Nehemiah 2:4

"The king said to me, 'What is it you want?' Then I prayed to the God of heaven,..."

Nehemiah's heart was grieved by the state of Judah and Jerusalem, and all of chapter 1 is a prayer from his heart to the Lord. He is filled with love for the land, and he mourns for the people of it, and confesses not only their sins, but his as well. Nehemiah prays for redemption and success. 
In the presence of the king, however, he is still saddened by this, and the king notices. I love that this is such a true emotion in Nehemiah--it isn't simple a fleeting feeling toward the city, but an honest burden that weighs heavily on him, to where he can do nothing but pray.
The king inquires of Nehemiah's desires, and BEFORE ANSWERING, Nehemiah PRAYS. I'm not even commenting on verse 5 for that exact reason. The Lord impacted my heart so heavily with that one realization: With all that is going on in his heart, with all the burden and grief, and with the king ready to give him what he wants, Nehemiah's FIRST point of action is to look to the Lord. 
My prayer is that this would be my heart. I can't trust myself with my own desires--if I were ever to be asked what I wanted, I would hope my first choice would be to pray first and seek what GOD would want me to want. 
His desires over mine. That's what the Lord has shown me in this verse. His desires aren't just better than ours, but they should be ours. We should want what He does, hate what He hates, love what He loves, instead of seeing Him as a far-off entity that doesn't communicate with His children. He is omnipresent, and is beckoning for us to come to Him with ANYTHING and EVERYTHING, so we need to utilize that in love. Instead of treating Him like a magical vending machine, we serve Him with everything we have. We look to Him for the answers, and obey His commands, because we love Him.

Application is to write pray FIRST on my wrist as a constant reminder that His ways ARE better than mine, and His choice should be the first and only for my life.

Colossians 1:5

"...the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel..." Colossians 1:5

This is where faith and love come from: our hope in Christ. When we have our minds set on Christ, His perfection, promises, and blood that washes us and deems us worthy, the natural result is to have an overflow of faith and love. Faith in Him for all things, and love for not only Him, but for our brothers and sisters. Keeping a single eye set on He Who commands us to love, it's difficult to think about yourself or about anything not glorifying to Him. The Colossians got it right. They're on fire for Christ because of their belief and because they serve wholeheartedly. This is such an inspiration, seeing their success. It's what we're meant to do: We're here to serve, not to be served, and remaining grounded firm in the Lord is the way to do it. 

This reminds me of Romans 12 how it talks about our "reasonable response". In that chapter, it's talking about offering ourselves as living sacrifices, as it's our reasonable response to what God's done for us. It's our act of worship. In the same way, when we put our HOPE in CHRIST, the reasonable response to Him is to have increased faith and love in all areas of our life. That's just what happens when we put our hope where it belongs, every single time.

Application is to write "HOPE = FAITH & LOVE" on my wrist as a reminder of what must come first to have faith and love in action in my every day life.