Martin Luther’s famous statement “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God,” as he defended the truths that ignited the Reformation. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted those words in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” as he took his own stand for racial equality.2 Catherine Booth drew on those words as she said, “Here I stand and make my boast, that the Christ of God, my Christ, the Christ of the Salvation Army, does meet this crying need of the soul, does fill this aching void.”3 As cofounder of the Salvation Army, she was standing for the power of Christ to meet the needs of social injustice in her day.
These are people who took a stand when no one else would take a stand. They show that taking a stand means having the courage to face the consequences. Whether you’re snickered at, stared at, shouted at, or shot at, there will be consequences when you take a stand, because you are the one leading the way.
Intuitively we all know there will be pressure that comes with taking a stand. That’s why it’s hard to do.
This is true even if it’s a stand you take within your own heart. You decide, I’m going to take a stand against this laziness in my life. I’m going to restore a life of living for God’s purpose. Even before you tell anyone else, this internal stand brings the pressure of needing to live a different way. You are no longer coasting downhill; you’ve changed direction and are headed uphill.
I asked Julie what gave her the courage to continue to take the first steps to ask Chad to come to church with her. “It was very scary for me,” she said, “because I didn’t want him to think I was trying to change him.” For her, the courage came each time she discovered a life-changing truth in the Bible. It wasn’t about her trying to change him, but about the ways God was changing her.
Chad, of course, had to have the courage to say yes, even after he had said no. To let go of a no takes a great deal of humility. For him, it came out of a desire to restore their relationship. “Even though we didn’t like each other at that point,” he said, “I had married her because I loved her. So I was willing to try anything, and what I had been trying didn’t seem to be working.” It takes great courage to admit that what you’ve been trying isn’t working and to try something different!
Jesus Christ can give you the courage to take that stand. He took a stand for you. He went to the cross for you and gave himself for your sin. Don’t try to take the stand in your strength. There is no greater encouragement I can give than to urge you to take your stand in the strength that Jesus can give you. Ask him for that strength right now.
DECIDE TO PREPARE FOR SUCCESS
The king said yes, and Nehemiah was ready for the king to say yes. He prepared in advance for what might happen if the king was favorable to his request:
Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, “How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?” It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.
I also said to him, “If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the royal park, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?” And because the gracious hand of my God was on me, the king granted my requests.
Nehemiah 2:6–8
Nehemiah’s preparation began even as he made his request. Notice that the king had the queen sitting beside him. Nehemiah likely knew that the king would be more open to his request with the queen present, perhaps because of the favor he enjoyed with the queen due to his role in protecting the king. We prepare for success by making our requests at the right time.
We also prepare for success by being ready to move forward. So often we allow ourselves to become so worried about somebody saying no that we give no thought to what we’re going to do if they happen to say yes. Nehemiah had wisely spent his energy focusing on what he was going to do when the king said yes.
There’s a principle here: People who get things started prepare for success rather than worry about failure. Are you spending most of your energy readying yourself for failure or preparing yourself for success?
One of the ways to prepare is to make a simple list of what you need. When the king asked what he could do, Nehemiah had a list of the resources he would need and the people who could help. To be a person who gets things done, you must get that list in your mind before the door of opportunity opens, so that when it opens, you’re immediately ready to walk through it.
There is sometimes great faith in a simple list of needs. In the flood we experienced, the water level in our home went to nine feet. Our first step in rebuilding was to strip our home down to the subfloor and studs by tearing up all of the flooring and removing all of the wallboard.
I feel deep gratitude for the great help my wife’s parents, Jimmy and Dot, provided in our rebuilding. Jimmy had done a great deal of construction work as a missionary builder of churches, and one of the first things he did was to make a list of the materials we’d need to rebuild. We were just starting to recover and didn’t have resources to buy those materials, but he still started a list.
One day he counted that we would need ninety-eight sheets of wallboard to repair the house. That very night, someone from out of town visited our home to see the damage. Shaking his head after looking at it all, he asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Yes,” said Jimmy, “we need ninety-eight sheets of wallboard!” That man bought the wallboard for us to rebuild our home because Jimmy had prepared in advance for someone to say yes. Rebuilders plan for success.
Where do you need to stop worrying about failure and start preparing for success? You may want to stop right now and write down a list of the resources you need to begin again.
DECIDE TO REVIEW THE PROBLEM
The next step Nehemiah takes to get things started is to undertake a firsthand review of the problem:
I went to Jerusalem, and after staying there three days I set out during the night with a few others. I had not told anyone what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. There were no mounts with me except the one I was riding on.
By night I went out through the Valley Gate toward the Jackal Well and the Dung Gate, examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire.
Nehemiah 2:11–13
I realize the main thing you may have noticed in this passage are the words “Dung Gate.” Why would they have a dung gate? Dung happens—that’s all we need to say about that.
The significant thing that happens here is Nehemiah’s personal and detailed review of the problem. He went through each gate, and he looked at each wall. This was not something he could delegate to someone else or leave to another’s opinion. He needed to see for himself exactly where the breaks in the wall were and what needed to be done to rebuild.
Nehemiah teaches us something very important about those who get things started. Instead of sitting around and moping about the unknown and unseen, those who initiate actions of faith face a problem head-on. There are a number of valuable aspects to a firsthand review of the problem.
First, a personal review cuts the problem down to a manageable size. When I saw pictures of our home and church underwater on the front pages of newspapers and as the lead story on national news, recovery looked impossible. It looked like a disaster from which we would never rebuild. But when I got into a boat with my friend Bob and rowed out to see our homes and the church, I could start to see how we could rebuild. It looked like there was a lot of work to be done, but it no longer looked impossible. The furniture was tossed and jumbled, but it was still our furniture. We had a few feet of water in the house, but it was still our house. Looking at the problem can cut it down to manageable size. Face the problem, and there’s every possibility that God’s going to show you how to manage the solution.
Second, a firsthand review of the problem gives a sense of the immediate need. Sometimes we procrastinate by mentally sticking the problem off in a corner. When we do that, the problem usually doesn’t just go away; it often grows larger through a lack of attention. And in the back of our minds, there is a gnawing anxiety about the problem we’re ignoring that saps our energy.
When we face the problem, we see the immediacy of the need in a way that motivates us to take the first step. We move from a fuzzy feeling of “I really should do something about this” to a concrete decision to act.
A third benefit of a firsthand review is that it renews a spirit of personal responsibility. When we’re not looking at the problem, it feels like someone out there somewhere is taking care of it. Everybody’s responsibility is nobody’s responsibility. When we face the problem, we feel the responsibility for taking action. It’s amazing how many problems still exist because we’re pretending that someone else will do something.
Sometimes the person we’re pretending will do something is God. I want to be extremely careful here in saying that in the end it is God who does all the work. What we sometimes miss is that in the work he is doing, he has something for us to do. A firsthand review of the problem will help us see where God wants us to act.
We can certainly rush ahead when God wants us to wait. I want to deal here with the opposite problem, namely, thinking it is spiritual to just wait when God has something for us to do. Even as great a man of faith as Moses faced this problem. When the people of Israel were trapped between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army, Moses told the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:13–14).
Moses’s words sound so trusting and spiritual. They were also exactly wrong. God immediately says to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground” (Exodus 14:15–16). Moses was telling them to stand still when God wanted them to move ahead!
While it certainly requires great discernment to figure out when we should wait and do nothing and when we should move ahead, I have observed that more times than we’d like to admit, we face the same problem Moses did that day. God is telling us to act, and we are hiding behind spiritual-sounding words.
I like the example of the apostle Paul, one of the greatest initiators of all history. He was the first to start churches all over the known world. Paul had a habit of moving ahead in whatever direction he felt God might be leading. If a door was open, he kept moving; if it was closed, he stopped or was redirected. God is often better able to work with us when we’re moving than when we’re stalled and he’s trying to get us moving.
As you review the problem, a good prayer to pray is, “God, what do you want me to do next?”
DECIDE TO ASK FOR HELP
The fourth decision that Nehemiah made in initiating change was the decision to involve others and ask for help:
Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.” I also told them about the gracious hand of my God on me and what the king had said to me.
They replied, “Let us start rebuilding.” So they began this good work.
Nehemiah 2:17–18
Every person down through history who has been an effective initiator has asked for help. Initiators are not independent. Without help, Nehemiah would have just been a lone crusader, but with help, he rebuilt the wall. Rebuilding a building, career, relationship, marriage, or ministry takes a lot of hard work. So those who face the task of rebuilding need help—carpenters to rebuild a house, counseling to restore a marriage, training to renew a career.
Here is a simple principle of life: To get help, you have to ask for help. Help doesn’t come without asking. We think it should—that people will just notice and show up and help. It doesn’t happen that way. Even God asks us to ask so that he will help us in our lives: “Ask and it will be given to you” (Matthew 7:7).
Some people are good at asking for help, but most of us are not. Most of the time, we’d rather do it ourselves. It may be a matter of pride, but just as often it’s that we don’t want to bother other people. We tell ourselves they have important things going on in their lives. But the truth of the matter is we need each other’s help. One of the important things in their lives is you!
When I faced the challenge of rebuilding a house and church, I had to make a decision: Was I going to try to do it alone? If I had, the job never would have been completed and my life would have taken a turn toward the bitterness and loneliness that grow out of failing alone.
One month before the flood hit, I had seen a news report about Gordon Bushnell’s highway in Minnesota. Bushnell believed there should be a highway between Duluth, Minnesota, and Fargo, North Dakota. The government wouldn’t build one, so he decided to do it himself. With only a wheelbarrow, a No. 2 shovel, and an old John Deere tractor, he began to single-handedly clear and grade the land for this two-hundred-mile highway.
At the time of the news report, he was seventy-eight years old and had been working on the project for twenty years. He had finished nine miles. Only 191 to go! It sounds very American, very independent, very inspiring. But the road never got built. You have to ask yourself, Do I want to be a lonely crusader, or do I want to be a rebuilder?
It’s significant that as Nehemiah asked for help, he “told them about the gracious hand of my God” that had been on him. He’s teaching us to ask for help with the grace of God in view. In the grace of God, each of us knows that our life is a gift, and the work of rebuilding is a part of that gift.
In grace, you know it’s not just about you, but about the grace that God wants to show in you and then through you. There is something about seeing your life as a grace-gift of God, instead of seeing your life as something you’re solely responsible for, that inspires you to ask for the help that God tells us we all need.
Galatians 6:2 (NCV) reads, “By helping each other with your troubles, you truly obey the law of Christ.” The law of Christ is the command to love one another. When you fail to ask for help, you are actually preventing someone from being able to obey Jesus’ command to love!
To rebuild, you have to take a stand; you have to prepare for success; you have to review the problem; and then finally, and I think most importantly, you have to decide to ask for help.
Taking these initial steps starts the process of restoration. As simple as this sounds, it is important to remember that a start is only a start. Beware of the tendency to feel that this first step gets you to the finish line. The process of putting it together again will take time.
When Chad and Julie began the process of restoring their relationship, they had no idea what their journey would be like. They were soon to discover that it would take longer than expected. They saw this in the weekly dates they committed to. “It was definitely awkward at first,” Julie remembered. “We made a deal to go on a date one day a week. We’d go to the park and yell and scream and fight one day a week. After a couple of those times, we were yelling less and talking more—all on swings, not even looking at each other, just swinging at the park.”
Out of this painful start came a moment that let Julie know their relationship really could be restored. After a couple of months of these dates at the park, they decided to go to a restaurant. Julie had just shut down her company, and she was struggling with her identity. She wasn’t sure who she was apart from running her business.
As Julie and Chad sat down at the restaurant, one of Julie’s former employees spotted them and came over to their table. He asked the dreaded question, “So what are you doing now?” Julie froze. She didn’t know what to say.
In her words, “I’ll never forget it. Without missing a beat, Chad said, ‘She’s retired.’ And I thought, That’s perfect; he gets me. Before that, it was me against him, and at that moment, it was us fighting the battle together.”
This was a small moment that gave them hope, a small step they could build on. It never would have happened without someone deciding to take that first step.
TAKE THE FIRST STEP: My First Steps
DECIDE TO TAKE A STAND
As a first step, tell one other person that you are looking to begin to rebuild. Choose a person who you are confident will support and encourage you in what you are hoping to restore.
DECIDE TO PREPARE FOR SUCCESS
What one thing can you do now to prepare for what you hope God will restore?
Write down a list of the things you’ll need as you begin to put something together again.
DECIDE TO REVIEW THE PROBLEM
Take some time to do a firsthand review of the problem.
Even with more internal or relational issues, it can help to go to places where the problem may have started or to days when things may have been better.
Then write a paragraph about what you see. There is something about writing down your impressions that helps you review the reality of what needs to be rebuilt.
DECIDE TO ASK FOR HELP
As a start, who could you enlist to pray for you in your process of restoration?