”Then the king asked me, ‘What is your request?’ So I prayed to the God of the heavens and answered the king, ‘If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor with you, send me to Judah and to the city where my ancestors are buried, so that I may rebuild it.’” (vv. 4-5)

You will be asked something like a million-and-half questions in your life. Not all of them are very important, but some are: What do you need? Where will you go? What’s next for your life?

Maybe you’ve got some ideas about the answers, and maybe you’re tempted to respond readily.

But follow Nehemiah’s example…

…and don’t skip Step One.

So I prayed to the God of the heavens.

There’s really only one way to discover if your own answers match His, and that’s to pray, to seek both His face and His Word on the way to your response. This is at least part of why the Scriptures implore us to be slow to speak: we need a beat for prayer, so that we might hear His answer before we answer.

So, when the next question comes, ask your own of the God of the heavens—and you’ll know better what you ought to say in reply.

— Tyler