Prayer for our Witness
The Way of Prayer • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 9 viewsBig Idea: As God sends us as witnesses in a raging world, support one another in prayer.
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Back in December of 2018, I showed Oak Hill videos of a persecuted church in China called Early Rain Covenant Church.
The government had raided their facility… locked up their doors… tried to silence their message...
And so they just went and met in a public park and kept crying out to the Lord together… kept worship him… kept preaching his word…
I found that so compelling… not only did they not stop… they took their worship PUBLIC.
As I was studying this week in Acts 4, I thought about that church as such a great example of what we see in the early church… and so I went looking for an update.
The most recent one I found was from Voice of the Martyrs, Canada from Nov. 12, 2020… they recap the story from 2018… and then give us some updates:
In December 2018, security forces raided the Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, Sichuan. More than a hundred members were arrested, including Pastor Wang Yi, who has since been sentenced to nine years in prison. The location where the congregation met has been demolished and authorities have officially banned all future gatherings. Despite these measures, members of the church have sought alternate ways to continue meeting for worship and share the message of the Gospel. In response, security forces have continued to intimidate church members.
On October 11th, Xuewei Jia was taken for interrogation because he had participated in a retreat service. According to his social media account, he was forced into a van, verbally abused, and interrogated for eight hours. To avoid reacting in anger, Xuewei chose to respond with silence, despite the relentless physical and verbal abuse he encountered. He was eventually allowed to return home.
Li Yingqiang, an elder of Early Rain Covenant Church, was often responsible for releasing updates on the situation since the initial arrests in 2018. On the morning of October 25th, police entered his home, as well as the home of a fellow church member, Xiao Luobiao, and his family. At the time of the raids, these Christians were participating in online worship. Both Li and Xiao were detained until that afternoon. Li was forced to delete all tweets from his Twitter account and ordered to remove the listed names of all his followers.
The article goes on to describe how Li’s family was forced by the police to leave TWO different homes that they rented… and he requests prayer in this way:
"May the Lord provide us a place...(helping) us lean on His grace and guidance as we take each step...so we can bear witness to His justice and mercy."
https://www.vomcanada.com/cn-2020-11-12.htm
I love his request for prayer… he wants grace and guidance THROUGH the persecution… he is asking PRAYER as his church takes THEIR next steps of the Way of a Disciple.
It brings new meaning to our series vision, doesn’t it? “Learning to support one another by praying TOGETHER on the path of discipleship.”
I’ll be we wouldn’t have to convince ANYONE that praying together was needed if we were going through something like THAT.
These types of persecution are hard to imagine… but without being alarmist or getting into conspiracy theories, I think we need to be prepared for similar opposition if we truly want to follow Jesus.
Maybe some of you can feel that reading the news over the past few weeks and months and even years.
Hear me carefully - I’m REALLY not trying to make a political statement here… I’m not saying America will look exactly the same as China… it COULD… it might not…
But we need to be prepared because the climate of American culture (politics, media, technology, language, religious practice)… the climate of American culture is increasingly antagonistic to the biblical message because it threatens their values.
I believe if the Lord does not return sooner, future church-experiences will need to look much different than they do today where you can sneak into a large building and remain anonymous and not really need to “own” your faith.
That kind of name-only Christianity is largely going away for most people sitting here today… and that’s especially for our kids and grandkids...
We’re going to need to own our faith… and since WITNESS is part of the path of discipleship… we are going to need to be bold in the power of the Spirit.
That’s to be expected… because the scriptures promise that our witness would be opposed…
The Apostle John wrote, Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. (1 John 3:13 ESV)
When Paul planted churches, he [encouraged] them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. (ESV)
Now, if we know that opposition is coming, our tendency is to want to prevent it in some way.
Avoid it… fight it… do anything we can to lessen the blow.
But all of that is like trying to stop a tsunami with a sandcastle.
The Scriptures promised opposition will come.
And so instead of trying to PREVENT the inevitable in the culture… the Bible calls us to PREPARE the unshakeable in our hearts.
We don’t need to be SCARED… we need to be in PRAYER…
Because witness is part of the the way of a disciple… and because opposition to our witness is PROMISED in the scriptures… we need to learn how to PRAY for our Witness.
That’s where we are headed in our sermon today… which is part of our sermon series called “The Way of Prayer...”
We are studying the times in the book of Acts that we see the early church praying together...
And in Acts 4, we see the early church praying FERVENTLY for their witness.
We can learn A LOT from them about prayer in this chapter… it’s honestly one of my FAVORITE prayer chapters in the Bible.
And so here’s our big idea for today...
Big Idea: As God sends us as witnesses in a raging world, support one another in prayer.
Big Idea: As God sends us as witnesses in a raging world, support one another in prayer.
Your Bible’s are open to Acts 4...
Last week we left the early disciples in a secret prayer meeting in an upper room in Jerusalem...
It started 40 days after Jesus rose from the dead… it started the same day he ascended into heaven...
And it continued for another 10 days until the day of Pentecost...
In those 10 days of devoted prayer, they were waiting for the Holy Spirit to come upon them with power...
I doubt that many of them even understood what that meant or what it would look like...
But they knew that it was the next phase of God’s work in bringing about the fulfillment of his Kingdom.
And so the day of Pentecost came… and Jesus made good on his promise… he clothed them with power from on high...
And they became his witnesses in Jerusalem to the nations that were represented there.
You see, there were a whole bunch of people in town for the Feast of Booths…
People from Africa and Europe and Asia...
And as the Spirit came upon the disciples, they all started speaking in languages that they themselves did not know, but that the people hearing understood in their own native tongue.
And Peter gave the main gospel presentation of the day… he told them about Jesus and the fact that he was the fulfillment of the prophecies… he was the promised Anointed Savior King… that he was crucified and on the third day rose again...
And the response of the crowd was incredible - they asked, “What must we do to be saved...”
And Peter told them to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sin… you see the way of a disciple playing out right there: repentance is how we become disciples.
And THAT DAY, 3000 people were converted in heart, baptized, and added to the number of the church!
What would we do if our church went from 120 (which it is right now) to 3120 in ONE DAY?!?!
Well, I hope we would do what the early church did… really the same thing we are doing now… they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching… to fellowship… to the breaking of bread… and to THE PRAYERS.
That’s what’s described in Acts 2:42 and following...
They met from house to house in small gatherings and in the temple courts for larger gatherings...
And God KEPT adding to their number DAILY those who were being saved.
The description of their activities in Acts 2 probably covers several months to a year.
And during that time, on the way to one of the larger Temple Court gatherings, the Apostles Peter and John encountered a lame man asking for financial aid at one of the Temple gates.
And they said, “Silver and gold we have none, but what we do have we give to you. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”
And he DID! And there was such a stir that Peter preached another powerful message… and the total number of believing MEN rose now to 5000 people (that’s not counting women and children)...
And so all this is starting to ruffle the feathers of the religious leaders… the same ones who sentenced Jesus to death (when they get ticked off, you watch out)…
And Luke tells us that these leaders were GREATLY ANNOYED.
They arrested Peter and John and put them on trial the next day.
And Peter again was crazy bold... and he accused his accusers of murdering the Messiah and called them to repentance...
And the religious leaders were dumbfounded… because these were just common, uneducated guys from the sticks...
But they perceived they had been with Jesus...
They were receiving their power from the resurrected Messiah.
And so they decide to let them off with a warning: “don’t teach in the name of Jesus or else!”
But Peter and John answer them by saying, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19–20, ESV)
I love this… Peter and John reserved their civil disobedience of their authorities for what really mattered: their witness of the gospel.
They didn’t fight it the day before when their rights were violated and they were arrested...
They cared more about the opportunity to witness.
Because WITNESS was burning in their hearts. “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”
The GOSPEL will not be silenced. The Gospel CAN NOT be silenced! In a world where there is already enough strife, let’s make THE GOSPEL the only thing worth fighting for… it will draw enough opposition as is!
And so Peter and John are released from prison… and where is the first place they go?
Back to their friends… back to the church.
That’s where we pick up our text today in Acts 4 [read Acts 4:23-31]
This passage we just read is the only account in the book of Acts where we learn HOW the early church prayed.
We often read about the fact THAT they prayed… and what they prayed ABOUT… but here we actually get a window into HOW they prayed.
And today, we will actually see that they are a good example of ALL THREE of our goals for this series. In fact, those goals are going to serve as our main points today...
First Response Prayer… Full Participation Prayer… Engaged, Expectant Prayer...
First, As God sends us as witnesses in a raging world, support one another in...
First, As God sends us as witnesses in a raging world, support one another in...
1) First Response Prayer - "They went to their friends and reported... And when they heard it..."
1) First Response Prayer - "They went to their friends and reported... And when they heard it..."
“When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God...,” (Acts 4:23–24, ESV)
Explain - So the apostles do what most of us would do after a traumatic event… they go and tell their friends.
They couldn’t update their social media status or text or call them up on the phone… so they actually went to be WITH them.
I know that seems like such a foreign concept today… but maybe it’s something we can learn from: the high importance of embodied presence wherever possible.
And as they go tell their friends… their friends receive the report… look at verse 24 again...
And WHEN THEY HEARD IT... they started slamming the religious leaders, repeating all the political theories they heard in the temple courts about the current state of Israel.
Is that what your version says? NO.
WHEN THEY HEARD IT... they started panicking and prepping their bunkers for the apocalypse.
Is that what it says? NO.
When they heard it they decided to create an alternate society separated from the rest of the world.
NO!!!
When they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God.
First response prayer.
Illustrate - What’s your first response to crisis or hardship or disapproval from others?
When you see something that is troubling or even dangerous, what are you most tempted to do?
We hear people talk about the natural instincts of fight or flight...
Some of us are flight people.
We retreat or shut down.
Sometimes we ignore or run away from the problem.
We rush to all the possible what-ifs and we start reacting out of fear.
Others of us are fight people… we go into action mode.
If it’s a personal threat, we’ve got fists up.
If it’s a concern for someone else, we immediately go into fix-it mode.
This is what makes EMTs or Firefighters or ER nurses and doctors GREAT at their job.
I would suggest there is another category than fight or flight… I call it Funny… some people just laugh in a crisis as a coping method.
Maybe it’s a form of flight response, but this was my mom growing up.
One time I flipped over the handle-bars of my bike and broke my jaw in three places...
And I’m there on the sidewalk screaming with blood pouring out of my mouth...
And my loving mother is on the front porch with the giggles.
It was just her natural response.
We always knew that if we were in crisis mode, we wanted Dad around because he was the action guy.
But what is your first response to crisis or hardship or opposition?
Apply: I would suggest to you that no matter your natural first response is, you need to develop a supernatural one: we all need to develop FIRST RESPONSE PRAYER.
Stop. Drop. and Pray.
I believe that comes from seeing our need for prayer.
Prayer is the overflow of our dependence on devotion to God.
If we think, “WE’VE GOT THIS… WE will figure it out...”
We will fight first and pray later.
And we will often miss what God wants to do.
Now I’m not talking anymore about split second decisions in emergency…
by all means if there is an emergency that requires immediate action, act WHILE you pray.
But I’m talking about those things that FEEL like an emergency… that raise our emotions… and send us into FIX IT mode… and we need to regain God’s perspective in prayer.
If we are flight people… and we think, “WE DON’T GOT THIS… ALL IS LOST… GET US OUT OF HERE!”
We will flee first and pray later...
And we will often miss what God wants to do.
Again, I’m not talking about immediate danger… someone is attacking you and you need to run…
By all means flee and pray!
But in ongoing trials… don’t seek escape from the trial first… seek prayer first.
And if you are prone to laugh in these circumstances… I guess get someone to pray for you ;)
No matter our first natural response, we need to develop a supernatural one: first response prayer.
God forgive us for running to our natural impulses instead of running to prayer!!!
We need to repent of turning to other things before turning to God!
I know I NEED that repentance… would you repent with me?
This first response prayer is needed in ANY crisis… but ESPECIALLY in a crisis of opposition to our witness.
I know I can so easily assume that opposition means failure.
Opposition means a closed door to our witness.
Opposition means not just rejection by the people receiving witness… but a lack of approval from God… “I DID SOMETHING WRONG and that’s why my witness didn’t APPEAR fruitful.”
But that shows that we tend to focus on ourselves first… rather than focusing on God.
We tend to rely on ourselves… and then blame ourselves when things don’t turn out the way we had hoped or expected.
And we need to turn to prayer instead.
Now, not only did they respond in prayer FIRST… they also responded in prayer TOGETHER.
They didn’t say, “Peter and John, thanks for sharing. I’ll be praying for you about that. Right now, I’ve got to go home and eat lunch and look at Facebook for the afternoon.”
No, what does it say in v. 24 - They lifted up their voices TOGETHER to God.
Here’s the second goal for our series and the second way we support one another in prayer:
2) Full Participation Prayer - "...they lifted up their voices together to God..."
2) Full Participation Prayer - "...they lifted up their voices together to God..."
THEY lifted THEIR voices TOGETHER to God.
Explain: Notice - THEY lifted their voices… who? All the FRIENDS they told about what happened.
Peter and John told their friends… and their friends lifted up their voices together to God.
Imagine if one of them was like, “Yeah, I don’t really pray in front of people.”
“Yeah, I’ll let others do the praying because I don’t always say the right things.”
Do you think Peter and John would have felt supported by those “friends”?
Author Donald Whitney notes this peculiar behavior common to Christians: he says, “There are many who are quick to ask for prayer from people in the church and who will even pray for others in return, but who will not commit themselves to pray with these same brothers and sisters.”
[Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplies within the Church (Chicago: Moody, 1996) 174; emphasis original.]
Think about it… which means more to you: someone telling you they will pray for you later… or someone praying WITH you right now?
Supporting their friends required ALL of them lifting their voice to God…
They needed to HEAR one another praying.
They needed the courage that comes from listening to someone else express their faith in prayer.
THEY lifted THEIR voices TOGETHER to God.
Now this word “together” means “with one mind” or “in perfect harmony.”
Their hearts and their prayers were unified. They were all on the same page.
So imagine if the worship team was leading us this morning...
And they all had their pages of music in front of them...
And David had planned, “We are going to sing O Our Lord first...”
But Keith was like, “You know, I think The Final Word would work better as a first song...”
And Heidi was like, “No, I think we should start with He will hold Me Fast”...
And Sarah’s like… forget the songs David planned altogether… I’m singing Jesus only Jesus!
And so they all have their own first songs picked out and they start on the down-strum and everyone is playing off a different sheet of music.
That would be the OPPOSITE of this Greek word for together.
“Together” means that they are praying in the same tune… off the same page.
And so how did they know how to pray TOGETHER? How did they all make sure they were playing from he same sheet of music.. all starting on the same verse and note?
Well, I want you to notice that they use...
The Pattern Jesus Taught Us
They all knew where to start because Jesus had taught them how to pray.
Remember the Lord’s pattern of prayer from Luke 11?
One of the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray… and Jesus didn’t say, “There’s no right way to pray… just say whatever comes to your mind.
NO… he gave them a pattern...
Father, Hallowed be your name… your kingdom come.
We said these two statements could be summed up with the words “He is worthy.”
Adore God and Align your heart to his.
Jesus continued the prayer… Give us this day our daily bread… forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us… and lead us not into temptation...
We summarized these three requests under the heading “We are Needy.”
We Acknowledge our need and Ask him for what we need to accomplish his kingdom purposes and bring him the glory due his name.
He is worthy. We are needy.
Adore and align.
Ask and acknowledge.
So Jesus gave them the pattern… the real question is, “Did they use it?”
Did they come together and spend a long time sharing their prayer requests, pray a little for those requests, and then leave?
Or did they seek God’s face before they sought his hand?
Look at verse 24 again - “And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “ ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’— for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” (Acts 4:24–28, ESV)
This is more than half their prayer that Luke recorded - Have you heard one request yet? NO - Instead they anchor their prayer in the worthiness of God and the nature of his kingdom.
First, they adore his name: Sovereign Lord.
Lord is the holy name of God. They are adoring the Hallowed name of God.
And they use one of his attributes to describe his name: He is SOVEREIGN.
In other words, he is the king who RULES over all and controls all things…
That’s important… because the religious rulers forgot that… they want the apostles to listen to them instead of God.
But GOD is the Sovereign Lord… he is the higher authority… and he holds that title because he CREATED all things...
Specifically, he created the heaven and the earth, the sea and everything in them.
That’s a fairly common refrain in the Old Testament scriptures… it’s in Exodus… it’s in Nehemiah… but most directly they are quoting Psalm 146:6.
“Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever;” (Psalm 146:5–6, ESV)
They are orienting their prayer around what GOD, through his Spirit, has revealed to be true about himself in the scriptures.
They use the scriptures to adore his holy name… and then they use the scriptures to align their hearts to his kingdom.
Specifically here Psalm 2… again, they are reorienting their hearts in the midst of what is a very disorienting situation.
The emotional response to being arrested and released by the very same people who KILLED your Lord and Savior earlier this year would have been a bit traumatizing.
But they don’t rush to express what they FEEL they NEED… They orient their hearts to what is REAL about God.
Because our circumstances and emotions can be disorienting, we need to orient our hearts with the truth of God’s word.
Psalm 2 was so perfect… because Psalm 2 gives us this picture of God who sits above all of the weak attempts of the powerful people of this world… and he LAUGHS at them…
And he will put his anointed Son on the throne and judge them.
The powerful elite of this world don’t hold a candle to the Anointed Son who will rule the nations with a rod of Iron at his return.
So as they pray Psalm 2, they apply it to their own situation...
They pray, “God we SEE what you described in Psalm 2 playing out in Herod and Pontius Pilate (Gentile leaders) who plotted together with the rulers of ISRAEL… your OWN PEOPLE…
against your anointed Son!
BUT you are still in control. You are still seated in the heavens.
Whatever they were TRYING TO DO really just accomplished what YOUR HAND and YOUR PLAN had predestined to take place.
What man intended for evil, God intended for good.
I love that they don’t just adore and align their hearts to God’s worthiness intellectually or theologically… they do it experientially.
They acknowledge his attributes (his Sovereignty) and his activity (his Kingdom rule) that are revealed in the scriptures… and they describe them as working in their OWN very real… very concerning situation...
They apply the scriptures to their situation.
So they adore… and they align… using scripture… now they are ready to acknowledge and ask.
We SEE that you are worthy… and we SEE how much we are needy!
We will look at their request in a minute, but let’s just stop and think about our application of this:
If Jesus said, “When you pray, say,”… and the only time in Acts we see HOW the early church prayed, we find them praying that very same way… don’t you think WE should follow that same pattern?
This is how we all pray off of the same page… this is the tuning fork that set’s the key for our praying… we tune our hearts to God’s word using the pattern Jesus taught us.
When we come together, we all have different responses to what’s going on in the world...
We all have different perspectives about how that impacts our lives...
We all have different opinions of what we would like God to do.
And our prayers could go in a thousand directions.
But if we are going to pray together… we need to let God speak first... and he does that primarily through his word.
We need to tune our hearts to the same pitch by responding to the way God has revealed his character and kingdom through his word.
At Oak Hill, we’ve borrowed a term called Spirit-Led, Scripture-Fed, Worship-Based Prayer...
And I would suggest that it should mark all of our prayer times…
Maybe the leader starts with a word of scripture...
Or at the very least, what we are praying should be firmly tied to the scriptures…
I honestly think that’s what’s happening here in Acts 4… they are so filled with the scriptures, that these come to mind first.
But the scriptures are what we can agree upon… this is where we find God’s name and his character revealed.
The scriptures are where God PRIMARILY speaks to us and reveals his will to us… they are what makes prayer a conversation…
Let God speak first through his word before you rattle off your requests… because our requests must be shaped by his nature and his kingdom.
The place we practice this Spirit-Led, Scripture-Fed, Worship-Based prayer the most is in our Gospel Communities.
We START there to get our hearts ready to apply the scriptures and to hear from God...
To get our eyes off of our circumstances FIRST and onto God.
And we need ALL of us participating… tuning our hearts to God together.
Lifting our voices TOGETHER and expressing our faith.
So last week I talked about applying the PATTERN of the Lord’s prayer to any passage of scripture… and we see in Acts 4 that some of the easiest scriptures to do that with are the Psalms.
One habit to enhance your prayer life is to - Fill your heart with the Psalms.
Here in Acts 4, they pray both Psalm 146:6 and Psalm 2:1-2.
I believe these disciples were so deeply and personally impacted by the Psalms that when it came time to pray, it was natural to start there.
The Psalms are in the Bible to give us language for expressing our hearts to God.
They clearly identify the names and attributes of God at work in real-life situations...
And the same God of the Psalmist is the one listening to our prayers.
That’s why the second habit to enhance our prayer life we can learn from the early church here is...
Prayerfully apply the scriptures to our situation.
Acknowledge how you SEE the things God has revealed in the scriptures playing out in our own situation.
How do we SEE his sovereignty and his kingdom purposes at work?
If you don’t see it, pray that too!
That kind of prayer is called LAMENT… God, I KNOW you work in this way, but I’m not seeing it!
Applying the scriptures in prayer requires careful thought.
It takes us beyond saying the words we always say… it requires more than just reading words off a page too...
It requires engaging our hearts with the God who revealed himself in his word and wants to reveal himself in our lives today.
Now it’s one thing to apply the scriptures to our situation… it’s another thing to face the reality that what he’s doing might continue to make your life VERY uncomfortable.
We can see that the nations have always raged and the peoples have always plotted in vain against the Lord...
But that doesn’t change the fact that they are still raging and plotting.
It doesn’t change the fact that persecution and opposition are real and painful and promised by God.
And yet, when we worship God FIRST, we have a clearer perspective of what we need.
They adored him as Sovereign… they aligned their hearts with his indestructible Kingdom… Now they are ready to acknowledge their need and ask for his provision.
Verse 29 - “And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”” (Acts 4:29–30, ESV)
As God sends us as witnesses in a raging world, support one another in… first response prayer… full participation prayer… finally in...
3) Engaged, Expectant Prayer - "Grant your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand..."
3) Engaged, Expectant Prayer - "Grant your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand..."
Our heart for Oak Hill is that Engaged, expectant prayer TOGETHER would mark every activity that we do.
But what do we mean by engaged, expectant prayer?
Explain: Notice what they ask for in the face of persecution:
They DON’T ask for relief from the persecution...
They DON’T ask for immediate judgement of their opponents....
They DON’T pray for safety or for the opposition to be prevented.
They ask for boldness.
The main request of their prayer was for boldness in the face of fear.
Lead us not into temptation. Don’t let us give in to fear as the world rages on against us.
Boldness, in the original, means unrestricted speech.
The rulers said, “Don’t speak in this name” and the apostles responded, “We can’t HELP but speak of the things we have seen or heard!”
They needed BOLDNESS.
They needed their hearts to be unrestrained by fear to speak the gospel… and ONLY the gospel.
To not cut corners. To not mix words.
They needed BOLDNESS.
That’s a prayer God loves to answer.
He had revealed in Psalm 2 that his Son would be given the nations as his inheritance...
He had revealed in Acts 1 that they would be witnesses to all nations about the SON...
They EXPECTED God would work this way… and so they as for what they need to participate.
Expectant prayer is the type of prayer you know God will answer because you are asking him for something you know he loves to do.
They had already seen God heal and perform miraculous signs to accompany their witness...
Now they could EXPECT that God would give them boldness to KEEP being his WITNESSES.
Notice… it also wasn’t the signs they asked for… they left whether or not God would perform the signs up to him (and they assumed that he WOULD!)…
but they ASKED him for boldness… that’s what they knew they needed.. and they knew he could give.
Expectant prayer is the type of prayer you know God will answer because you are asking him for something you know he loves to do.
Illustration - Now here’s the problem: Too often we mistake entitlement for expectancy
We think that expectancy means we name and claim promises so that we have an easier, more comfortable life.
God made a promise to Israel about financial blessing… and if we just expect it enough for ourselves… he will bless us financially. That’s wrong.
God made a promise to a guy named Jabez about increasing his pastures and if we just expect it enough, he will give us more square footage in our house. That’s wrong.
God used signs and wonders to accompany the early church’s witness… he MUST do that with us...
And if he DOESN’T, either there is something wrong with our faith… or something wrong with our God and what he promised. That’s wrong.
That’s not the way prayer works… expectant prayer is not the same as entitled prayer.
We can EXPECT that God will sovereignly and powerfully work to bring about the fulfillment of his kingdom purposes in our lives.
We can EXPECT that God will give us what we need to be his witnesses.
And we can ENGAGE in prayer to that end.
Notice in verse 31 - they are ALL still praying TOGETHER for these same things…
“And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” (Acts 4:31, ESV)
That must have been a crazy experience -
You are praying… and God answers with a physical phenomenon… the ground shakes… just like it did on the day when the Spirit first came in that upper room.
But I believe the greater miracle… in light of all that just happened… is that they were ALL filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.
Not just Peter and John… ALL of the friends who were there praying.
Their expectant prayer was answered… they engaged themselves in prayer… and the result was engaging themselves in witness.
If we want to be a church that is engaged in witness for God, we need to first be a church that is engaged in prayer TO God.
We don’t expect him to remove trial or opposition to our lives… we expect him to lead us THROUGH the trial and opposition to advance his kingdom.
Opposition is expected. So is God working in and through us by the power of the Spirit.
We can’t afford to be checked out when we are praying.
We can’t afford for prayer to be an empty ritual where one person stands up front says some words that we don’t pay much attention to before we get onto the real thing...
We need to be a church who hangs on every word of prayer.
We need a church who lifts one another up… and our other gospel partners up in prayer.
We need to be a church who prays because our witness depends on it.
We need to be a church who expects that... God will work... as we pray.
And so as we close, let me ask - What do you expect God wants to do in and through our church? And are you willing to ENGAGE in prayer to see him do it?
Do you EXPECT that God wants to work to produce BOLDNESS in our hearts to be his witness THIS WEEK? Then ENGAGE with him in prayer.
Do you EXPECT that as you seek God in prayer, he wants to fill us with his Spirit to know how to respond to a raging world? Then ENGAGE with him in prayer.
Do you EXPECT that God wants people to take the next steps on the way of a disciple together?
If that’s what you EXPECT he wants to do (which is in line with his word), ENGAGE your heart together with his people in EXPECTANT PRAYER.
That doesn’t mean that what God will lead us into will be EASY or without resistance… but it WILL be GOOD.