THE CORPORATE DIMENSIONS OF PRAYER

THE CORPORATE DIMENSIONS OF PRAYER Selected Passages from the Book of Acts August 16, 2009 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction There are many occasions when a larger group is more effective than one person. If you are painting a house things go better with a whole crew than by yourself. Parties, sporting events and conventions all go better with a larger crowd than by yourself. Big news lately is being made at Town Hall meetings where crowds are gathering to make known their feelings about proposed Health Care Changes. Whichever side you’re on, it makes more sense to bring a crowd than to be a lone voice. To represent the needs of workers unions form because there is power in numbers when it comes to persuasion. Is it the same with God? Is it better to have a group worshiping than one person? Why, or why not? How about prayer? Can it be said that God is more impressed, or moved, or likely to answer the prayers of a group assembled in prayer than he is the sincere prayer of only one intercessor? Do numbers mean anything to God when it comes to prayer? Let’s reflect on this from a scriptural perspective this morning. It is important to God that his people pray God’s Word and will are clear. Ask the Lord for rain in springtime (Zech. 10:1) Jesus taught in Mat. 7 that we should “ask, seek and knock” because your Father in heaven will give good gifts to those who ask him. In fact he said, “You may ask for anything in my name, and I will do it.” (Jn. 14:13) If anyone lacks wisdom, James 1:5 teaches, “he should ask God, who gives generously without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” Who has not quoted 2 Chron. 7:14? “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” In addition are the countless times we are commanded to pray in the pages of both testaments. If we do and when we do, God promises to hear and answer prayers made in faith that are within the confines of his will. It is beyond question that God wants his people to pray to him, even about the smallest things, and certainly about the big things. But is it important that his people pray corporately to him? After all, God is almighty and gracious—He can do much with the prayer of a single faithful saint in intercession. He answered Elijah’s prayer brought fire down from heaven, filled a widow’s container of flour and oil. Moses interceded with the Lord many times for the people of Israel and they were delivered. Hezekiah prayed for Israel and the people were healed (2 Chron. 30:18). Jesus, Peter, John, Paul and many of you, have made intercession for others and seen your prayers answered. If individuals can pray effectively in God’s will and receive His answers, why pray corporately? Or, should we look at it another way, if a single pray-er can intercede and get prayers answered so powerfully, imagine what a group could accomplish in prayer! “5 of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase 10,000, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.” How about it? Is it better to pray in numbers? Before we consider this issue further, I think we should recall the purpose of prayer. Is the purpose of prayer to get God to answer us? Is prayer a “success” when we see God answer? We must dispense with the notion that prayer is 1) only a matter of persuasion, 2) only making requests of God, and 3) successful only when there are immediate and obvious results. Such definitions of prayer are shallow and short-sighted. What is prayer? Prayer is communion with God. It is worship; it is thanksgiving; it is conversation; it is a means spiritual growth; it is ministry; it is relationship with God; and yes it is our means to ask God for what we need and what we want in order to live for Him. But it is not just a 1-800 request line. Prayer is LIFE for the Christian. Aren't we also guilty of using God the way a drunk uses a lamp post not for the light but to lean against? But God is not some Cosmic Crutch propping us up, making our life easier, lending us a hand when we need it. Neither is God a divine "Mr. Fix-it," waiting around idly until we need someone to extricate us from some crisis we have created in our lives. Those who see God as such a "Fix-it" often have a prayer-life that resembles dialing 911: "Need to hit all green lights in order to get to your meeting on time? ... Is your team losing with six seconds to go in the game? ... Will your spouse hit the roof if she/he finds out you've bounced another check? ... For these and other emergencies pray 911 and the magic Mr. Fix-It god will swoop down and change those lights, dunk that ball, and hide that bank statement." Prayer as the church’s corporate experience I’d like for us to take some clues and cues from the early church concerning what it meant to them to engage in corporate prayer. While we’re at it, please note that this is not only what it meant to them, but it is also what it meant to God. This kind of praying is precisely what the Holy Spirit led the church to do. It pleased God. He responded to such praying by granting His presence and His power to the church. It seems consistent with the will of God that we learn all we can about corporate prayer and begin to practice it with the fervor of the early church. 1. Corporate Prayer precedes a move of God While the church was still in its period of gestation, just days before she was born, we find the disciples gathered in prayer, waiting for the promise of God, just as Jesus had directed them. Acts 2:1 says “They were all together in one place.” It was then, in the context of the church gathered prayerfully (as the KJV) puts it, “in one accord.” The church gathered in one accord has always been the context of God sending revival. Sincere believers assembled with one another, not experts at prayer, but fumbling through their feelings to God alongside one another in unity. Prayer is this. This is prayer at its essence: bringing the truth of ourselves as we feel it and know it before God, expressing our hearts and leaving space in which to listen. This little band of believers brought before God their fears, their expectations, their hopes, their worship, their worries. They verbalized all these feelings in tentative, halting language, just as unsure of how to pray aloud with one another as we often are. But they knew it was important to be together, to pray and to wait on the Lord. 2. Corporate Prayer provokes blessings of God Boom! The Holy Spirit shows up in most unexpected ways with God’s preemptive power, and the church is born on that Pentecost Sunday. Within hours, three thousand new converts are finding ways to relate to God, and one another, corporately in this new context of being the church. What did they do? Acts 2:42 tell us: They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. God was pleased with this regimen. The rest of that paragraph records how God worked wonders and miraculous signs, blessed them with wonderful, deepening unity as they cared for one another. They shared meals with each other, using those occasions to participate in the communion as well. There was a pervasive sense of gladness and sincere fellowship. They shared everything with one another, meeting every need among them. Verse 47 adds this tender observation, that they “were praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to the number daily those who were being saved.” I want to be in a church like that. I suspect you want to be in a church like that. We NEED to be in a church like that, I’m thinking, if we want to be pleasing to God and recipients of those kinds of blessings from the His hand. It occurs to me that while God was blessing, the church was staying near enough to Him through Bible study, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer to lay hold of those blessings. When you think about it, it is truly remarkable that the early church was such a prayerful fellowship, outstripping the formal Jewish prayers and becoming a genuine devotion for them. 3. Corporate Prayer kept the church focused in crisis In chapter four of Acts, Peter and John preach themselves into trouble with the Jewish religious leaders when God healed a lame man through them which provoked a preaching occasion. They were strictly warned not to preach or teach at all in the name of Jesus; they insisted they must obey God rather than men; and after further warning they went back to the church family. Look at Acts 4:24, and how this is recorded: …they went back to their own people and reported all that the priests and elders had said. What a tender expression – threatened, upset, a little worried and wondering what was next, they went back to their own people… What did their friends and fellow-members, these young Christians, do when they got this foreboding report, threatening to incarcerate their two strongest leaders? Read Acts 4:24-31 The beauty of what occurred here as the church prayed not for protection from anti-Christian forces, but for courage to continue to serve God’s mission faithfully, is that their instinctive move in the face of crisis was to prayer. Why? Because the church was already habitually involved in corporate prayer. Their leaders were praying (Acts 6 tells us their high priority was to not get bogged down in service ministries that others could do, but to give their attention to prayer and the ministry of the word), and because they were praying and modeling the prayer life, the church was a praying congregation. When the church is praying together corporately, the inevitable crises that occur will not distract, but will simply drive them deeper into prayer for power to do the will of God. Let’s be that kind of church. Let’s build a strong network of intercession among the family of God. Let’s meet regularly for corporate prayer about the important things in the kingdom. We have a prayer-n-share ministry on the internet. Let’s keep that modality busy with kingdom-centered , mission-oriented, God-honoring requests for prayer and reports of answers to those prayers. 4. Corporate Prayer kindles the affirmation of God There is something else of import here is this Acts 4 account. Look at verse 31 again. After the church prayed so courageously and decisively in the will of God and for the kingdom of God, what happened? God stepped in and said, “’Atta boy, church! That’s what I like to hear! And just so you know that I am pleased with your on target corporate prayer, here’s a little earthquake—a local one not to bring about any destruction, but to affirm what is happening among you!” How inspiring that moment must have been! A Holy Spirit empowered prayer meeting, and a shaken house for dessert! No wonder they were filled with the Holy Spirit and emboldened to speak the word of God even more boldly! I want to be part of that kind of a prayer meeting! I want to hear God say “Well done, good and faithful servants. You can be sure I will answer your prayers for boldness, and here’s a miraculous confirmation to build your faith!” 5. Corporate Prayer provides direction for mission There is one more example from the book of Acts that I’d like to comment on, and it is found in the 13th chapter of Acts. Here we find another prayer meeting. Verse two actually says they were worshiping, but they were also involved in fasting, which means they were in prayer together. Read Acts 13:1-3 This is no small thing. Once again, the two prominent leaders of the church at Antioch are being summoned to leave their vibrant, growing congregation and travel on mission for the Lord! How in the world did the church come to that conclusion? They heard it in prayer! This text goes out of the way to mention that the prayer group was made up of prophetically gifted people and those with the gift of teaching (what a great duo, complete with Spirit and Word, prophetic excitement and Word balance of teachers!). It’s not hard to imagine what happened that day! TThese gifted leaders are gathered with their two lead pastors seeking the Lord in prayer and fasting and worship. One says, “I believe the Lord wants us to set Paul and Barnabas aside for missions travel!” “I heard that, too! In fact, it’s becoming clear to me that the Lord is calling them to leave here and serve throughout the rest of the empire.” says another prophet. A third chimes in, “I think you’re on to something.” The teachers are scratching their chins considering all the truth they know of the apostolic teaching, looking for evidence to confirm or deny this idea. No sure word for them yet. Verse 3 tells us they did not act on the leading immediately, but tested it through further fasting and prayer, and after confirming the validity of the leading did they lay hands on Paul and Barnabas, and send them off. God used a prayer meeting to move this church to the next level. And it wasn’t an easy one. They were giving up their two gifted pastors whom they all loved and probably desperately wanted to stay. But after fasting and prayer, the church was convinced it was God. And world missions has not been the same since! How did God get the attention of the church to this mission expansion? In a prayer meeting where genuine seekers of God had come together for corporate prayer and fasting, and had their hearts open to how the Lord might be leading them. I can remember the occasion when Brent Gregory, one of our four elders at the time, first shared with seriousness that his family felt called to go to Brazil as missionaries, and that it would probably be in the next couple years. That was over six years ago. We prayed with them and sought the Lord’s counsel for more than two years until they and we were certain. God confirmed the decision with a miraculously quick fund-raising season, and a number of other signs. They’ve been serving with PAZ Ministries in northern Brazil now for over four years. The greatest missional ministries this church has been involved in were born in prayer meetings. When as a young congregation we became convinced we were to find and pray for an unreached people group somewhere, we sought the Lord corporately. He honored us with what could only be described as miraculous leading to the Fulani-Wodaabe people, a nomadic tribe in the sub-Saharan regions of Niger. Since that time 15 years ago, we found and began networking with and supporting a missionary family serving this tribe, have made two trips to be on site and minister with them to the Wodaabe people. One of our leaders had the privilege of being on hand for the ordination of two young Wodaabe men—an evangelist and a pastor teacher named Tambaya, whom yet today we support in his ongoing ministry among his people. Who would have thought in that original prayer meeting that God would lead us so unmistakably, and this little congregation in the St. Louis metro-east would not only be privileged to have such a direct part in intercession and hands on ministry among the Wodaabe, but also be used of God to stir up a dozen or more American churches to also serve the Fulani-Wodaabe? Such is the excitement of praying corporately for God’s leading like the Antioch church prayed! I want more of that kind of leading from God, don’t you? And the way we will get it is when corporately we begin coming to God hungry for Him and listening for His inimitable leading for us. Because we already sense His leading among our leaders, we are acting in obedience in the first steps by calling a three week time of corporate intercessory prayer, the first meeting of which is this Wednesday night 7-8 p.m. Because I believe you want to be part of whatever God is beginning among us, I am expecting you to be there. Billy and I have personally invited the top two tiers of leadership to be there, but the meeting is for everyone, the whole church. A corporate prayer meeting, just like the book of Acts. Where is God taking us? Long term, who knows? But we’re about to find out. Short term, we are already responding in obedience to what we are certain is God’s leading: First, these preliminary prayer meetings. Second, our Life Groups for this fall will be given over to the study and practice of corporate prayer.     [ Back to Top]