We’ve been looking these last few weeks at how people pray in the Bible. Abraham haggled with God over judgement he had planned for Sodom and Gomorrah. Do you ever haggle in prayer? Moses unloaded his exasperation on God when it all got too much for him. Jeremiah poured out his raw emotions and personal grief. Are you real with God when you pray? Simeon and Anna prayed faithfully every day and were finally rewarded at the end of their long lives by seeing the answer to all their longings. Reverent prayer. Exasperated prayer. Passionate prayer. Faithful prayer. Today; audacious prayer.
“Audacious” and “prayer” are not words you usually associate with one another… The word “audacious” is more suited to the world of extreme sports than to prayer meetings. When brave people jump out of airplanes with parachutes or fall from bridges with an elastic band round their ankles that is what we call audacious.
But God wants us to pray outrageous, audacious, daring, risky prayers like the one in Acts 4. Peter and John have just released from custody, but they have been given a gagging order, strictly forbidden to say anything in public about Jesus. Put yourself in their shoes. You have been ordered by your local authority to keep the peace and not speak to anyone under any circumstances about what you believe. You’ll stir up trouble. You’ll be responsible for causing a public nuisance. It’s a private matter. It’s the law.
But Peter and John prayed not for the council to change its mind but for the nerve to disobey the law even more insolently than before.
This is the prayer equivalent of bungee jumping or parachuting. The wearing of safety helmets is recommended – literally in fact – because v31 tells us that the house where they prayed was shaken. You know you’ve had a good prayer meeting when you have to measure it on the Richter scale!
There’s a story I like to tell about a businessman who opened a casino and strip club opposite a school. So a group of concerned Christian believers got together and organised a night of prayer and fasting. They prayed until dawn asking God to stop the moral rot in their town. Two days later there was an electrical storm. The casino and strip club were burned to the ground. Praise God! But not for long, because the businessman decided to sue the Christians, claiming that they were liable for the damage because their prayer meeting caused the storm! The believers decided to defend themselves against the allegations, pleading that they could not be held responsible. Ironic isn’t it? Before a judge and jury the businessman suddenly believed in the power of prayer and the Christians vigorously claimed there was no connection at all and it had all just been a coincidence!
Do you really believe in the power of prayer? Recent research in the USA reveals that church leaders (in any case those who participated in the study) pray on average about three minutes every day. I hope on average we manage a bit more than that. But for people like us, busy, tired, distracted, and with a spiritual enemy who hates it when we pray, praying is a battle. So God has given us in Acts 4 five secrets for a powerful life of prayer.
1) Pray Together – Not Just Alone
The first is in v23. “On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people.” There is no trace in any page of the New Testament of solitary Christians. No one manages fine on their own. No, it says “They went back to their own people.” They knew that together they were much stronger than the sum of their parts.
I remember an old Peanuts cartoon where Lucy (the bossy one) tells Linus (the dozy one) to switch channels on the TV. Linus says, “And what makes you think you can just tell me what to do?” Lucy says “My five fingers. They’re not much on their own but together I can make them into a fearsome weapon.” Linus thinks for a minute and says “What channel do you want?” And then, he looks at his fingers and says “Hey, why aren’t you as organised as Lucy’s fingers?”
The unity these Christians had wasn’t about getting together over a cup of tea. God wants us to go further than social friendship; his plan for us is spiritual fellowship. They carried each others’ burdens. They prayed together. “When they heard (about the threats), they raised their voices together in prayer to God” says v24.
In all creation the humble snowflake is among the most fragile of things. They are very small, they weigh next to nothing, they readily melt and they are easily crushed. But together with other snowflakes they can form avalanches capable of burying a village. Prayer is like that. It is so much more powerful when there is agreement in the Spirit and we all say “Amen” with conviction. The world can refuse our invitations, it can despise our teaching, it can oppose our arguments, it can patronise our good works and it can ridicule our values but the world is defenceless against our prayers spoken out in faith, in unity and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is why we encourage people to pray together in home groups, that is why we have started prayer partnerships (are you in one? – get into one if you’re not, see Sylvia and she will do the rest). It’s why we love to do prayer ministry, it’s why we have arranged prayer evenings for sung worship and children’s and youth ministry this month. We believe in the power of prayer together. It changes things. It makes a difference.
2) Look To God, Not At Problems
The second secret comes in v24-28. “They raised their voices together in prayer. ‘Sovereign Lord,’ they said, ‘you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.’”
What are they doing there? They are focusing on the power and authority and supremacy of God; not on the scale and complexity of their immediate difficulties.
And they go on; v25… “Lord, you spoke by the Holy Spirit…” God knows that. Why did they say that? They are reminding themselves that God is the God of real revelation, he has spoken his true and authoritative word, he has already disclosed his mind to us and it is breaking into the realm of our experience.”
And then they say this; v28… “Herod and Pontius Pilate met together … to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.”
Again, God knows all this. They’re declaring the truth that God is in charge of history because there is power in speaking out truth that nothing takes him surprise. He will accomplish his plan, he will do what he has said. Even allowing for the free will given to all people, he are sovereign in the affairs of nations and nothing will frustrate his will.
Whenever I begin my praying by rattling on to God about how unfair life is I pray with no perspective, no authority and no power. That’s why these people start by focusing their attention on God. Before asking anything at all, before they present God their real and numerous problems, they remind themselves just who it is they are addressing.
3) Start With Praise, Not Petition
The third secret flows from the second. Spend time in praise and worship before bringing a list of stuff for God to sort out. The basic reason is obvious. God absolutely deserves high praise. He is unquestionably worthy of adoring worship. It’s just the right thing to do. But it’s more than that. Praise and worship make fertile ground for increase in faith. Praise and worship pull down strongholds of fear and unbelief. Praise and worship lead us into the presence of God where there is fullness of joy. That’s a good place to pray.
So start by exalting and magnifying the greatness of the Lord and speaking out truth about him. The first Christians did. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” Start with praise. Only then, renewed by God’s presence, confident in his grace, should we move on to petition.
4) Pray Specific Prayers, Not Vague Ones
The word of God reveals a fourth secret in v29-30. When they present their requests to God what they actually ask is very precise, very exact. There’s no waffly church language in there; no droning, repetitive flannel. They say “Lord, consider their threats” and then theyask God to do two specific things.
First, “Enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.”
Second, “Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
One of the first things I learned as a young Christian is that specific prayers get specific answers and vague prayers get vague answers.
Helen Roseveare, who was a missionary in Zaire, once told the story of a baby who was born prematurely. Her mother died in childbirth so they brought the baby and its sister to the orphanage where she worked. This is what she wrote:
“We tried to improvise a homemade incubator to keep the baby alive but our only hot water bottle was leaking. So we asked the children in the orphanage to pray for the baby and its sister. One of the children stood up to pray, ‘Father, please send us a hot water bottle today. Tomorrow will be too late, the baby will die. And Father, please send a toy doll for the baby’s sister so she doesn’t feel so lonely and sad.’
That same afternoon a parcel arrived from England. The children looked on impatiently all the time we were unpacking the parcel. To their great joy, surrounded by piles of clothes, there was a brand new hot water bottle.
The child who had prayed for a doll started to furrow down into the package saying, ‘If God sent us a hot water bottle, he has sent a doll too.’ And she was right! Our heavenly Father knew in advance that that child would ask for those very things. Five months earlier he had led a group of women in a small English church hall to place those particular items into that particular package.”
Specific prayers get specific answers and vague prayers get vague answers. I want to encourage you, when you pray, to ask God for precise things.
5) Know That God Answers In His Time, Not In Ours
The fifth and last secret , in fact it’s not a secret at all, because we know this very well it’s just that we find it hard to accept… sometimes God answers our prayers quickly - and sometimes he delays.
In v29 the believers pray “Now, Lord… enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” And in v31 it appears that God answers their prayer straight away. “After they prayed, (or as the ESV translates it ‘when they had 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.”
They asked God for boldness and God gave them what they asked for immediately. God’s answer to their prayer was live, before their eyes. I love it when that happens. Kathie and I once prayed for a friend who had had a stomach bug for two weeks and kept being sick. Immediately after we prayed she rushed to the toilet. I don’t know what went on in there. It sounded like a firework display! But she came out, said she felt much better and was fine from that moment on.
But we know that it’s not always like that, don’t we? Why?
· Is it because we don’t have enough faith?
· Is it because we are too sinful?
· Is it because we are resisting the Holy Spirit?
It could be - but not necessarily.
Sometimes God just answers later. Look at v30 for example. They pray “Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” But you need to wait until chapter 5, verse 12 before you read “The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people.”
So please don’t be discouraged if God doesn’t answer your prayers straight away. Two weeks ago we saw that Simeon and Anna waited a whole lifetime before they set eyes on the Messiah they had been praying for and waiting for.
C.S. Lewis once said that God is exceptionally kind to us when we are young in the faith. I spoke with an experienced Christian recently and he said to me, “When I was a young believer I had loads of clear and prompt answers to prayer including some that I can only explain as miraculous.
My own experience is exactly the same. For many, if not most, Christians I think that is the case. At the beginning of your faith journey, just before conversion and just afterwards, God seems to do amazing things every week. But as you get older in the faith that sort of thing seems to get more and more rare.”
It doesn’t seem right does it? Shouldn’t spectacular answers to prayer become more and more common the more we progress in faith and knowledge of God?
It seems not. The New Testament gives two very clear examples of prayers that were not answered. Jesus (who didn’t lack faith and who was guilty of no sin) begged his Father to remove the cup of suffering from him the night before he died. And his Father said, “no.” Oh how glad I am that that prayer was not answered!
If God had said “yes” instead of “no” Jesus wouldn’t have died, he would not have risen from the grave, we would still be lost in our sins, we would still be without God and without hope in the world, and destined for hell – an anguished and everlasting separation from God.
The other example is Paul (he was no spiritual pygmy either). Three times he begged the Lord to take away the thorn in his flesh. Was it a physical sickness or weakness or was it persecutors or something else? I don’t know. I just know he asked God to take it away and God said “No. My grace is going to have to be enough for you.”
Sometimes, in exceptional circumstances, and for reasons that belong to him alone, and even when the stakes are high, and when he knows that by his grace we can live with his silence, God sometimes says “no” or “wait.” Mature Christians understand that God answers in his time, not ours.
Ending
The very first Christians on the African continent each had a little place in the bush outside the village where they spent time with God alone and prayed their audacious prayers. After a while the routes that led to their prayer spots got worn down and became real paths. So it became obvious which Christians were praying daily and those who were not. Those who really believed in the power of prayer used to say to the others, “Friend, why is grass growing on your pathway?”
I want to grow in boldness and I want to see the Lord stretch out his hand to heal and perform signs and wonders. Do you? Well let’s not let the grass grow on our path.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 7th November 2010
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