From Texting to Praying
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Throughout the series, we’ve said that technology can help connect us. It actually can, but it can never replace the importance and priority of face-to-face, in-person fellowship that God created us for. And if you think about how God created us, he made us first of all for himself, and then he made us for one another. He made us so that we would live in community with one another. As the Apostle John wrote, 2 John 12 (ESV) “Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink.
Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.” John wasn’t against writing. He wasn’t against pen and paper. He just said it’s superior to be in person. It’s better to be in person.
And I’m not against screens and smartphones and those kinds of things. They can help us, but if we get them out of order, they can also be a hindrance to our relationships. In our series theme, we’ve been following the four devotions. The four sermons actually followed the four devotions of Acts 2:42 (ESV) “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Today we’re on that fourth devotion – prayer. And we’re going to be talking about the importance of praying together.
We know how to pray alone and it’s good to pray alone, but it’s just as important to set a priority of praying with God’s people, praying together. And we’re going to be talking about that today. Now, all of us know how to communicate a prayer request. You just post it on Facebook, right? Here’s my prayer request.
And then you get the prayer emojis and you know people are out there praying for you, right? And so that is helpful, you know, and we know how to inform people of our prayer needs, but it’s not the same. It doesn’t communicate as much as what we see in the scripture that you could bear one another’s burdens, that you could come together in person and actually lift up each other and lift up prayers for each other and find real strength. Some burdens become lighter when shared. Some fears begin to lose their grip when you open up about them. Some trials require more than a prayer emoji.
They require God’s people together with you in person, somebody putting their hand on your shoulder or holding hands with you and lifting up your prayer request, your burden together in prayer. It helps to lift them off of your shoulders to the very presence of God. Now, we all want to know that someone will stand with us when life gets hard. We all want to know that. And that desire is not just limited to grown-ups.
Children feel it too. They feel that same desire to come together. And that reminds me of a popular family movie that’s out right now. I think it’s in part 5, Toy Story part 5. I think I’m like three behind on this one.
But I was looking into this because this weekend we had our grandchildren over. Robin and I had our ten grandchildren over for our annual event that we call “Grandparents Weekend.” We used to call it the “Grandparents Trip” and then there were ten of them, and we’d need to buy a bus. And so we said, let’s just have them at the house for the weekend. So they dropped them off Thursday at 5:00 PM, and pickup was at noon on Saturday.
We had them for two nights, and it was great. The first thing I said to them when they showed up was, “Hand me your phones and your screens, and here’s where they’re going to be. They’re going to be upstairs in your bedrooms.” And by the way, if any of you saw photos of what happened at our house over the weekend, you couldn’t even walk in the bedrooms because we had blow-up mattresses. And so they had to walk on each other’s bedding; it was just really great.
And it was a great weekend. At the end of the weekend, my wife Robin asked the kids, “What was your favorite part of the weekend?” They could have said swimming in the pool, shooting basketball, playing ping pong, eating all these great meals, but you know what they said? They said that it was Papaw’s stories at night.
And so every year, I write stories and each of them has a part. They’re called “The Cosmic Cousins” and they all have parts. One of them at the end of the second night, stood up; I think it was Kenzie. She stood up and said, “Oh no, we have to wait another year?” because I ended it with a cliffhanger again.
I found out, and maybe you could learn this too, that they can still sit still for a story. They can still be quiet and be together without a screen. They can have a meal and have a conversation with their Papaw and their Mingie, which is what they call Robin and not be looking at a pad. Now, maybe they can only do it for two days; I don’t know what the parents are doing with them now, but we got through two days without it.
So back to Toy Story, because I had grandkids over and it inspired me to look into this thing. There’s a little girl, she’s 8 years old, she’s named Bonnie, and she has trouble making friends, as the story goes. And so her parents think maybe because they see all the other little kids have a pad called “Lily Pad,” maybe if she gets one she could be accepted. And then, of course, she stops playing with her real toys, and so then there’s that Toy Story dilemma. There’s this new toy that is, you know, grabbing all of her time – “Lily Pad.”
She’s in a chat, I guess, on the “Lily Pad” and she becomes friends with some of the little girls in her dance class. They invite her over to a sleepover, but ultimately they end up making fun of her online. And so the thing that she was seeking to be accepted, she found out was the very thing that was injuring her little heart. I’m surprised, thankfully surprised, that Hollywood put out something that I think is probably pretty good and timely and useful for parents to consider now. Not that pads are bad, but they have their place and they need to be used responsibly. Well, that’s kind of been the setup for this series.
That’s not what this message is about. What this message is about is a better priority, and life is better face to face. That leads us into Acts chapter four, where we’re going to be looking at this devotion of prayer and how it’s one thing to give people the information about your prayer request. It’s a whole other thing to get together and to pray together. In the book of Acts,
Luke described, after the Jewish leaders had arrested Peter and John and threatened them to stop speaking in the name of Jesus, how they immediately went to their brothers and sisters and prayed together. I believe today that we can bring those things that threaten us, those trials that we’re facing, and we can pray together and experience real help. As we look at the text today, I’m going to see together with you four reasons why the best help we can find for the trials that we face, in order to answer God’s mission for our life, is found in our text today. Four reasons why we can get real help in praying together. Chapter 4 of the book of Acts.
Acts 4:23-31 (ESV) 23 “When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 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, 25 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? 26 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’ 27 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, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. 29 And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, 30 while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
31 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.” This is God’s word. Amen. We’re looking for three reasons why praying together helps us face trials and fulfill Christ’s mission. Here’s the first reason:
1. Because it helps us lift our shared burdens to God’s throne.
It helps us lift our shared burdens to God’s throne. Look at verse 23. It says, “When they were released…” Released from what? From jail. They had spent the night in jail.
They appeared before the court of the Sanhedrin that morning, and they were threatened to no longer speak in the name of Jesus. Why were they arrested? Why were they jailed and brought before the Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish leaders, the high priest and others? Why? Because in chapter 3 of the book of Acts, they had been going up to the temple to pray, Peter and John, and as they went up to the temple, they encountered a crippled man who had been crippled since birth.
Probably, the family or friends would carry him up there every day to the gate called “Beautiful” and he would beg – “alms for the crippled, alms for the poor” and he rattled his dish. And so as Peter and John walk by, Peter looks at him and he says, Acts 3:6 (KJV) “Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” And he takes him by the arm and pulls him up.
And the man doesn’t just walk. The man, who had never walked in his whole life, goes dancing behind Peter and John into the temple and leaping and crying out that he’d been healed. And a great crowd gathered in the temple courts, and Peter, never one to waste an opportunity, preached Jesus. And he got arrested for it. And he was threatened not to do it again.
So as soon as he got out, he didn’t stop by Chick-fil-A on the way home. He didn’t go get something to eat. They spent the night in jail and didn’t get a night’s sleep. No, they went straight to the house where the people had been praying for them. And the people that were praying were probably thinking, we might not ever see Peter and John again.
Again, it hadn’t been but a little while since they had crucified Jesus, and it’s this same crowd now that have their own Peter and John. We might not ever see them again. And then Peter and John come to the door. That’s what all happened before we get to this: Verse 23, “When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them.”
They told them, ‘Hey, we got threatened. We were told to never talk about Jesus again; not to do that anymore.’ And so they could’ve stopped right there; this is what happens sometimes at some of the prayer gatherings maybe. Maybe the people think, what we need to do now is give Peter and John some advice – maybe you shouldn’t have been so loud in the temple and you attracted attention to yourself or maybe you should’ve…
They didn’t do that. They came in with their prayer request and gave them their report, and guess what the people did? Well, let’s look and see. Did they give them advice? No, it says in verse 24 “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,”
You know what they did when they received the burdens that Peter and John brought to them? They didn’t offer them advice. They didn’t try to fix it. They didn’t say, you should have done this, or maybe you could try this next time. You know what they said?
We’d better pray about this. Let’s lift this up to God. Let’s go to God’s throne room. Well, Gary, why do you say God’s throne room? Well, let’s look at how the prayer began: “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them,”
”Sovereign Lord,” King of the universe, sovereign over all sovereigns, Lord God. That’s how they start. “Sovereign Lord.” And then Creator God, “who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.” They started in the throne room.
They didn’t start in the room where the Sanhedrin were. They’re not in authority. They claim authority, but they have no authority. The only authority given to them is that which is released to them through the Sovereign Lord. So that’s who they addressed.
When Peter and John came in and told them their prayer requests, they said, ‘Hey, let’s bring these burdens up to the Sovereign Lord. Let’s take them into the throne room.’ And do you know what? They didn’t have to knock at the door. They didn’t have to stop at the secretary’s desk in heaven and say, ‘Hey, Angel Gabriel, could you see if we can get an appointment with the Father?’
No, the door is flung wide open. The temple curtain is rent from top to bottom. The Holy of Holies is wide open. They just could come right on in. Not because they knew how to pray well, not because they were somehow able to earn that position, but Jesus had paved the way.
He had paid all the price. They were able to say, “Sovereign God” and they did this together. It’s helpful to do it together. It helps us to do it together because we often try to bear it alone.
And when we bear it alone, we’re so bowed under the weight of our own trials, we have a hard time looking up. But together we can bear one another’s burdens. We can share them and lift them to God’s throne. The book of Galatians says, Galatians 6:2 (ESV) “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” We teach this all the time here —
“You can’t do the ‘one anothers’ without one another.” How are you going to bear one another’s burdens if you don’t get together? You have to get together face to face. Phones are great, pads are great. It’s not the same as face to face.
Bear one another’s burdens, pray for each other. And we have the right to the throne room because Hebrews says, Hebrews 4:16 (ESV) “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” We can come on in because the door’s been flung open, because of what Jesus has done for us. We can cry out to the King and the Creator of all things, and He hears us. And when we cry out together, it helps those of us that are burdened down to lift our eyes up.
It gets us together in this. Have you ever tried to move something heavy on your own and you think to yourself, I got this? Some years ago, we had just moved to Roanoke, Virginia. I bought my wife a piano. It was a nice piano. We really loved this piano, and the movers put it where we told them to.
We bought a two-story house that was kind of built into a hill, and so you could also walk around to the deck and you were on the upstairs side because of the way the hill hit the house. And so they put the piano upstairs where we told them to, and then we found out we didn’t really like the piano upstairs, We really wanted it downstairs. So my brother came over, my younger brother. I said to him, “I think me and you can move this.” He says, “Do you think we can get it down those stairs?” I said, “I have an idea.
What if we take it out to the back upstairs deck; there’s only three steps off the deck to the yard, and then we’ll walk down the hill in the yard and then carry it downstairs through the downstairs door. We’ll avoid all of those steep steps.” He says, “That’s a long walk.” I said, “We can take a rest once in a while.” I mean, look at me, you know, right? And so we head off.
I said, “I’ll be the guy who goes backwards.” I’m the big brother, you know. And so we carried the piano around, and right when we almost made the last step, we had done so well, my brother stumbled a little bit and dropped his end, and broke the leg of Robin’s new piano. If you ever go over to my son Stephen’s house, it’s right as you walk in the door. We gave it to him.
Somebody in the church gave us a better one. We’ve got that one in our living room now. Here’s the moral of the story: we thought we had it. I thought we could carry that burden without calling more friends over. I was wrong.
And that wasn’t the first time, and that pains me to say it. It’s not the last time that I have said, ‘Hey, I got this.’ Famous last words of Gary.
It’s better to share the burdens with others. And bring it into the throne room. The Sanhedrin threatened the apostles, but they didn’t occupy the throne. We can share burdens and lift them up to the throne room. Here’s the second reason:
2. Because it helps us see our circumstances from God’s perspective.
It helps us see our circumstances from God’s perspective. We’re at verse 25 and following. They prayed to the sovereign Lord, the sovereign Creator, Then verse 25, “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?” Somebody in the room felt Scripture come into their heart, and they verbatim prayed Psalm 2:1-2. They referred to it like this. Instead of saying, ‘the Lord just put on my heart Psalm 2:1-2,’
they said, “who through the mouth of our father David,” because David is the one who wrote the Psalm. But he didn’t write it in his own power. “….your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,” It’s beautiful. Then they quote it verbatim. Go look at Psalm 2:1-2.
There it is verbatim. They quoted it.
And they prayed, and then they prayed the psalm out loud. “Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? 26 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed” and then they apply it
to their present day. They took something that was written hundreds of years ago in God’s Word, in the book of Psalms, and they saw its fulfillment had happened in their day. In prayer, this happened. Now, how did this come about? How did they get this perspective?
Wait a minute, it’s because they had saturated their hearts and their minds with God’s Word. They’d been students of God’s Word. And so then when they’re praying together, the Holy Spirit goes through the file in their mind and tells them to pray this one. It has to be there first, by the way. That’s what’s so good when you pray with other believers is that somebody here has a verse and you don’t have that verse necessarily memorized, but this one does or that one over here does.
And then you’re praying. And when you offer your prayer requests and people have said, “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…” and you’ve already done the big ‘Sovereign Lord, Creator Lord.’ You’ve done that, but now you’re at this place of quiet. And then somebody starts speaking scripture. I get holy chill bumps on my arms when that happens.
That’s the Lord speaking through my friend right here next to me, my brother. And then all of a sudden, I’ll feel what I’m supposed to pray. See, that can’t happen by yourself.
It doesn’t happen like that by yourself.
And then you pray, and then somebody else in the room feels the Holy Spirit tap them, and then they pray. They haven’t even offered their prayer requests yet. They’re just praying scripture over each other, and they’re applying it to their present day. And they say, ‘look, this very scripture that David wrote centuries ago, we just saw this happen in this city.’ 27 “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, Jerusalem, they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed.”
The word, “anointed,” is in the Greek, “Christos,” (who is your ‘Christos’) Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, they name them, the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, people who never would have been friends became friends. They gathered together. See, Satan’s people, the world’s people, they know how to gather together. They conspired together.
The book of Luke actually says that it was the first time that Herod and Pilate became friendly over something. It says, Luke 23:12 (ESV) “And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day, for before this they had been at enmity with each other.” They became friends over crucifying Jesus, over the trial for Jesus. The Gentiles and the Jews became friends. The Romans and the Sanhedrin became friends.
And the world will conspire against God’s people. But they said, ‘God, you saw this coming.’ That’s how they’re praying –this didn’t sneak up on You, Sovereign Lord. You saw this coming. And so they say in verse 28, “to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.”
Jesus wasn’t crucified because he fell prey to some political mess and just made a bad decision and it should have never happened. No, before the foundation of the earth, it was planned that Jesus would come and die in our place. It was according to God’s hand, his activity, and his plan, his will. And they’re praying like that. You know what they have?
You know what’s happening in this prayer? They’re getting God’s perspective on it. Has their burden been lifted yet? No. Has their circumstance— has the threat been erased?
No, the threat’s still active. But do you know what’s changed? It is their perspective. They now see it all from a higher place, and they recognize there’s no such thing as a coincidence with God’s people. There are only “Godincidences” with God’s people.
Anything that touches me has to first go through His fingers. He has to allow it to touch me, and if he allows it to touch me, then he’s going to cause it to take up to be my good, for my good. And so I can just live, and I can trust him, and I can lift this up together with others. And so we see in Romans chapter 8, which I referenced just now, Romans 8:28 (ESV) “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Some years ago, in 2010, we made an offer on this old Regal Cinema that we’re sitting in right now.
And I was so excited. One of our members, Mike Laramee, is a pilot. I asked him, “Hey, is there any way you could fly over this thing and I could get some photos from the air?” And so he borrowed a friend’s plane that had one of those wings that’s kind of beneath the cockpit.
I didn’t have my smartphone. I had an actual Canon camera holding it like this. He flew over and I said to him, “Man, all I got was the wing. The wing was in the way.” He says to me, “Oh, I can fix that.”
And so I’ve got my camera leaning over. And he turned the plane upside down. And all of a sudden, I’m like this. And the camera’s about putting my eye out.
And I’m clicking – click, click, click, click, click, click. And I didn’t know if I got anything till I got back home. But I got some great pictures. It all looked different from up there. You could see how it all laid out.
It was a different perspective, and that was just from flying over. Everything looked small down here.
All the big stuff down here looks small, and it all looks small from God’s perspective. Prayer may not change our circumstances immediately, but it can change how we see them. All things are small from God’s perspective. And that leads us to the 3rd reason
3. Because it helps us align our requests with God’s purpose.
It helps us align our requests. Notice they started with where God is in his throne room, God’s word and his perspective, praying consistently with God’s perspective. And now they’re going to finally give their prayer requests.
A lot of times when you pray with people, sometimes— be aware of this— we start with our laundry list too early.
And sometimes we might pray out of order because we haven’t really thought through who we’re talking to and what access we have and how thankful we can be for that access and how his word gives us wisdom and we can pray about wisdom. Save those prayer requests a little later in the prayer. That’s when things start coming into alignment with God’s purpose. Look at verse 29 and 30. We finally get to some prayer requests.
They are finally going to ask him something. Verse 29, “And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, 30 while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” Verse 29, “And now, Lord, look upon their threats…” That’s the first prayer request. There it is in verse 29. Lord, you look at their threats.
You look at it, we’re not going to worry about it. We know they have threatened us, we know there’s trouble, we know there’s trials. Would you look at that? We’re going to stay busy over here with what you told us to do. We are not going to let that fill my mind and heart.
You look at that, you worry about that, Lord. Not that God worries, because he doesn’t. You let that be your concern. I can’t control it anyway. Most of my worries come from things that I think I can control but can’t.
So you look at it.
I’m not sure I would have started there if I was praying. If I was praying to God and I wanted to give him advice on how he should handle it— I know you don’t pray that way, but sometimes y’all pray for me because sometimes I think, now Lord, could you do it like this? If you could just send a lightning bolt down and wipe out the Sanhedrin, that would be helpful.
Well, Pastor, my goodness. Sorry.
But then the Lord gets a hold of me. And that’s it. That’s what happens if you pray your requests before you get in alignment.
Another way you might say before you get in tune— Brother Eric is over here on the electric guitar. That’s my guitar of choice too. I like the fact that you got one of those early Fenders going on here, man. That’s a good one. I like that one.
But he’s got a rig over here. It’s got all kinds of buttons. I didn’t grow up with that, so I don’t know how to use all of those buttons, but I know one of them is a button that turns the volume off, so you can check tuning between songs without everybody out here knowing. Because if Eric plays out of tune— and that’s the thing with stringed instruments, they can go out of tune in the middle of a thing— and somebody in the audience that’s not even a musician will think, something ain’t right up there.
They don’t know what it was, but there was something not in tune. And sometimes we pray “out-of-tune” prayers because we haven’t started in the throne room. We haven’t got God’s perspective from God’s Word. But if we start there, we bring our prayers into alignment. And so they started there.
They said, we’re not going to worry about this, Lord. I’m not going to pray my worries to you. I’m just going to leave it to you. I’m going to leave that at the foot of the cross. I’m going to leave that in the throne room.
You look at their threats. Now fill that in for yourself today. What do you feel threatened about today? What are you scared of? What’s causing you anxiety?
Say, ‘Lord, could you look at that for me? Look into that for me, Lord. I’m not going to look at it anymore.’ Here’s their second prayer request in verse 29, “… and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness,”
That’s their second prayer request. It’s exactly the one they were ordered not to do by the Sanhedrin. Lord, we know it’s your will. They’re praying consistent with his will. Lord, you look at the trouble, you handle that.
It’s out of our control anyway. Help us to do what you called us to do. Help us not to allow the world, Satan, and even our own temptation to distract us for the purpose you made us for.
I thought that’s a prayer request right there.
And they’re not finished. They have another prayer request. Lord, help us to do what you’ve called us to do, because there is something for us to do. Lord, you look at it. Help us to, to keep speaking your word.
And then what? Verse 30, “while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” So Lord, as we do our part that you’ve called us to do, you do that which we can’t do.
Heal marriages, heal broken relationships, heal people that have addictions, heal people that are in trouble. Heal their bodies; the doctors told them they have cancer or some other thing. Lord, we can’t heal anybody, but we can talk about Jesus.
Now, I don’t know why you do it. You show up here, a lot of you, every Sunday— not all of you, but a lot of you— to hear this guy get up here, waving his arms and talking about Jesus. I see those hands.
It’s kind of strange. I can’t do a thing for you. I’m just like you.
But if I do my part and you do your part, we talk about Jesus and lift Jesus up, we can all say, ‘Father, stretch forth your hand as we do the part you told us to do.’ And so when I preach, when I get up to preach, Lord, if I just get up there without you, if I show up without you, nothing happens.
But Lord, help me to disappear and they only hear you so that you can stretch forth your hand and heal. That’s how they prayed, but they weren’t finished. They got a fourth prayer request:
, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” Verse 30, “…And signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
Miracles.
Aren’t they a little presumptuous praying for miracles? No, they started at the top. Verse 24, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them,” All of those threats happened according to your hand and your plan.
No, it wasn’t presumptuous. They were praying like they were talking to the sovereign Lord, Creator of the universe. They were praying to the one that can do anything according to his will. Do you pray like that?
Miracles.
We’ll do our part, Lord. We’ll lift up Jesus. That’s all we can do, and we have to have your power to do that. But you do what you can do.
So we pray in tune. And as we sang earlier from John 15:7-8 (ESV) “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” He’s in me and I’m in him, and I pray according to him in me, and then he does miracles in me. I bear fruit not from myself but from him.
And one of the greatest benefits of praying together is that it keeps a church in tune with God and one another.
4. Because it helps us open our mouths with God’s empowerment.This past week in my community group, something happened. The first part of the group time was a little bit stiff. We had some first-time guests, and so sometimes when you have first-time guests, you try to be on your best behavior, and then you end up being a little bit too formal or whatever. But then the men and women broke for prayer. There were more men than women this past Wednesday night, and we finished first, because we have fewer words.
And the women went upstairs. By the time the women came down, we were on the front porch trying to figure out which star we were looking at. I mean, we were holding up our apps – that looks like that’s Venus over there. But the women came down, and all of them had tear-filled eyes. And this preacher thought, uh-oh,
what did those women upstairs do? And on the way home, my wife told me that miracles happened. I can’t tell you the details because what’s said in the group stays in the group, but miracles happened. It started out a little dry that night but ended up wet because they prayed together. They prayed real prayers.
Have you ever been there? Well, here’s what it looks like, not just what happened at my community group, but what happened back there in the book of Acts,
verse 31, “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.”Some say it was an earthquake. The Greek word here seems to be a motion produced by wind or storms, not so much a shaking of the ground as it was a shaking of the place. It says the place, doesn’t it? The place they were meeting was shaken. It seems like a similarity to chapter 2 at Pentecost when the Holy Ghost came in like a wind.
It seems like something similar to that, but whatever it was, it shook the people up. Have you ever been to a prayer meeting like that?
Dr. John Gill says “This was now shaken with a rushing mighty wind, as on the day of Pentecost, and was a symbol of the divine presence, and a token that their prayers were heard.”
Wow. Gathered together and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And what was the outcome? They continued to speak the Word of God with boldness, the very thing they prayed for. They spun out of that room with their hair on fire talking about Jesus.
And they fulfilled what Jesus commanded in Acts 1. He said, Acts 1:8 (ESV) “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Everything you have needs to be recharged, and they keep changing how you plug them in. You thought you had all the charging things you needed, and then they come out with a new device and you have to go buy something else to charge it. We all know they don’t work, these devices we have, if you don’t recharge them. We know that about our devices, but do you know that about your soul?
Do you know that there are things about your soul that will not recharge alone? They will only recharge when you become devoted to the apostles’ teaching, gathering in the temple courts and public places on Sundays like this. There’s no replacing this for recharging your soul. And that rhythm of temple courts and house to house, big groups and small groups, that rhythm. Why try to invent something new, friends?
This was the priority of the first century church, and oh, how it grew, and oh, how the place they met was shaken, and oh, how they spoke the word of God boldly.
If we want to be a church that grows, we’ll be devoted to that rhythm.
Something that’s breaking my heart right now that I learned this week— we’ve been able to take attendance of the children. I know that we’re growing, but I don’t know if you were here because we don’t take your attendance on Sunday morning. I can know by memory when I look at you. If I don’t see you for a few weeks, I’ll start to notice, but it’s hard. There’s really four services, and plus we have another campus with two services.
There are two in here, two next door. It’s hard to keep up with individuals. Our community group system is really our strategy for keeping up with people and caring for them. But here’s the disturbing statistic. We’ve been looking at our stuff, and we thought, we can’t check people in, but we can check children in.
And so we know how many times a month your children come to church, which can give us a little sense of young families at least. We don’t— we’re not sure about singles and people that are empty nesters, but we’re pretty sure about young families. You know, the national average according to Barna is now the American member that says, “I’m a committed member to the church,” attends 1.5 times per month, which is pretty tragic. And I thought, surely we’re better than that. But if we just look at young families that check in their kids from nursery to 5th grade, I thought, surely we’re better than that.
I’ve never known this number until this past week.
It’s 1.3 times per month – 35% frequency rate, because there’s so many things competing for our young families and our children. So many great things, important things— playing music, playing sports, education— wonderful things.
But the priority of the rhythm of life, of getting together for the apostles’ teaching, for the fellowship, for the breaking of bread and prayer. It’s become a lost priority, and we’re putting so many things in front of it. It’s breaking my heart. It’s breaking my father’s heart, my grandfather’s heart.
Would you pray about it with me and do more than pray about it and say, Lord, help me to get my priorities in order.
As we think about these four reasons that we can lift it up to the throne of God, that we can get his perspective, his purpose, and we can move with his boldness, his empowerment. It’s not the power of our prayer, it’s not the quality of our prayer, it’s not the fellowship of each other and how that makes us feel more accepted. It’s all based on the finished work of Jesus. It’s all based on the one who prayed for us and died for us on the cross and went to the cross alone so that we could be together with the Father and with him. He died on the cross for our sins.
He was raised to life so that we could have eternal life. This is the basis on why we can approach the throne boldly.
We are not trying to persuade a distant God to care about us. Through Christ, we’ve already been brought near. We’re not trying to earn God’s favor. In Christ, we’ve already received grace. We’re not gathering because our faith is always strong.
The truth is we often gather with our faith being weak. But when I’m weak, he is strong. So what burden are you carrying today? Who knows what you’re really facing? Who in this room knows your name because you told them and you said, pray for me, and you opened up your life to community and you decided to gather faithfully with God’s people
and to experience a real shaking in your life?
This same Jesus who saved us gave us another gift. He gave us one another.
Make it a priority. Let’s pray.
Lord, I pray first of all for the one that’s in the room and you’ve never given your life to Jesus. You came in on a thin thread today. Someone invited you. You looked us up online, but you’re missing something and you’re looking for it.
And it’s been Jesus looking for you the whole time. Why not commit your life to him today? Why not pray with me right where you’re seated right now, right where you are? If this is your heart’s desire, pray with me right now. Dear Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner.
I repent of my sin, and I come to you believing that you died on the cross for my sin, that you were raised from the grave, and that you live today. I believe that, and I confess you as my Lord and Savior, and I receive you as my own. I ask you to receive me and to forgive me and to adopt me into your family as a child of God. I want to follow you all the days of my life. If you’re praying that prayer of faith, believing, he’ll save you and welcome you to the family.
Others are here today and you’re a believer. Maybe you’ve even been attending here for a while, but you have yet to plug in. You’ve yet to really take advantage of the “one anothers;” to really be able to share life in community. Why not make a commitment to the Lord and say, Lord, forgive me for trying to live on my own. Help me, Lord, to make a commitment today to be involved in what you’re doing with your people. We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Read transcript
We’re concluding our series called Connected. If you missed any of these, that’s okay. They, they, they stand alone pretty well. But let me celebrate a few things before we dig in. I want to celebrate the work we did last week.
Many of you got involved with Serve Rocky Mount last week. We served all over our city. We fed the hungry with, with Ripe Revival. We did some work at Peacemakers, which is a group of people that, that teach and do various work over in the community. We— some of you may have given blood last week.
I didn’t partake in that one, but some of you might have done that. But we were over at the pregnancy center. We did some work with Building Shalom, and some of you might have engaged all of that. I saw a few of you at the ones I went to. I’m so thankful for you.
I pray, and my prayer has been all week, that maybe some of those conversations made a huge impact, that people are professing Christ this week that weren’t last week. As a result of the hard work. Also, I want to celebrate something. Today’s message is about prayer. That’s where we’re going to spend our time today, but there’s kind of another theme that we’re having today.
We celebrated our kids ministry and our leaders and our teachers who are deserving of our praise for sure, but it’s more than that. There’s a great work that’s happening of our church hopefully passing on the baton to the next generation. This morning was Miss Eden’s first Sunday on stage. You may have noticed her.
Eden, I’ve been around her since she was born. I had the great privilege of baptizing her. I’ve been a part of this journey with Eden and Eden’s 12 years old, y’all, and she’s on stage singing and praising God and there’s something— that’s exciting in and of itself, but I just want to say something. Our church, I pray, will be a part of a group of churches that leads the next generation to follow Christ and to lead in ministry. We’re always just one generation away from dropping the baton of the gospel, and so we have to do well.
One of the most important jobs we will ever do as believers is to pass it on, to pass it on to our children, to pass it on to the next generation. I’m thankful for Eden. I’m thankful for— I pray that maybe she’ll inspire others who are young and scared even, but that are incredibly gifted in music or something else. That they would feel led, because I want to be a church that helps people join in the ministry. Because guess what?
One day I’m not going to be here. Somebody else is going to have to fill the pulpit, and I pray that, that, that person is getting trained right now. They’re probably— they may be in the back, and they might be in the nursery right now, and they’re getting their butts changed. And one day they’re going to be up here changing lives. Now, I don’t— I’m glad you laughed.
That might have been corny, but thank you for that grace. But we’re gonna continue now. We’re gonna finish this series called Connected. And this whole topic has been about the idea of having real community, authentic relationships in a hyper-digital world. You’re experiencing something, I’m experiencing something that everybody is being a part of that, yes, we’re super connected, but are we really experiencing true fellowship?
I bet a lot of you are recognizing that there’s just something missing when all we do is text and group chat and sometimes FaceTime, That there’s something got to be more to life than this. I like what the Apostle John wrote late in his life. I’ve quoted this every week. It’s such a beautiful text. In 2 John, verse 12, he wrote, though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink.
Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete. So even in the days of letters and writing, he said, it’s just not good enough. I mean, I’d like to send you a letter, but I want to see you in person because there’s something more powerful there. We know this too. Yes, it’s important that we keep up with one another.
Some of your family, some of your friends, they’re distant and it’s good to give them a call, but it’s better if you get to see them in person. This is all organized around these 4 devotions at our church. They’re something we’re devoted to, not just as a church, but even more specifically in our community groups. This comes out of Acts 2:42. It says, they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers.
We’re going to spend some time this morning talking about corporate prayer. Now I recognize everybody in the room is at various stages of how they’re walking with the Lord in prayer. Some of you are really struggling in this area. I pray that this morning would really encourage you more than anything. Here’s what I know to be true.
Most of us in the room, we’re pretty good at communicating like a prayer request with someone. We, we, we’re good at, hey, shooting a text. Maybe we’ve got a set of friends, maybe it’s our community group where we just say, hey, I got this going on, would you all pray for this? And what you’re going to get back from a lot of people— and this isn’t meant to shame you because I do the same thing— is you’re going to get that little emoji that looks kind of like that, that I heard from somebody was meant to actually be a high five, but we have commandeered it and made it prayer, which I think is good. And that’s, you know, there’s a certain level of that that you feel comforted by.
Okay, I sent that out, people have seen it, they’ve been informed, people are praying, and I bet a lot of your loved ones, they are praying for you. But there’s something more powerful that happens when we come together and share burdens and share prayer. And that’s the, the place we’re going to spend time today, that there’s something more encouraging because the people dearest and nearest to you, they need more than to be informed, they need to be present. Sometimes it means you step out of your comfort zone and go see them or ask them to be with you because there’s a difference between telling Jesus about someone else’s burden and actually helping carry that burden with them to the Savior. One of my favorite passages in Scripture, just because of how wild this event went, in Mark chapter 2, there’s this paralyzed man that if you and me were dealing with him, we might have done this.
I know I might have. I might have come to Jesus and said, hey, one of my friends is paralyzed. Would you heal him? Would you go, go and see him? Or even better, just right where you are, just say he is healed.
And Christ could have done that. He actually does that for some people in the Gospels. But that’s not what these friends did. You remember this story? They scooped him up, they dug a hole in somebody’s roof and lowered him in.
Now that’s wild. I don’t know how the homeowner felt about all that, but guess what Jesus did? He healed him and he had a teaching around it too. It’s one of the most powerful places in Scripture. And but these were friends, the kinds of friends I need in my life that did more than just say, hey, we’re going to go talk to Jesus about it.
They scooped him up and brought him to Jesus. And I got to tell you, there’s times in my life where I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know how to go before the Father, and I need some people to scoop me up and say, come with me, we’re going to see him. And you do too. So we’re going to spend some time this morning talking about the power of corporate prayer coming out of the book of Acts chapter 4.
This is a fantastic scripture that I pray will lead you from not just a digital connection but a real community where you can bring your requests to the Lord as a community of believers. We’re going to be in the book of Acts. Here Luke is teaching of this post— this release moment where Peter and John have just been arrested. They’ve just gotten arrested for preaching the gospel shamelessly, boldly in the streets and just a powerful— go back and read Acts 3 and 4, you’ll just see some incredible work by these apostles. But they’re afraid.
They don’t sound afraid when they’re talking to everyone else, but internally they’re scared and they’ve been arrested. In this text where we’re going to be today, they’ve been released and the first place they go is in community. The first place they go is, I got to be with my friends in the faith and we got to pray about this thing. This is a powerful text because this is how, church, this is how we face life trials together. This is how we fulfill the mission of God on our lives.
It’s not apart, it’s together, and primarily beginning in prayer. And so this is a wonderful text. I pray today you’ll see why praying together helps us face these trials. Let’s dig in. We’re in Acts chapter 4, handful of verses here, starting in verse 23.
Let’s read. It says, when they were released, they went to their friends. I love that word. They went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they’d 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, the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit— here’s what he wrote— why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain.
The kings of the earth, they set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together— where? Against the Lord and against His anointed. For truly, in this city they 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. We’re going to go over that, church. That’s a noteworthy sentence.
Verse 29, now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to Your servants to continue to speak 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. And when they prayed— hear this, church, listen to this— When they 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. This is God’s word. Amen. Great news for you today: when you pray, powerful things happen.
When you pray together, you will often see the move of God not only in your life but in those around you. Praying together. Helps us face trials and fulfill Christ’s mission. First reason for that is this: because it helps us lift our shared burdens to God’s throne. When we come together and share our burdens, now we have a shared prayer that leads us into the throne room of God.
Verses 23 and 24 just about by themselves could preach. I love what happens here. These men are arrested. They’re told, you keep preaching like this, and you’re done. We will end you for this.
And instead of running around and maybe running out of town or escaping or running in fear, they go to their faith friends. They go to church, in fact, and they say, hey y’all, guess what happened to us? And what do these friends do? These are some good friends. They don’t say, oh man, tell me all the details.
Oh my goodness, should we leave? What should we do? That’s not what they do. They say, let’s talk to the Lord. We better, we better go up with this one.
This one needs some vertical attention because it’s beyond us. No, it says in verse 23 and 24, they told them, they told it to their friends, and they lifted up their voices together. And here’s what they said. They said, Sovereign Lord, you created all this. Creator of heaven and earth, look upon their threats, they say later.
They say, Sovereign Lord, when we come together in prayer, when we bring our burdens into the community of fellowship, the community of faith, now people around us begin to pray what we needed to pray, but we were struggling to pray. Sovereign Lord, when I come to the Lord with my brokenness, with my sin, with my struggles, sometimes I don’t know what to say.
That’s okay, friend. I struggle where you struggle. Sometimes I come saying, Lord, here’s here I am again. Here’s my mess again. Lord, look what’s happening to me.
Look what’s happening to my marriage, to my finances. Look what’s happening happening at work. What’s going on? But when I get around the church, there’s some people that will say, Sovereign Lord, He made the heavens and the earth. Grant Jonathan wisdom.
Help him in these places, whereas I might struggle how to appropriately talk to the Lord. I need a reset, don’t you? I need some people to get around me and say, hey, you’re not seeing this quite right. You’re seeing these problems in this way. You need to see them in the throne room of God.
You need to remember that because of the blood of Jesus, you can walk into the throne room and say, Lord, here I am. Help me. And he says, here I am, and I didn’t move. I’ve been here all along. Thanks for coming and stopping by.
You can come anytime. I need some people in my life that would bring me in that place, because one of the primary ways we bear one another’s burdens is in prayer together. Paul writes to the Galatians, he says, bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. You want to know how to fulfill the law of Christ? Bear one another’s burdens.
Christianity is not a lone wolf work. It’s not. It never will be.
In fact, we approach God’s throne together with confidence. I love what the writer of Hebrews in chapter 4 says, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. There’s a lot of us, there’s a lot of together. There’s something powerful that happens when people pray with you and for you in your presence. It moves you and stirs you and helps you pray in ways you had not considered.
A few years ago, we were moving into the house I now live in, and I was trying to be macho this particular day. I had a couple of friends helping me move a piano. I want to just tell you this, no matter how small a piano looks, it’s heavy. It’s extremely heavy. If it’s a grand, you bought it, you should hire somebody.
If any of you call me and say, hey Pastor, help me move my grand piano, I’m going to say no, because I’m not trying to die with you like that, right? It’s not worth it. I’ve got a very small piano, just a standard size piano, but I can tell you right now, you ain’t one man in that thing. Not never. Strongest man on earth is not one man in that.
He might be able to lift it, but it’s too weird and bulky. There’s nowhere to grab it, but this particular day I thought, man, I’m gonna, I’m gonna really show some stuff here. And so there’s a couple of people on one side and I got the other side, and I did it, y’all. I’m just gonna say I did it. I was looking real tough that day.
It cost me dearly. I was hurting for days afterwards. I would not even risk that now. My back will say no for 2 months if I do that. But you don’t lift— church, you don’t lift a piano alone.
You do not do it. If you try to do this, you are a foolish person. All right, I’m just— this is encouraging to you. Some of you are trying to lift pianos in your life constantly. You’re saying, I got this, I’m strong enough, I can handle it.
No, you’re not. You need help, and so do I. You need some people. It— this is this, this area that actually bugs me because I’m a little bit introverted. I’m a lot of bit introverted.
I really wish that I could just bring my prayers to the Lord and that me and Him would be enough, but that’s not what He’s built. He’s built a fellowship of believers, a community of faith, and quite frankly, sometimes I don’t know what to say to Him, and I’m trying to lift a piano alone and I can’t do it, and I’m breaking my back. Sometimes I have to come with you and say, will you pray with me? ‘Cause I need help, and so do you. Look, here’s what happens here, church.
The people in power in this day are threatening the apostles with a true threat, a threat that they will follow through on. Almost all of the apostles are persecuted and killed. This is a fact, but that’s not how they pray. They come together and the first thing they said is, these people are not in charge. They say, Sovereign Lord, You are King, You’re in charge, You created all, You do according to Your will.
We’re going to trust You. If they threaten us again, here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to keep on because You told us to. We’re going to talk some more about that in a moment, but Acts 1:8, you will receive power and you will be my witnesses in all the earth. They’ve already been commanded. So look upon those threats.
Our shared prayers overcome our shared burdens. That’s the first reason. Here’s the second, and I think this one might have really moved me the most this week. I pray that it encourages you. The second reason is that it helps us see our circumstances from God’s perspective.
When you enter into the throne room of God, when you look back down on your mess, it looks a lot smaller. It just does. When you go up there where He is in the Holy of Holies and then you look back down on your mess, you go, wow, that’s tiny. I thought it was huge. I thought my marriage was failing.
I thought my budget was shot. I thought, I thought I couldn’t get that job. I thought this was the end of the world. And then I get up there and I go, Huh, what am I whining about? I’m not trying to reduce or diminish your set of problems.
They are significant, I’m sure. But from God’s perspective, you start to recognize He can do anything, and this stuff is mighty small to Him. If He can set me free from all my life’s sin, then He can certainly handle this thing. This is incredible. And so this is the way they pray in this middle section, and I don’t want you to miss this, verse 25 through 28.
They begin to quote Scripture. This is a powerful way to pray, let me just say. If you’re ever struggling, say, hey, I’m going to pray back the Psalms. I’d start there. That’s a great place to start.
I spent the whole summer praying back the Psalms to the Lord and it really dug me out of a hole. Here they say, hey, somebody in the room— obviously they’re not in corporate, maybe it happened, but I bet there’s somebody in the prayer circle that said, I don’t know why, I feel a Psalm coming on. And he starts praying Psalm chapter 2 and everybody in the room is like, Yes! Yes! Psalm chapter 2, why do the Gentiles rage?
Why are they waging war against the Anointed? And the people are like, yes! Yes! And then it goes on to say that they— these Gentiles raging, they’re gathered together and it starts making uncommon friends. I want you to hear something, church.
This is kind of a side point, But anytime where Christianity begins to take root and really have a powerful effect, the enemy is on the move. He always will be, he always has been, until the Lord comes again, he will be doing this, and he will make uncommon friends. Here, guess what happens? He puts Herod and Pilate together. That shouldn’t be.
In fact, Luke 23 says, Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day, The very day they were working on crucifying Jesus. For before this, that they had been at enmity with each other. They shouldn’t be friends. Herod wants Pilate’s job. He wants his land.
These are not people— the Israelites and the Romans were enemies until Jesus. Now all of a sudden they’re fast friends because they have a common enemy. Church, I want you to know this has been true for 2,000 years. The evil one will make uncommon friends. He will put religion with irreligion.
It’s happening currently. He will put Islam with liberal thinking, and that makes no sense together, and yet that’s together to oppose Christianity. Watch the news for 5 seconds, you’ll see it. It’s very wild, but there’s nothing new. I’m not saying this is like a unique— this is a 2,000-year-old thing that started all the way back here, because guess what?
When the gospel starts taking hold, the evil one is scared and starts making uncommon friends. So they pray instead. They say, hey, look, the Gentiles, the nations, they’re becoming— they’re gathering together. Verse 27, that word is sunagoge. It’s where we get the word synagogue.
He’s saying they’re becoming a synagogue of Satan. And they’re uniting forces against who? Against your holy servant Jesus. But verse 28, here’s the good news, here’s where the point’s coming from. It says, your hand, your plan, which you predestined.
Okay, whose plan? Whose hand? God’s. He said, I know they’re waging war, they’re opposed to your servant, but it’s not like suddenly the Lord was like, oh my goodness, look what they’re doing. That is not how God works, church.
I just want you to hear this if it’s the first time you’re hearing it. He is never surprised. Nothing ever slips through His grasp. Nothing ever just shows up and He goes, I didn’t see that coming. He’s not like you and I.
He has plans. He has purpose. He has allowed certain things to occur that are hard, but He has His reasons. And these people are coming together saying, we know they’re waging war against Your holy servant Jesus, but here’s what else we know. You never left your throne and you’ve got a plan, so help us to understand it.
Help us to have your perspective, because church, here’s a fact: not all things in this life are good. Have you realized that yet? Not everything you run into in this life is good. Not everything you eat in this life is good, I’ve observed. I remember the first time I ate broccoli as a child.
I was not a fan. To this very day, I am not a fan of lima beans. I told this to the first service and nobody tried to help me afterwards. I, I don’t think it’s because I’m miscooking these things. They’re gross, all right?
Some of you like them. That’s okay. It’s okay. There’s, you know, we all have problems, all right? But some things in life are simply not good, and Christ doesn’t like them either.
Death is not good, nor is it something God created.
Sin entered the world and so did death. And guess what grieves the Lord Jesus? Death. He grieves at the tomb of Lazarus. He grieves it.
He hates it. He hates sin. He didn’t create it. There are things in this life, church, that are simply not good, but God is working good even in those things. One of my favorite verses, Romans chapter 8, it says, we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.
A few years ago, I took a flight over Rocky Mount with Mike Laramie. Some of you know Mike. He’s preached up here a couple times. He owns a little 2-seater plane, which is a good time. He made me a little sick to my stomach that day.
I wasn’t ready for the barrel rolls. I don’t know if I could ever be ready for some of that, but he got me right to the verge of you know, losing it all. And then he kept it together. I don’t think he wanted to clean up his plane, and I don’t blame him for that. But we did a little flyover of Rocky Mount.
We looked over my house, and I’m like, I think that’s it. We flew over the church. This was when we were at the old building. I’m like, okay, there it is. Hey, it really did get a new roof.
I wasn’t sure because it was still leaking. But anyway, we did this fly, and we were looking at all this stuff. And I gotta tell you, when you’re up there, everything looks so different. Like, you— a lot of you have taken commercial flights, and I mean, things just look like they might as well be ants when you’re up that high. Everything looks so strange.
All you really notice is lights and maybe streets. When you’re up there in this little plane, everything looks small. I just want you to hear today, this is the way in which God sees your conundrum. He sees it like he’s flying over at 30,000 feet and goes, okay, I hear you. Let’s do something about that.
And when you in community walk up into the throne room of God, you get to peer down as he sees it and go, oh, that is kind of minute.
I thought I was fighting. I thought my marriage was over because we were fighting so much. And then you look down and go, yeah, but there’s a couple things I could do about that. There’s a couple— I can make some small steps right now. I thought, man, I thought this was a life-ending event, but now I’m looking at it from your eyes and going, I see a way out.
But sometimes you need some people to grab you by the shoulders like that poor man on that mat, that poor paralyzed man, and say, hey, come on, we’re going to go see him because you need to talk to the Lord. Prayer, friends, prayer, it might not change your circumstances immediately. In fact, It often doesn’t, but it will change how you see them.
Sometimes the Lord leaves them for a bit.
He has His reasons. I think oftentimes it’s because He cares more about your character than your comfort, and He always has. And sometimes He’ll leave a little something. In fact, Paul prays at one point, he says, I prayed that the Lord would remove this thorn, and the Lord instead responded with, I’m not removing it.
In your weakness, I’ll be strong. He left it.
If we’re left to our own devices, if we begin to disconnect from God’s people, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re often going to interpret our lives with our emotions and our fears. We need to get around people that’ll take us into the throne room of God and say, see what he sees. Do you see what he sees? Because he can overcome this.
The snap of a finger. Do you see as God sees? That’s the second reason. Here’s the third. This one’s powerful too.
These are all so good, y’all, because it helps us align our requests with God’s purpose. It helps us align our requests with God’s purpose. Here’s part of the problem with our prayer requests is we don’t know exactly what we should be prayer requesting. We want to pray, get me out of this, and God does not intend to do that. God wants us to learn something in it, and so we need to learn how to pray through it, and other people can get around us and help us align those requests.
I want you to not miss verses 29 and 30. They might be the most powerful part of this whole sermon. Notice what they got together and prayed. They said, Sovereign Lord, you created all. In fact, you prophetically said in Psalm chapter 2 that one day people would wage war against your anointed.
Okay, we’ve seen that coming, but here’s how we’re going to pray. Lord, you look upon their threats. I don’t know how you, you would pray, friend. I might would say, hey Lord, can you remove them because they’re enemies of the gospel and they’re going to hang us up from getting this work done? Can you put them out as, as a part of the problem?
That’s not what they say. I can be a bit of a fighter, y’all. I grew up playing football and wrestling. I sometimes want to say, hey Lord, I like the Psalms when they say, hey, take them out. I like those Psalms.
I know you’re judging me right now. I receive that. There’s moments where I’m like, Lord, remove them because they oppose you. That’s not how the apostles pray. They say, hey Lord, you look at their threats because we don’t have time for it.
We’re too busy following your great mission where you said, go make disciples of all nations. You said, be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and the ends of the earth. That’s what you told us to do, and if we’re so busy over here being afraid and concerned about their threats, we can’t do what you’ve called us to. So here’s our request, Lord: you deal with it.
That’s a powerful prayer, friend. Notice the request they make for themselves. It’s not, help us to know how to deal with them. And then we’re not gonna think about them. We’re done with them.
You look at that, you handle that. Here’s what we want, Lord. Help us to be bold. Notice it, verse 29. Grant that we would speak your word with all boldness.
That’s our request. And then, Lord, stretch out your hand to heal and do signs and wonders. You do the work that only you can do, Lord, that would reveal to people that this is the the Holy Spirit’s work, that God is on the move. But here’s what we want for us. We just want to be bold and have courage.
Jesus had already taught them to align their requests with his words, his purpose. Here’s what he says in John chapter 15. If you abide in me and my words, they abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples.
When we get together and we pray together, we begin to abide in these words together. There are people in the room that are walking with Jesus at different stages of that journey, and we begin to corporately come together and begin to pray things like, Lord, grant that we would be bold, because at the end of the day, the work we do The the various tasks we have day to day—they’re important, but in an eternal way they’re not. People are the only things that’s coming. That’s it. Everything else is dust.
People. So Lord, grant us the ability to speak with boldness.
You probably noticed something. Some of you are musical in the room, so this is like duh. This is aha to you, not aha at all to you. But you’ll notice sometimes up here, especially our our guitarists, people with.
Stringed instruments, you’ll see them sometimes looking down and fiddling with stuff. And in between songs, you’re like, man, they’re not focused. They’re actually really focused. They’re focused on making the music continue to sound good. They’re doing this little thing we call— it’s a Chinese term, it’s called tuning.
That’s what they’re doing. That joke never worked for my dad either. It never worked for my dad either. Dad, if you watch this one day, that’s on you. Anyway, They’re tuning their instruments together, and if they don’t do this, guess what happens to the music?
It starts sounding real bad. We all get together, musicians, they tune the instruments, they’re fiddling with these pegs, and the reason they’re doing it is because that’s the only way to make the music sound well together. The pianist never has that trouble unless that computer goes out or something internally, then it’ll be a massive issue. This idea of making music, being in tune together, is one of the great, I think, illustrations of what happens when we come together corporately in prayer, that we get in tune together in prayer, that what begins to happen in my heart and in your heart is that we get on the same wavelength and say, all right, I was thinking I was going to pray about it this way, but now hearing you, I get it. I get it now.
We’re going to pray for the mission of God. We’re going to pray less about, hey God, fix all my little problems. You know, I’m going to pray for that to some degree, but when I’m with you guys, I start thinking more about the big things, the important things, like how well are our kids coming to faith? What about your families? How about your coworkers?
When we get together like that, it starts realigning how I pray. Do you see it?
One of the greatest benefits of praying together is that we get in tune. So let’s begin to pray. I’m going to pray at the end as we— when we close here in a little while. God, give us boldness. Use us powerfully.
Open doors. Save people. Let Your Word go forward. That’s the way they prayed. And here’s the 4th and final reason.
Because it helps us open our mouths with God’s empowerment. Notice the process here. They begin in prayer. They know what to pray. God, You’re sovereign.
You’re in charge. Give us Your perspective. They begin to plead with Him, Hey God, grant us boldness, and then it concludes with Holy Spirit power and opening of mouths. Notice what happens. Verse 31 is kind of astounding.
It says, when they prayed, the room shook. Now, I worked really hard on this term this week because I’m like, what does that even mean? What happened here? In fact, I did a deep dive to see if there was some kind of event in the first century, an earthquake or something. I couldn’t find any record of something like that.
In fact, this word means a motion that’s produced by winds or storms Waves of the sea. I think it’s indicating something that they’ve seen before, a mighty rushing wind like what they had seen just earlier at Pentecost. The commentator John Gill wrote this, he said, this was now shaken with a rushing mighty wind as on the day of Pentecost and was a symbol of the divine presence and a token that their prayers heard. I do believe there was a physical move of God that day. Now what that looked like, I do not know, but I can tell you what I’ve seen at times in my own personal life.
Maybe not a whoosh, but I’ve had some moments in prayer with people where I could tell the Lord was in the room, where someone said something that was exactly what I needed to hear. Where maybe even I had a thought come to my mind. I had a prayer time with a young man one time and we had been having a tricky time dealing with his marriage and I felt something in my— and it sounded like my head, but it was too smart. It said, hey, you asked him a question earlier. I want you to re-ask him that question.
Like, okay. Some thought passed my head and I re-asked him that question and it just totally unpacked the real problem he was having. In his marriage. Now, that hasn’t happened to me a lot, but it has happened. Some of you have been in prayer with people before, and in some sense, a mighty rushing wind has shown up.
Maybe it didn’t shake the room, but I think God still does things like this, and I think He does things like this maybe on smaller scales a lot. Sometimes when I’m praying with my community group, someone will say something and I go, ah, I hear you, Lord. I hear you. I needed them to say it because I was having trouble saying it. It says they were filled with the Holy Spirit and guess what?
I love how the verse ends. Did you hear it? They were praying, Lord, look on their threats. Help us to— grant us to speak your word with boldness. And listen to how verse 31 ends.
It says, they continued to speak the word of God with boldness. They prayed for it. God granted it. They did it, and they went out in, in great power and in great number. Jesus had already taught His disciples to depend continually on the Father.
He says in Acts 1, I’ve been quoting it, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. I want to end with a thought with you right now. This is— this might feel This might feel like I’m trying to make you feel guilty. It is not my goal. I want you to hear something that’s true of our church that I thought was just a national average, but we’ve been looking at the numbers lately to see what the attendance is like at our 2 campuses.
In fact, Wilson is slightly worse on this than we are, but we’re right here. That our church, our families at our church, on average, they attend 35% of the time. 35% of the time. That means, church, on average, our people are coming 18 times a year, 18 Sundays out of 52. Now, that’s not meant to accuse you.
You might be thinking, well, Jonathan just wants us here so he can preach to us, and kinda, like, empty chairs are pretty boring to preach to. I mean, we’re getting nothing back and forth here, me and that chair. But some of you have been with us long enough to know I’ve preached to some very empty rooms and I’m gonna preach all the same. I’m here for you. I’m here to preach with you, but that’s not why I’m telling you this.
I’m not telling you this because it’s a numbers game. I’m telling you this because your soul is on the line. Because you know this with everything else in your life, you know that things require a recharge and it doesn’t bother you in any other way except this one. You know that every day you better feed the system, you better rest the system, you know it. And none of you are missing a beat on that one.
You know that every device you have in your whole life, if you don’t charge it, it will die. You know things need batteries, you know recharge is necessary, and except for one area, spiritually, you assume for whatever reason, I got this. That piano looks pretty heavy, but I’m pretty strong. No, you’re not. I mean, you might be, but you’re going to wear out just like me.
I’m not saying, hey, come to church more because coming to church more is going to fix things. I want you to be around the people of God more because when you pray together, powerful things can happen. You want to be a part of the Spirit of God showing up and shaking a room? It doesn’t happen to you if you’re not here.
And these moments where you’re stuck, and I know a lot of you are, you’re stuck in some area, maybe it’s a sin area, maybe it’s a financial area, maybe you’re stuck in your marriage, you’ve got places where you’ve lost, you don’t even really know how to pray for this anymore. I know you’re there, I’ve been there. But to continue in that way and say, I don’t need a spiritual recharge, is madness.
You need to be in fellowship with believers, and more than that, There needs to be people in your life that you begin to say, I’m going to tell you about this. I’m going to let you in. Jonathan, the last couple times I let people underneath the hood, they looked around and they made a big mess of things. I can’t do it again. Then you’re going to live this way— stuck.
We got to take a risk with each other and say, I’m just going to tell people. I’m going to tell people I’m struggling here. I’m stuck here. Even me, church, I might argue especially me.
The last thing a shepherd should do is assume he’s good. We’ve seen plenty of news reports on church leaders that thought, I got this. I’m gonna tell you right now, that piano is way too heavy for me.
It’s too heavy for you. Let’s pray together for a fresh courage, for fresh insight, that we would trust each other, that we would come into community, that we would build friendships. If you don’t have friends at this church yet, let’s try today.
Maybe just say hello to someone new today. Maybe have lunch with somebody today. Start a relationship that can end in corporate prayer where somebody can help you authentically have a relationship with the Father that you’ve been missing.
Peter and John, they returned to their friends. The apostles, they come together in community. They lift it to the throne of God. They get a new perspective. They’re aligned around the purpose of God, and they begin again to speak with boldness.
I want you to remember something as we close now, that when we approach God’s throne together, we approach it with confidence. Why? Because Christ Jesus has done everything necessary for us to come into that throne room with confidence. We believe in eternal security, not eternal insecurity. We come to Him knowing that we have a place there where we can pray and speak, and when we get lost, we can grab others and say, would you lead me back in that place?
And we could do it with confidence. Why? Because Christ did everything necessary by the cross and the resurrection.
And when you forget that in moments of your life, that’s when you phone a friend.
What burden are you carrying alone today? Who knows what you’re really facing? Who are you praying with this— with that knows this? Who’s reminding you of God’s Word? Do you have anybody in your life that would remind you of the Word of God or some other philosophical or cultural truth?
Who do you have that’ll say, hey, no, God’s Word says…
Seeker in the room, some of you may have shown up today, maybe you feel like you were dragged in here. I’m glad you’re here. I want you to hear something today. Your greatest need is not merely better friends. It’s not merely greater courage in life.
Your greatest need today is a relationship with Jesus Christ. Your prayer life begins first with faith in the Lord Jesus. Today’s the day. There’s an appointment with you and the Lord today. I’m going to pray for you in a moment.
I pray that you will do the same. With me. Believers in the room, here’s your main focus: stop doing life alone. Get in community. Put some prayer warriors around you that love you and will pray to the Lord of hosts with you and lead you out of this place where you’re stuck.
Let’s go now to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we ask for those people in the room right now. I don’t know all of their stories, but Lord, you are, you are all-powerful, you are all-knowing. You know deeply what is going on in each one of our lives. You know my most deep struggles, Lord, some of the ones I haven’t hardly told anybody.
Lord, I pray for those people, including myself today, who have come in here with some stuck areas, for that broken marriage who has come today on a thread. Lord, would You heal them? Would You help them to hear from You today? Would You put some people around them that would encourage them and strengthen them with the Word of God, that they ought not give up on this thing that you’ve put together, that there’s hope. God, would you begin to make that husband and that wife see each other through your eyes, not the eyes of the world, that they might understand the other the way in which you see them?
Restore them, Lord, for that person who’s coming in— come in here today and their, their life is so disordered. Their finances are a mess. They, they, they, they, they’ve lost their job. I don’t know, Lord, There’s people in the room just like that today that are in deep and desperate places. God, would you lift them up and bring them into your throne room right now, that they might see their lives from your perspective, that they might see all of their problems and go, okay, okay, God, I trust you.
I believe you. Would you guide me, give me wisdom, give me opportunity, and help me to take it? If it’s a new job, if it’s a new way of handling my money, if it’s this, Lord, Grant them wisdom.
For that person who’s come in here today, Lord, and they’re far from You, I pray right now they’re recognizing this wasn’t an accident that they’re here today, that, God, You had a desire to be with them today that they might come to saving faith. Friend, if you’re ready to have a real relationship not only with the Lord but with true believers, who love you and care for you. Would you pray a simple prayer with me?
Lord Jesus, I believe you died on the cross for my sin. I believe you raised— that God raised you from the dead, and because of that, I’m free. You’ve saved me from my brokenness. Eternally, you’ve dealt with it. Lord, thank you for that today.
Help me now, Lord, to learn how to pray. Would you move in my life when I speak to you? I don’t really have a habit. I don’t know how to do this. Would you teach me how to speak to you?
Would you show up when I try? Would you put some people around me, Lord, that would pray for me and guide me in my faith? God, would you direct my steps that I might know how to live in a way that pleases and glorifies you?
Dear friend, if you prayed that with me, welcome to the family of God.
We’re all with you in this. Lord, teach us to pray. Help it to be authentic. It’s not the, the glamour of our prayer that you hear. It’s the authenticity that you hear.
Make our, our time with you genuine, that we would speak to you as we would a dear friend, and that, God, you would hear our requests and move. Lord, help us as a church look upon their threats. The enemy is opposed to your gospel work in the city of Rocky Mount. He is opposed to healing the broken in our community. The evil one is opposed to marriages getting healed and people getting well and following the Lord Jesus.
He is opposed and you know it. Lord, we’re asking, look upon their threats, but grant us boldness that we may speak your word to others with courage. Lord, would you save the lost with our church and do it by every individual in the room, that just one more One more coworker, one more family member, one more, and we would keep thinking like that until, Lord, you have healed and rescued the lost. We love you. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
We know how to communicate a prayer request. We can send a text, post it on social media, or add someone’s name to a prayer list. But communicating a burden is not the same as carrying it together before God.
We need people who are more than informed. We need believers who will sit beside us, call upon God with us, remind us of His promises, and believe with us for His strength and help.
Some burdens become lighter when others help us carry them. Some fears begin to lose their grip when we hear another believer speak God’s truth over us. Some trials require more than a prayer emoji. They call for the gathered people of God to lift their voices together.
In the book of Acts, Luke described how after the Jewish leaders had arrested Peter and John and threatened them not to speak in the name of Jesus, they immediately gathered together with other believers to pray, and received Spirit-given boldness to continue proclaiming His Word. We can face life’s trials and fulfill Christ’s mission more boldly when we gather together in prayer.
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