Together in Prayer
Notes
Transcript
Prayer. We do it. We talk about it. We receive emails and Facebook updates prompting us to pray. We say we’ll pray about that. Before meals and bedtime, after we wake up, while we’re driving, we pray.
Sometimes, for all of our prayer, we might think wrongly about prayer. How many times have you heard someone say, “Sending prayers!”? Where are they sending them? To the person who asked for prayer? To God? Do we really need to “send” our prayers, or can we just pray?
I grew up in a Christian home, and somewhere in our house (I can’t quite remember if it was a throw-pillow or a wall-hanging)—somewhere in our house was cross-stitched the saying: “Prayer Changes Things.” As a kid, I wondered what that meant. As an adult, balding preacher, I still wonder what that means: “Prayer Changes Things.” Like what things?
Sometimes our prayers are routine, and nothing else. Sometimes we pray without thinking about what we’re saying.
My grandma told the story of the family sitting around the dinner table, about ready to eat. Holding hands, with heads bowed, about ready to pray, the phone rings. My Uncle Scott, the youngest at the table and that night’s designated pray-er, turned to pick up the phone behind him. And instead of “Hello”, Scott spoke into the receiver, “Dear Heavenly Father!” He was primed and ready to pray; he knew exactly what he was supposed to say.
Sometimes our prayers are routine, scheduled, rote, and even thoughtless. I tread here lightly, not wanting to unduly upset anyone; I just want us to think.
I hear, from time to time, people remark about the power of prayer. It might be splitting hairs, but we need to be careful with what we say. Someone receives a good prognosis or shares a positive answer to prayer, we often hear, “Prayer works!” or “That’s the power of prayer!”
Is the power in the prayer? Or is the power in the God who hears our prayers? It’s not the mere act of praying that helps or works or has power. It’s the Lord Almighty, the One to whom we cry out, in prayer and supplication—He is the One who helps and works and has the power.
We should never praise prayer; all praise and glory and honor belongs to God. It’s not the prayer or the pray-er that healed the person or helped the situation; it’s the God who hears our prayers who heals and helps and has the power.
I’m not in any way attempting to downplay the importance of prayer. I do, however, want us to think about prayer Biblically and properly. Prayer is not a magic bullet, nor is it a means to an end.
Prayer is speaking to the God we know, trusting Him to work, aligning our wills to His.
When we face trials and temptations, we should pray, speaking with God, trusting Him. When we gather corporately and share with one another our concerns and troubles, we are meant to take our requests to God, in one accord, believing that He is able to do exceedingly more than we can ask or imagine.
>Prayer is how the early church reacted to the threats of the Sanhedrin. After being released from prison and from the not-so-friendly company of the Sadducees and Pharisees, where do Peter and John go?
Their first inclination was to be with their own people.
23 On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.
Peter and John went back to their families and their brothers and sisters in Christ. Their initial inclination was to gather together again with the church. They’re free to go, and their choice is to be with the people of God.
They had news to share. They needed to and wanted to share all that had happened to them in the last couple of days—the lame man who was healed, their arrest, the number of people who heard and believed the message. But the text tells us that Peter and John wanted to make sure their people knew what the Sanhedrin had said to them—the commands and orders and threats not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.
How did the early church react to the threats of the Sanhedrin against them? What’s the first action they took? They prayed. And this is their prayer:
24 When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. 25 You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
“ ‘Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
26 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord
and against his anointed one.’
27 Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. 29 Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. 30 Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
This is a model prayer. It’s a really good prayer, focused on and filled with the right things.
When we sat down to meals together, my mom and dad and sister and I would hold hands and Dad would bow his head and say, “Bless this food and us that eats it. Amen.”
That’s wrong on so many levels—grammatically, theologically. After Dad looked up from his “prayer”, Mom would look at him like, “Please don’t teach our kids to pray like that.”
We need good, model prayers. Like this one here.
The early church prays, and directs their prayer to God.
Directed to God
Directed to God
Upon hearing Peter and John’s report, the gathered believers raised their voices together in prayer to God.
It’s not just prayer, detached or undirected. These friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, didn’t tell Peter and John that they’d “send some prayers” along when they thought about it.
No, together they all raised their voices in prayer to God. And, as John Stott writes: “before the people came to any petition”, before they asked anything of the Lord, “they “filled their minds with thoughts of divine sovereignty.”
The gathered believers address God as “Sovereign Lord”. You Bible might say simply, “Lord”, or “Master”. The word they used is despotes.
They translate this word as sovereign: the One who has supreme power and authority. This is who God is; the early church understands this. I’m not sure we always believe this or practice our faith in accordance with a belief in the sovereignty of God.
After everything Job suffered, one of his friends, Eliphaz, had some advice for him. Not all the advice Job’s friends give to him is good advice. But Eliphaz hits the nail on the head. He’s exactly right in this piece of advice, using the same word: despotes.
8 “But if I were you, I would appeal to God;
I would lay my cause before him.
9 He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed,
miracles that cannot be counted.
Peter and John and the gathered assembly, together in prayer, address the Lord as Sovereign. He’s in charge. He has unchallengeable power.
The Sanhedrin might utter warnings and threats and prohibitions. They might attempt to silence the church. But their authority is subject to a higher authority still.
The Sovereign Lord is the one to whom we pray. There’s such great comfort and assurance in this.
Do you ever stress out about anything? Probably not. I’m probably the only one who worries about how this or that is going to get taken care of. And then I’ll have a flash of brilliance. I’ll realize I have no idea how to do this or that, or how I can make this work, but I’ll think of a friend who can.
More than once I’ve thought, “Boy, I have no earthly idea how to do this. I’ll give Landon or Clifford or Larry Palmer a call. Or, hey, John Hough’s really old; he probably knows what to do.”
And sure enough, there’s almost always someone who can help. Someone who knows much more than me, someone who can take care of this with no problem. I stress about it, when I should just hand it over.
Take that scenario, take the smartest and most competent people you know, multiply their intelligence and helpfulness by infinity, and you’ll just barely start to scratch the surface of what the Sovereign Lord can do for you.
8 “But if I were you, I would appeal to God;
I would lay my cause before him.
9 He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed,
miracles that cannot be counted.
We direct our prayers to the Sovereign Lord because He is supremely qualified and able. He also is in full-control of each situation and every single person.
The word for Sovereign has the sense of “owner” and “possessor.”
In a very real sense, God is our Master. We belong to Him. We are His bondservants, His slaves.
As it has been said:
“I belong to Jesus. He must have the right to use me without consulting me.” - Mother Teresa
The early church is willing to be used by the Sovereign Lord for whatever purpose He has for them. If they are to meet the same end as Jesus, so be it. If the Sovereign Lord has exile in mind for John, let it be. They’re good. Before they make any petition or request, they remind themselves who God is.
He is Sovereign and Creator.
24 When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.
It’s a good practice to get into. Reminding yourself who God is and what He has done. Orient yourself around His attributes before you rush Him with your requests.
If the God to whom you’re praying made the heavens—the sun, moon, stars, planets, universe after universe; if He made the earth and the sea—everything from Mount Everest to the Marianas Trench, all the fish and birds and animals great and small; if He is Creator, He formed you, knows you, and hears you when you call out to Him.
When the early church prays they direct their prayer to God and focus on Him.
Focused on God
Focused on God
Unlike so many of my prayers that are focused on me—“Give me, help me, answer me, do this for me”—Peter, John, and friends are focused on God.
Their prayer is biblical.
They pray in concert with what they know about God from His Word. They are steeped in Bible; they quote the 2nd Psalm because they believe it has just been fulfilled in their midst.
1 Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
The rulers and elders of the people have just joined forces against the Lord’s anointed, Jesus, telling Jesus’ disciples to stop preaching and teaching. They will continue to plot and conspire against the followers of Jesus.
Their prayer is biblical and it is Trinitarian, that is, it speaks about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The focus on the activity and work of all three—Father, Son, and Spirit—is expressed and praised in their prayer. We worship a Triune God, three-in-one. We pray to a Triune God, three-in-one.
If you know me at all, you’ll know I love grammar. I love words and how words work. One of my favorite books is a book on grammar. I’m one of those people.
Whether or not you enjoy grammar, we need to notice the pronouns in this prayer; it’s important. The people praying speak to God and are focused on Him. They say:
v. 24 “You made...”
v. 25 “You spoke...”
v. 27 “Your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed...”
v. 28 “They did what your power and will had decided...”
v. 29 “Enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness...”
v. 30 “Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
There’s no “we” or “us” or “me”. Not one. It’s all “You, you, you, you, you, you, you.” It’s entirely focused upon God and His Work.
The people praying here only refer to themselves in relation to God. They don’t say, “Enable us to speak with great boldness.” They say, “Enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.”
The only reference they make to themselves is in verse 29. And there, they refer to themselves as God’s servants. What a well-focused prayer.
We probably all need to work on getting the “me” out of our prayers and focusing more and more on the Lord.
When the early church prays they direct their prayer to God and focus on Him, marking their dependence upon Him.
Dependent Upon God
Dependent Upon God
If the Holy, Triune God doesn’t act, we’ve got nothing. This, the early church believed. They knew this to be true. They had no allusion of any power of their own, any ability of their own.
They understood their dependence upon God. They get that it’s His power and His will that determines and decides what will happen. They are, like we, utterly dependent upon Him.
Knowing what they know about God, focused as they are on Him, dependent upon Him, they believe that they are where they are for a purpose. And they’re not praying that they get to avoid what’s going on around them.
They don’t pray for the persecution to stop. They instead pray that God would make them bold to endure it.
29 Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.
Not “Keep us safe”, but “Give us courage”. That’s a good prayer, a prayer that trusts God and His will for them.
It’s God’s enabling them that matters. If God doesn’t enable them, they’re sunk. They can’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s not on them to find the window God opened after He shut the door.
“Enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness,” they pray.
“Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders,” they pray.
When push comes to shove, when the going gets tough, the men and women will need the strength and the courage God provides in order to make it, to continue on, to keep preaching Jesus.
Dependent upon God, these believers pray for boldness and for God’s miraculous power to be evident.
The prayer for boldness/courage was answered specifically and immediately.
31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
It’s this boldness that appears in the following chapters, enabling Peter and John and the other apostles to resist and defy the religious leaders. It’s this boldness that enables Stephen to preach Jesus while being threatened with death. Boldness that keeps him preaching until the last stone is thrown at him.
>This prayer makes me want to reevaluate my prayer life and how I pray.
Most of the time, I pray selfish prayers. They’re not quite like the prayers of my childhood when, after hearing a verse taken out of context and being told, “All you have to do is ask and God will give you whatever you want,” I started praying for a million dollars, a new bike, and a lion cub as a pet.
My prayers aren’t that silly now (at least not most of the time), but my prayers tend to be pretty selfish and self-centered. “Me, me, me. Give me this, give me that.”
What we need to pray is not that we’d be more comfortable or that we’d have whatever we want, but that we would be given boldness in the face of obstacles and difficulties. We need to be less self-centered, and more Christ-centered.
Prayer has no inherent power in itself. If not directed to and focused on the Triune God of the Bible, a “prayer” is just a string of words spoken into the air. The act of prayer, divorced from God, is completely powerless.
But when God’s power is operating through prayer, as a consequence of prayer, things are shaken. Heaven comes down!
“These ordinary men and women, with no particular learning or training, without any evangelistic methods, were enabled to speak because they were filled with the Spirit. By the power of the Spirit, they were prepared to face opposition, beatings, imprisonments, and even death. They were convinced of the truth of the gospel, and they could not be kept quiet. Their hearts burned within them for the lost, as they longed for others to know the same Savior that they had come to know and love.” -Derek Thomas
Do you pray for boldness of this kind? The situations we’re facing may not be as dangerous and threatening as those faced by Peter and John and the early church, but they are very real.
We need to pray—directing our prayers to God, focusing on Him, depending on Him. We need to pray that He would enable us to witness boldly for Jesus.
This, friends, is our task. It is our great commission.
Let’s pray, not for comfort, but for courage. Let’s pray, not for our best life now, but for boldness.
Let’s pray that we would not live our lives for ourselves, but that we’d give our lives to make Him known, no matter the cost.