And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.” – Nehemiah 1:3 Nehemiah, the cupbearer for the King of Assyria, learned of this historical fact from a friend who had come to visit him: his hometown was broken down and destroyed and it’s survivors we’re demoralized at best and barely hanging on to life at worst. Then there is everybody in between barely alive and demoralized; there are those whose lives are ambivalent, where nothing in their lives make any sense– everything they worked for, everything they cared about, all of it just… happened without rhyme or reason and it just doesn’t matter anymore. They should do something, but what? That is where our lives are, most of us anyways. We’re in a place of ambivalence. We’re not really demoralized because we struggled along life this far so we never really had morals to be demoraled, and we’re not dying, except slowly and painfully; but we’re just living without home or a direction to go. We are figuring things out but the things in our lives make little to no sense. We feel like our lives are on fire or have been burned down in the circumstances of life which have felt like a fire raining down on us for a guilt we never understood. The walls we put up to protect us psychological and physically are run down after a long siege. Our minds numb and our bodies battered, we just move like the walking dead, stuck traversing the tattered pattern of our so-called lives. We’re ready for the broke down redemption and we need it in our lives now! Nehemiah gets the news of his homeland and of his people and then he begins to cry, because even men in the Bible cried. Then he prays to God with the passion of a tango, wrestling with his words, but rather shadowing the words and movements of God. He doesn’t stop there because the redemption didn’t start when his prayers ended– he took his prayer and began his redemption project. He made it a life goal, no life mission, to fix the walls and rebuild life at the place he called home. The amazing thing about this historical event was that the supernatural power of God was gifted to an ordinary man, through ordinary circumstances and by a matter of faith and conviction that if he asked for redemption in his broken down situation, he would receive it. He did receive it. Where most people give up and wait to die, Nehemiah asked God for a broke down redemption. Nehemiah knew he was broke and was going for broke. He didn’t know what to expect from God, but he belted out what he had on his heart. God heard and God continues to hear. If you’re broken or you find a situation broken, it’s time to get down and ask for redemption. You may be ordinary, but God’s power is extraordinary and He will empower you to fix the broken things. It’s hard to imagine, I know; but it’s time to make it reality. God is with us, waiting for our broke down prayers so He can give us supernatural redemption. You need to believe it and go and do it now.