Long ago in our seminary days, my wife and I moved into Park Place Suites, a brand new three-story 162 bed extended stay hotel in the middle of an older but stable part of Memphis, Tennessee. My boss, a developer from Atlanta, built the hotel with a grand plan. He would provide housing, transportation and meals for students of the Defense Contract Audit Institute, located across the street; employ us to live on site and run it on the cheap like a Mom & Pop operation; and make pots of money.

The plan had four fatal flaws. I knew nothing about running a hotel and neither did the developer. Park Place, like so many start-up businesses, was under-capitalized. We needed $80,000 per month to operate and were cash strapped from the first day. We had no contract with the government, no guarantee that their students would use our gleaming new facility. And most deadly, we had no links to a national reservation system, no marketing plan. A website with links to all the travel services would have helped. But the web didn’t exist yet.

I knew what to do. I wanted to go to Holiday Inn’s six-week manager training school (Memphis was HI’s backyard). I wanted a contract with the government. Most importantly, I wanted to buy into Best Western’s reservation network. I wasn’t sure we could get the government contract. But a mere $18,000 would have put me through school and put us in the Best Western system.

But I couldn’t convince my boss. The stress put me in the hospital. I’m sure there are worse things than being cussed out by contractors you can’t pay and bouncing a $40,000 mortgage check but it ranks right up there on the ugly scale for me. I quit to finish seminary. The bank took the hotel back a couple years later.

Everyone experiences stress. It comes when we don’t have the wisdom, authority, cash or other resources to deal with a problem. Nehemiah was a genius at it. This week and next we’ll examine some of his secrets to success under stress.

The first is communication. Read the first two chapters of Nehemiah and you find that he was careful about communication. That is, he was intentional about timing, tact, and truth.

Timing is everything, especially when communicating with authority. Good timing depends on discernment, paying attention to the moods and moments of someone else’s life. It means understanding when the pressures are getting to your superior and when they aren’t. There’s a great line in Pirates of the Caribbean 1: “Wait for the opportune moment.” Prayerful people, like Nehemiah, usually discern those opportunities.

Tact, speaking well when the moment arrives, is also critical. Nehemiah’s “May the king live forever,” is courtly courtesy. Courtesy is the oil that lubricates the fine machinery of civilization. Tact depends on it. But courtesy is no longer a virtue in America. Incivility is the tone of the day.  Nehemiah never stooped to that with his authorities or his subordinates. He never lost his cool and therefore did not lose his head.

Finally, when the right moment presents itself, tell the whole truth. Know what you want to do. Know how you’re going to say it. Then say it. Go for clarity. Nehemiah was very clear. “Let him send me to the city…so that I can rebuild it.”

He did not say, “Let me survey the damage and report back.” Or “Let me go visit my uncle and cheer him up.” He presented the whole vision in one bold sentence. But first he prayed.

There is a time for long prayers and a time for short ones. When you see God bringing your long prayers to fruition, don’t get cocky. Pray a short prayer and then move boldly in faith.

Everyone deals with stress. Handling it successfully requires timing, tact, and truth. We’ll learn more about stress-management from Nehemiah next week.  I hope you’ll login then.