“Devoted to Prayer”
Acts Overview
This morning, we are going to be taking a brief break from Nehemiah to consider the topic of prayer in the book of Acts. We are doing this because we are beginning a week of prayer today in order to dedicate the ministries of EBC to the Lord and ask Him to work through them in this coming year. If you have ever read through our church values, you will know that one of them is a value for prayer. That is probably not much of a surprise. What is more of a surprise is the value we see for prayer in our broader culture. Prayer is an interesting phenomenon in our secular age. It is a decidedly spiritual act that persists in an age of materialism. A decidedly faith-based act that is prevalent in an age of science.
A recent National Day of Prayer study found that 61% of Americans pray. That may not seem very high, but if you broaden the definition of prayer to “connect with a higher power”, that number jumps to 85%. In 2014, Pew Research found that among those who do not believe in God, some still pray daily, 1% pray weekly, 5% pray monthly, and still more pray at least seldomly. To be fair, and as was probably clear as soon as I mentioned the phrase “connect with a higher power”, a lot of that prayer is a far cry from traditional Christian prayer. But it still speaks to this innate reflex humans have to reach beyond themselves to express gratitude, seek help, ask guidance, find comfort, and so on. As Christians, this reflex should be no surprise. We believe there is a good, caring God who delights when people cry out Him. Given that belief, the bigger surprise is how little we in the church pray.
As you would expect, statistically, one’s level of belief in God reflects the frequency at which one prays: those who are certain of God’s existence pray a lot, those who feel certain there is no god pray very little, as previously mentioned. This correlation between belief and frequency of prayer has always been convicting to me. Because, so often, prayer is not my first response to the experiences of life. Especially in the challenging circumstances, I tend to gravitate more quickly to planning, problem-solving, and just working harder. And I’m not the only Christian who fails to rely as I should on prayer. Again, Pew Research found in 2014 that only 68% of professing Christians pray daily. So much for “I need Thee every hour”. That same study found that 1 Christian in every 10 prays seldom, never, or don’t know how often they pray. If we’re honest, what does this say about what we really believe about God? I think it says we often trust our own unaided efforts than we do God’s providence. It says our default is self-sufficiency, as opposed to God-dependency.
This is why historically, prayer has been classified as a discipline of the faith; it has not simply been viewed as an effective source of help (although, it is), but also as an important source of reformation. Because when we pray, we remind ourselves that we’re not self-sufficient creatures, we’re dependent creatures and we practice the proper way of navigating the world as such creatures. In other words, prayer trains us to respond to the circumstances of life in the way that needy people should: by asking for help, expressing gratitude for unearned blessings, and reveling in the reality that there is someone on whom we can depend. In light of this identity as dependent creatures, our default mode of self-dependency is utter folly; it’s like a battery trying to recharge itself. And, on some level, most people sense this innate dependency, and so they pray. As is so often the case, Christianity gives the basis for this innate human sense by telling us that we were created and are sustained by God, and therefore, ought to depend on Him with intention.
This is certainly how the early church operated. We finished our sermon series in the book of Acts last Spring, but today I want to revisit that book with a specific focus on the place of prayer in the early church, as we prepare for our week of prayer. And so, our project this morning is simple: we’re going to overview prayer in the book of Acts as a way of reminding ourselves of the centrality of prayer to the life of the church, and as a way of calling ourselves to take that vital practice seriously. But, before we do that, let me pray, for we are dependent on the Lord to help us even now.
There are 36 references to prayer in the book of Acts, which is more than one per chapter; that’s a lot, so we’re not going to look at all of them, but we are going to be jumping around a bit, beginning with Acts 1:12-14. Acts 1:12-14 reads, “Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.”
So, here we have the disciples returning to Jerusalem after Jesus’ ascension to heaven. And this is the first mention we have in Acts of a “devotion” to prayer among the earliest Christians, and it really summarizes the place of prayer in the early church, hence the sermon title. Prayer was not an add-on, or a peripheral practice of the church, it was central. It was a defining function of the Christian community. We see this in Acts 2:42 when it says, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” As a note, the phrase “the prayers” seems to indicate that prayer was already a discipline of the church. It’s not just that they were devoted to “prayer”, but to “the prayers”. Now, these may have been the daily prayers that Jews said in the 1st century, or some other set of formal prayers, but either way, prayer was apparently a disciplined practice to which the church was devoted.
But what exactly did this devotion to prayer look like? It looked like praying about everything. So, now begins our jump around overview of Acts, beginning by going back to our first text. In the context of chapter 1, it meant praying in a time of waiting. As I said, these verses come right after Jesus has ascended to heaven. Before ascending, Jesus told them they would receive power from God, but He didn’t tell them exactly when that power would come or what it would look like. So, what did they do when they didn’t know what to do? They prayed. We’re not told what they prayed for exactly, just that they prayed. Prayer was their main activity as they waited. Out of this, apparently, came Peter’s impulse to replace Judas with another disciple, leading to the selection of Matthias. We’ll talk about this more later, but this is an example of God leading His people through their prayers. And how do they decide Matthias should replace Judas over Joseph Barsabbas? They cast lots, yes, but first, they prayed. So, the early church prayed in times of waiting, when they didn’t know what to do.
Which leads right into another role of prayer in the early church: they prayed in times of crisis. In Acts 4, Peter and John are arrested after healing a man in the Temple who was lame from birth. The religious leaders (you know, the guys who had recently orchestrated Jesus’ crucifixion) bring them in and examine them, asking them how they performed this miracle. Peter, led by the Spirit, tells them in no uncertain terms that “by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well”. Following this, the leaders tell them to stop speaking and teaching in Jesus’ name, which Peter and John politely decline to do. Somewhat miraculously, the leaders then released Peter and John.
After their release they go straight to their friends and tell them what had happened. The believers, sensing that persecution is on the horizon, all pray together. And what do they pray for? They pray for more boldness to speak and perform miracles in Jesus’ name, the very things that got Peter and John in trouble. So, we see that prayer was the church’s response to persecution and the temptation to forsake their call to be Jesus’ witnesses to the ends of the earth. We see other examples of praying in times of waiting, confusion, crisis, and persecution throughout Acts. In Acts 12, Peter is arrested shortly after the Apostle James is executed by Herod, and the church is understandably worried, and don’t have any ability to do anything. And so, they pray. In response to their prayers, God sends an angel to break Peter out of prison. Then, in Acts 16, what are Paul and Silas doing as they sit in the stocks in prison? They are praying and singing hymns to God. So, prayer was how the church dealt with uncertainty and persecution.
Next, the church prayed in order to dedicate people to the Lord and the ministries to which God had called them. As the early church grew in Jerusalem they began to face some logistical challenges. In Acts 6 there arose a problem with the daily distribution of food to the widows. In response to this, and in order to protect the Apostles from being distracted from their primary calling to, get this, be devoted to prayer and the ministry of the word, they chose seven men to handle the administration of the food distribution. Now, there’s no mention of them praying about which men to pick (though I’m sure they did), so there’s a place for wisdom and common sense in the church, but before these men begin their ministry it says the Apostles prayed for them.
Here are a couple other examples of people being commissioned for ministry by prayer. In Acts 13 the church at Antioch is worshipping and fasting when the Holy Spirit tells them to set Barnabas and Saul (who would become Paul) apart for ministry, and so they pray for them before sending them off. Then in Acts 14, before leaving the region they were in, Paul and Barnabas “appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.” Here again, they seem to pick elders based on qualification, but that doesn’t mean they think those men are sufficient to carry out that ministry on their own. So, they commit them to the Lord with prayer and fasting. This role of prayer is probably the closest to what we’ll be doing here at EBC this week. We have a bunch of ministry leaders who have been called to various ministries, and who have planned as wisely as they know how, but God forbid we think that’s enough. We must commit them to the Lord, because we are dependent on Him.
This is exactly what the early church did, it committed those serving in ministries to the Lord in whom they had believed, knowing that human qualification and wisdom was not enough. This kind of prayer was even used to commit people to the Lord in a more fundamental way than ministry call, at times. In Acts 8, Peter and John go to Samaria and pray that the newly baptized believers there would receive the Holy Spirit, since they hadn’t yet. Similar to ministry callings, we need God to help us keep the basic call to be Christians. So, prayer was used to dedicate people to the Lord and commit them to His help.
Moving on, if you’ve ever wondered how all those miracles were being done in the early church, the answer, at least in part, is that they prayed for them. We already saw in the story of Peter and John’s arrest that part of their prayer after their release was that God would grant continued signs and wonders through Jesus’ name. But they also performed specific miracles by prayer, like in Acts 9, when Peter prays and brings Tabitha back to life. So, the church prayed for miracles. Prayer was also a means by which God led people. I already pointed out how this was the case with choosing Judas’ replacement in Acts 1, but another example is the story of Peter and Cornelius. Cornelius, who is described as a man who “prayed continually to God”, is praying when he receives his vision from the Lord directing him to send men to seek out Peter. And the next day Peter is praying when he receives his vision showing him that the Gentiles were to be welcomed into the people of God, which leads him to go with the men Cornelius had sent and share the Gospel with those gathered at his house. And so, we see God leading His people through prayer.
I also already mentioned that prayer was a discipline within the early church, but this story shows how that discipline allowed God to lead His people through prayer. You see, spiritual disciplines are not like vending machines. What I mean is that the acts of reading your Bible, praying, coming to church, and so on are not like punching in E3, so you can get your spiritual fix. Rather, when we engage in the disciplines, we are in essence saying, “Here I am God. Do as You will.” In other words, it’s about making ourselves available to God, no strings attached, so He can do what He wants; it’s not about cracking the code to get Him to do what we want. What this means is that often the disciplines are mundane. But it also means that at other times God speaks powerfully. What’s important to recognize though is that you don’t get the latter without the former.
Tim Keller once made an observation about relationships that I think is profound. He said something to the effect of, “Quality time is a result of quantity time.” We all know this is true. You can’t just say to your spouse, or your child, or your friend, “Hey, I’d like to schedule a heartfelt conversation with you.” No. You just have to spend a lot of time together, and periodically, those conversation will happen naturally. The same is true with the disciplines. We don’t get to say, “God, I’d like to schedule a time for You to give me an epiphany.” We can only show up, make ourselves available to Him, and He will decide when the big, exceptional moments of revelation happen. And this is the case here in Acts, Peter and Cornelius have these revelatory visions, because they had dedicated themselves to the long and consistent discipline of regular, predominantly mundane prayer. So, prayer was a discipline in the early church, and God used that to lead His people at times.
Finally, the last role of prayer in Acts I want to look at is a little hard to define but might be described as a means of relating to one another. I think we can see examples of this in Acts 20 and 21 when Paul is making his way to Jerusalem. As a reminder, Paul is being led by the Spirit back to Jerusalem, despite the fact that he knows “imprisonment and afflictions” await him there. On his way he stops at Miletus and sends for the Ephesian elders to meet him there so he can tell them what’s going on and give them a last charge. After his speech to them, Acts 20:36-38 reads, “And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And there was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship.” It’s this incredibly moving scene in which you can feel the love that Paul and these elders have for one another. And in the middle of this heartbreaking, emotional scene we see Paul and these elders kneeling together and praying, as they weep and embrace and kiss. Prayer is operating as this integral part of their relationship to one another, just as integral as the hugs, kisses, and heartbroken tears.
A similar scene takes place when Paul stops at Tyre, where they beg him not to go to Jerusalem, but he decides to go on. Again, what do they do as they are saying farewell? They kneel and pray together. In these moments, prayer operates like a display of affection. Prayer was an integral part of the fabric of the relationships between fellow believers in Acts. Prayer permeated everything for the early Christians, from their ministries to their personal relationships. Which is really just another way of saying they were utterly devoted to prayer. They prayed as a way of dealing with waiting, uncertainty, crises, and persecution. They prayed to dedicate people to the Lord and the ministries to which He had called them. They prayed for miracles. They prayed as a discipline, and God used that to lead them. And they prayed as an integral part of the fabric of their relationships. So, here’s the main idea for us: we should be devoted to prayer, just as the church in Acts was devoted to prayer.
The early church’s prayerful dependence on the Lord in all things gives them a childlike quality, in my mind, which is another thing that shouldn’t surprise us. Kids ask a lot of questions, and are constantly telling you what’s going on in their lives, and something similar is going on between God and these early believers. Which makes sense. After all, Jesus said that the kingdom belongs to the childlike. Whatever else Jesus may have meant by that, I think dependency was one of the childlike qualities to which He was trying to draw His disciples’ attention. The Kingdom belongs to those who recognize their need, because it is they who discover that there is a King and Father who cares for us far more capably than we can care for ourselves. In the eyes of God, we are all children. Don’t get me wrong, we’re really cute and all, but most of the time, we’re just trying to figure out what we’re supposed to be doing. Often our best attempts are…interesting, like the picture on the fridge that you’re not sure is right side up. And we tucker out pretty easily.
It’s not a bad thing to be a child, but it is a reality we need to realize and learn to live in accordance with. And kids need a lot of help, trust me, I have two, and they keep me plenty busy. There’s a lot they can’t do on their own, and often when they think they can do something on their own, they’re wrong. It’s easy for us to look at our own children and think we know quite a lot by comparison, but that gap between us and them disappears as soon as the God who created and sustains the universe enters the picture. Relative to God’s infinitude, does any adult really know much more than a child? Relative to God, the gap between what Stephen Hawking knows and what a newborn baby knows is so infinitesimally small it is virtually non-existent. Relative to God, there is no appreciable difference between my theological knowledge, and that of my three-year-old daughter Phoebe. And, by the way, if you’re truly coming to know this infinite God more, then your sense of your relative ignorance should only grow, because the more you come to know of infinitude, the more your own finite knowledge shrinks in relation to it.
I share all this simply to impress on us the reality of our humble stature, not to make us feel bad about ourselves, but to push us toward the One who is infinitely great, and who is ready and able to help us in our childlike need. I said a moment ago that it’s not a bad thing to be a child, but I’ll take it a step further and say, life is a really good thing when you’re a child with a good Father. How many of us wish we could go back to the carefree days of our childhood, when all our needs were provided for, and all we had to do was go to school and play? Well, I’ve got good news for you: we can. We have the best Father, and, while He may not always do what we think He should do, He cares for us perfectly. We have only to trust Him and rest in that care.
And so, when it comes to the ministries of EBC, while I hope we are a church that appoints qualified people to lead those ministries; while I hope we work hard to plan wisely; while I hope we make every effort to be effective in that all we do; before any of that, I hope we have a healthy sense of our identity as children, and of the blessing it is to have God as our good Father. I hope we have an awareness that we have no idea what the future holds, and so we have no idea what the next year of ministry will require of us, but God does. I hope we have an awareness that Kingdom work includes things we have no power to influence, like the softening of hard hearts, the opening of blind eyes, and the resurrection of those currently dead in sin, but which God does have power influence. I hope we have an overwhelming sense of our dependence on the Lord Jesus, and of His infinite dependability. In short, I hope we will be devoted to prayer.
So, with that, let me pray.
“Devoted to Prayer”
Acts Overview
Main Idea: We should be devoted to prayer, just as the church in Acts was devoted to prayer.
Introduction – Prayer: A Phenomenon
Acts 1:12 & 2:42 – Devoted to Prayer
Acts 1:12-14 – Prayer in Times of Waiting
Acts 4 – Prayer in Times of Crisis
Acts 6:1-6 – Prayers of Dedication
Acts 9:40 – Praying for Miracles
Acts 10 – God Leading Through the Discipline of Prayer
Acts 20 & 21 – Prayer as a Means of Relationship
Conclusion: Living as Children of the King
- If you’re honest, what does your prayer life say about your trust in God?
- Is childlike dependence on God difficult for you? If so, how come?
- Spend 5 minutes reflecting on what it means to have God as your Father. Read Matthew 6:25-33, and really think about what Jesus is saying here in terms of God’s care for us.