Opening illustration: One day a handicapped woman (due to her physical state could not go to church) was reading the newspaper and came across an article about the ministry of D.L. Moody and the Revival that was taking place in the United States. Even though she had never heard of him before, she began to pray and ask God to send Moody to her church in England. Sometime later, Moody decided to take some time off and go to England on vacation. He really hadn’t planned on doing any preaching while he was there. But he met a pastor in London, who persuaded him to come and preach in his Church one Sunday. That afternoon the invalid woman’s sister came home from church and told her that D.L. Moody had preached during the morning service and would also be preaching in the Evening service. When she heard this, she spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in prayer, praying that God would do something special. In his journal Moody made the statement that the people of that church were the deadest group of people that he had ever preached to. But that night, as He stood to deliver the message he could tell that something was different. That night several people confessed their sins to the Lord and accepted him as their Lord and Savior. Moody left town the next day to go to Ireland, but received a telegram from the pastor of the church begging him to come back and preach some more because Revival had broken out. Moody got back on the train and went back to London, where He preached 10 consecutive nights, and hundreds of people were saved. All because of the powerful prayers of one invalid woman who couldn’t go to church, but wanted to see and experience a Revival.
Let us turn to Acts 4 and catch up with the narrative of how and what the early apostles prayed for …
Introduction: Your prayers reflect what you believe about God. Small prayers reflect a small God. Sometimes we may wonder whether our big prayers sound too glorious or ambiguous and one may be perceived as a con man. We must understand that our prayers must reflect that it is not about us but God alone who did it. Most of the time people come with a grocery list for prayer or start telling a story about themselves in prayer. Let us not forget what it says in Psalm 100: 4 “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.” We must learn to praise and worship Him passionately in Spirit and in truth. When we pray, the word of God tells us that the Spirit of God will give us utterances and sometimes we might just groan while praying. Considering all these aspects of prayer let us learn from the early apostles …
What kind of prayers should we pray?
1. Pray for the POSSIBLE (vs. 13, 29, 31; Exodus 14: 8; Ephesians 3: 12) ~ Pray for boldness
Praying for something that we know is possible in the physical realm too. But here they were not asking for physical (worldly) boldness but spiritual boldness to speak and articulate the truth to believers and non-believers, knowing they could face persecution and even death for the same. There is a drastic difference between physical and spiritual boldness. Physical boldness you acquire through your education, job, status quo, eloquence and being relevant in society. It may take years to build on it. Whereas spiritual boldness doesn’t need any props from the physical world but requires your dependence on the Holy Spirit. Apparently it just goes to show how much time you have spent with God. Have you met/seen Him and been in His presence? Let us not forget what it says in 1 Timothy 1: 7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
This word properly denotes “openness” or “confidence in speaking.” It stands opposed to “hesitancy,” and to “equivocation” in declaring our sentiments. Here it means that, in spite of danger and opposition, they avowed their doctrines without any attempt to conceal or disguise them. Their boldness and success in the ministry, as well as in everything else, will depend far more on honest, genuine, thorough conviction of the truth than on the endowments of talent and learning, and the arts and skill of eloquence. No man should attempt to preach without such a thorough conviction of truth; and no man who has it will preach in vain.
They do not pray, Lord let us go away from our work, now that it is become dangerous, but, Lord, give us thy grace to go on steadfastly in our work, and not to fear the face of man. Those who desire Divine aid and encouragement may depend upon having them, and they ought to go forth, and go on, in the strength of the Lord God. God gave a sign of acceptance of their prayers. The place was shaken, that their faith might be established and unshaken. God gave them greater degrees of his Spirit; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, more than ever; by which they were not only encouraged, but enabled to speak the word of God with boldness. When they find the Lord God help them by his Spirit, they know they shall not be confounded.
This expression means simply that they obtained evidence that they had been with Jesus. It is not said in what way they obtained this evidence, but the connection leads us to suppose it was by the miracle which they had performed, by their firm and bold declaration of the doctrines of Jesus, and perhaps by the irresistible conviction that none would be thus bold who had not been personally with him, and who had not the firmest conviction that he was the Messiah. The apostles pray for boldness in v. 29 and we see that in v. 31 that prayer was heard and granted. That is, the apostles, and preachers of the Gospel, spoke it with great freedom, and without fear, not only privately, in their community, but publicly, in the temple: this was what was particularly prayed for, and in which they had a remarkable answer. Let us be a people who will continue to pray for the possible ~ boldness so that we are able to reach out to others without any hesitation or inhibitions.
Illustration: Moses, the fisherman turned disciples and me. (Abraham & Sarah: hard for God?)
2. Pray for the PROMISE (v. 30a; Jeremiah 17: 14; Exodus 15: 26) ~ Pray for healing
It is natural to be frightened when we become ill. We feel vulnerable. We worry; we want to know that everything will turn out all right. We sometimes feel alone even when loved ones are by our side. The illness lies within us, and no one else knows exactly how we feel. Prayer has the power to transform our fear into faith. It reminds us that we are never alone. Everything we are, body and soul, is in the hand of God, whose presence fills the universe and who is as close to us as our own breath. No matter what this unpredictable world sends our way, with God by our side we can find the strength to confront our fears.
I’ve heard people say "It’s God’s will" or "I’ll just leave it up to God" when faced with a serious illness or tragedy. Don’t fall into that trap. God wants us to pray to him for help. In Luke 18: 1 Jesus told his disciples that they "should always pray and not give up." and then Jesus asked "...will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?" Pray to God from your heart for healing. Don’t stop. Don’t give up. God wants us to ask him for help. He loves us. The Bible actually gives us some directions on how to pray for healing. For example, in James 5: 14-15 we are told: "Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15) And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven." and in James 5: 16 we are asked to "confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed."
Claiming God’s promise of healing in prayer is something of a reminder to God. Not that He forgets but holding Him to His promises after we have faithfully done ours (obedience to His commandments, judgments and statutes). The apostles were praying for healing of the sick for His glory as the Roman leadership and Israel had stood against them and their public ministry.
God heals because that is His pattern for revealing His nature through His Son. With compassion, Jesus chose to touch the festering sores of the leper (Matthew 8: 3). He showed mercy as He touched the crusted lids of blinded eyes (Matthew 9: 29). In receiving healing from God, we must earnestly desire to touch Him as well. “People brought all their sick to him and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed” (Matthew 14: 35–36). Every individual has the ability, through healing prayers, to express faith - the belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. You express faith in the car manufacturer who installs your brakes, faith in the architect who designs your office building, and faith in intangibles like gravity, solar heat, or a promise. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11: 1). Biblical prayer of faith is determined by (i) reliance upon God rather than man and (ii) confidence in the unseen power of God.
Exercising our faith in the area of healing may involve unconventional behavior. The Bible tells of a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years (Mark 5: 25–34). She knew that her condition would cause Jesus to be unclean under Jewish law if she touched Him. Yet she reached out in faith and was healed immediately as “Jesus realized that power had gone out from him” (Mark 5: 30). Genuine faith requires action. However, faith is not something we must “conjure up” enough of in hopes that God will heal us. So pray and welcome God’s healing power.
Illustration: Praying for healing of a Hindu man (tumor in abdomen) who was coming to one of our underground churches in the Middle-East. God healed him at the last minute. (John 4: 48)
3. Pray for the IMPOSSIBLE (v. 30b; Jeremiah 32: 20, 21; Daniel 6: 27; Acts 2: 43; 6: 8: 14: 3) ~ Pray for signs + wonders
The needs of the world today are so great and the present experience of the church is so weak, that we should long for the very thing they longed for. In the face of great opposition the Christians cried to God like this: "Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus." They cried for boldness in their witness; they cried for God’s hand to be stretched forth in healing; and they cried for God to perform signs and wonders. They were not just "open" to signs and wonders. They were desperate for them. They prayed for them to come.
And the question I want to get to is this: why did they want so badly for God to show signs and wonders? Why did they want him to stretch forth his hand to heal? This was the generation that had more immediate and more compelling evidence of the truth of the resurrection than any generation since. Hundreds of eyewitnesses to the risen Lord were in Jerusalem. This was the generation of witnesses whose word was least in need of supernatural authentication of all the generations following. This was the generation whose preaching (apart from signs and wonders) of the mighty, soul-saving Word of God was more anointed than the preaching of any generation following—the preaching of Peter and Stephen and Paul. Why did this generation, with its immediate access to resurrection witnesses, and its extraordinary preaching, feel such a passion to see God stretch forth his hand to heal and do signs and wonders among them?
In today’s text we see a pretty clear answer to the question why the church wanted signs and wonders—with all their dangers, with all their abuses—why they prayed: "Lord, stretch out your hand to heal and do signs and wonders in the name of Jesus." Acts 5: 12 says, “Many signs and wonders were done among the people by the hands of the apostles.”
Now let me bring in the objection that is sometimes brought up against praying for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit with power in signs and wonders today. Some people say that this compromises the centrality of the Word of God. It depreciates the value of preaching God’s Word. It jeopardizes the sufficiency of the Word of God to save sinners. If signs and wonders are added to preaching, it must be because God’s Word is not trusted or esteemed as sufficient to save. That’s the sort of thing you hear. Right? Signs and wonders are God’s witness to his Word. They are not in competition with the Word. They are not against the Word. They are not over the Word. They are divine witnesses to the value and truth and necessity and centrality of the Word. Signs and wonders are not the saving Word of grace; they are God’s secondary testimony to the Word of his grace. Signs and wonders do not save. They are not the power of God unto salvation. They do not transform the heart—any more than music or art or drama or magic shows. What changes the heart and saves the soul is the self-authenticating glory of Christ seen in the message of the gospel (2 Corinthians 3: 18–4:6).
But even if signs and wonders can’t save the soul, they can, if God pleases, shatter the shell of disinterest; they can shatter the shell of cynicism; they can shatter the shell of false religion. Like every other good witness to the Word of grace, they can help the fallen heart to fix its gaze on the gospel where the soul-saving, self-authenticating glory of the Lord shines. These apostles prayed for the impossible in the spiritual realm and received it bountifully in the physical realm. God did not fail them. He will never ever fail you. You need to do your part … (obedience to His Commandments, Judgments & Statutes.)
Illustration: Narration of our travel through the Awabi Road in the Middle-East and I prayed asking God whether He wanted us to stay in that country or leave … God answered. (Mary ~ impossible …)
Application: We must understand that God may answer our prayers with a ‘YES,’ ‘NO’ or ‘WAIT.’ We might be afraid of God saying ‘NO’ so what to do about it? It just reflects whether we have a ‘FAITH’ that will accept God’s ‘NO.’ Let us not forget the three Hebrews thrown into the fiery furnace. They had that faith. He may not always do what you ask or desire and may not do it immediately. The important thing is that we need to know whether we are asking it in God’s will (1 John 5: 14). In order for His will to be active in our lives we need to be walking, pleasing and witnessing for Christ. We must be walking and moving in the power of the Holy Spirit every moment and every day of our lives.
So are you going to pray for the possible and impossible, and claim the promises for your lives?
