SPIRITED PRAYER

Can I pray for you in any way?

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

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. 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. 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? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against His anointed one.’”

“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. They did what Your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable Your servants to speak Your word with great boldness. Stretch out Your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of Your holy servant Jesus.”

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.

Acts 4:23-31

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

How do you handle adversity when it comes your way, especially when it serves to challenge your faith?

There are plenty of options but as we see in today’s passage, there is only one right one.

For fresh off of their encounter with the Sanhedrin, who had taken Peter and John captive after they healed a lame man in the temple courts and ordered them to stop speaking in the name of Jesus, the two apostles could have done many different things.

They could have allowed themselves to be intimidated and frightened by the Jewish religious leaders, giving into their orders to stop evangelizing as Jesus had commanded them to do.

They could have decided to still speak in the name of Jesus but do so secretly, discretely doing as Jesus told them to in order to avoid any further confrontation.

Or they could have done what they did do, turn to God in prayer, placing their faith and trust in Him.

For the scriptures tell us that Peter and John went back to their people after being set free by the Sanhedrin. I’m sure everyone was eager to hear what had taken place and how the apostles managed to gain their pardon. The two apostles didn’t leave them wondering for we read where they “reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.”

How did the people respond?

The scriptures tell us that they “raised their voices together in prayer to God.”

Friends, this is always the right answer when we face difficulty and uncertainty. We need to go to the Lord who cares for our every need and places His protection upon us always, especially when we are involved in the work He calls us to do. He is the One who shows us the way when we can’t see one for ourselves and we have no more trustworthy source of wisdom and direction than Him.

And so the people joined together and lifted their voices in the following prayer:

“Sovereign Lord, You made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. 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? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against His anointed one.’”

“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. They did what Your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable Your servants to speak Your word with great boldness. Stretch out Your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of Your holy servant Jesus.”

Note the key elements of this prayer because in it we find a framework we can follow ourselves.

First, the people acknowledged God for who He was.

Sovereign Lord, You made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of Your servant, our father David.”

Here we see God elevated to His proper place of authority as the great Creator of all things. There wasn’t anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea that God hadn’t formed with His almighty hands. He made all things to include the people who were giving Him their praise and He possessed the power to help them with whatever they were going through. All they needed to do was place their hope in Him.

Second, the people acknowledged that God had designed and was executing a perfect plan.

Yes, there was a vast conspiracy that worked against Jesus, a plot that resulted in His wrongful conviction and execution, but it wasn’t as if God was just idle, standing by helplessly as the Jews and Gentiles murdered His one and only Son.

Rather, God knew well in advance how things would play out. What happened to His Son was necessary, a short term loss to achieve a longer term glorious gain. In Jeremiah 29:11, we’re reminded that God knows the plans He has for us, plans to give us hope and to help prosper our future. We see a perfect fulfillment of His promise in the life of Jesus, the Messiah God sent from heaven to earth to save all mankind. And if we maintain our faith and trust in God, no matter what life brings, we’ll see His promises come to life in our own lives as well.

Finally, we find the people asking God to keep them in His care and defend them against their adversaries. The Sanhedrin rained threats down upon Peter and John with the intent of intimidating them and shutting down any further proselytizing in Jesus’ name. But the believers knew where their strength came from. They knew God was their refuge and a very present help in times of trouble (Psalm 46:1) so there was no need to be afraid. They believed with all their heart that God could enable them to speak with the very boldness that Jesus did when He ministered. And they asked for God to work in and through them so they could heal, as well as perform other signs and wonders, in the name of His Son.

So how did God respond to the spirited prayer of His people?

We read where He first showed them a sign, indicating that He had heard them loud and clear. For after the people had finished praying, the scriptures tell us that their meeting place was shaken. Imagine a mini-earthquake right after a prayer meeting and you would have a decent idea of what happened but as we see, God had much more in mind than just shaking things up a little. For after their meeting place had been shaken, all the people were filled with the Holy Spirit which empowered them to speak God’s word boldly.

The people’s spirited prayer led to the Holy Spirit being imparted, a Holy Spirit that empowers and protects, a Holy Spirit who is just as much with us today as he was well over 2,000 years ago.

Friends, when adversity and difficult circumstances come knocking at the door of our life, we need to pray and follow the blueprint of the New Testament believers in the fourth chapter of Acts.

First, we need to acknowledge God for who He is, in power and authority over all things.

Second, we need to confess that God’s plan is always at work and that plan is perfect, even if it might not seem that way on the surface. We need to need to trust His promise to prosper us and grant us hope for a future.

Finally, we need to seek the Lord’s power to help us boldly speak in His name and carry out His will. We also then need to be prepared to receive the Holy Spirit to help us do just that.

In the end translation, spirited prayer results in the power of the Holy Spirit being imparted to help us carry out God’s perfect plan. We’re going to see this on full display as we continue our study of this book and follow the development of the Christian church.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com