Ancient Prayers, Present Power | The Prayer of the Early Church (Andrew Nunn)

And fundamentally, what they pray for is for boldness.

Now, there's a spectrum of people, and some people should

pray for more boldness, and some people should probably pray for

a little bit less. And there's a spouse somewhere

elbowing a spouse beside them saying you're the person who

needs less boldness. You would think because I'm

standing up here in front of hundreds of people that I'm a

bold individual. And I'll tell you that is a

faulty assumption. Let me tell you about one of the

times that marked my walk with Jesus and my lack of boldness.

I had a family member. I didn't grow up in a Christian

home. Most of my family were still

working out the whole Jesus thing.

And I had a family member who was injured in a workplace

accident. Pretty vehement atheist.

And God really, really clearly said, you need to call and you

need to pray for healing and you need to share the gospel.

And I was like, all right, Lord, I've heard you, but let's tweak

the dials on this plan a little bit.

We don't have a real deep relationship.

So what if I just started calling every few weeks and we

built a relationship to the spot where I could get to that point.

And fundamentally, I lost the opportunity to be obedient to

Jesus because I didn't want to step boldly into something that

was terrifying. Quite frankly, it was it was an

opportunity to preach the gospel to a family member.

And some of you are like, I'm having heart palpitations even

thinking about doing that, to pray for healing, physical

healing and spiritual renewal in my family.

But the story we're going to walk into today, Peter and John

do just this. They pray for physical healing

and for spiritual renewal, and they do it with boldly and God

moves in power. And so let me give you a little

bit of a quick background of the passage we're going to walk into

here. So this is the early stages of

the book of Acts. So Jesus has ascended into

heaven, said wait for the Holy Spirit.

They wait and then Pentecost happens, Thousands of people

come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior.

And things keep growing. And I start to turn on what's

happening here with these followers of Jesus.

And so Peter and John are walking to the temple one day

and there's a guy there who seemed to be like a fairly well

known beggar who was unable to walk.

And he's asking for money. And Peter and John say, hey,

he's like, hey, I'm about to get some money.

And he looks up and he says, I don't have any silver or gold.

But what I do have I give to you in the name of Jesus Christ the

risen Lord, stand up and walk. And he does.

And because he's this like regular staple in the community,

like Kent on the Corner by Franklin and Dundas, like

everybody would know if he wasn't there, right?

And so everybody takes notice and they start to see, and this

builds and Peter filled with the Holy Spirit, preaches the gospel

and thousands of more people come to know Jesus.

And the religious authorities are like, let's shut this sucker

down right now. So they throw him in prison and

then they threaten them and then they threaten him a little bit

more. And they're like, don't, don't

stop. Stop with the whole Jesus thing.

And they're like, well, that's not going to happen.

I appreciate your offer there, but we're responsible to share

this message. So we're going to do what we

need to do. And if you need to punish us,

then you do what you need to do. That's the Andrew Nunn like

revised translation. And then, and then they're like,

OK, threaten them a little bit more and then send them out.

And then this is where we walk into the passage.

They've just been released. They've been likely beaten,

definitely threatened, told not to talk about Jesus.

And so here is their next step in the playbook.

And so we're going to read this together.

Acts 423. And one of the things we do at

Brant is we want to recognize man.

This is the authoritative, infallible word of the living

God. And so as a sign of respect,

we're going to stand as we read it.

So I'm going to invite you to do that, and then I will read this

aloud for us. Acts 423 After they were

released, they went to their own people and reported everything

the chief priests and elders had said to them.

When they heard this, they raised their voices together to

God and said, Master, you are the one who made the heavens and

the earth, the sea, and everything in them.

You said through the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our

Father David, your servant. Why did the Gentiles rage?

Why do people's plot futile things?

The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers

assemble together against the Lord and against His Messiah.

For in fact, in this city both Herod and Pawnius, pilots with

the Gentiles and the people of Israel, assembled together

against your holy servant, whom you anointed to do what your

hand and your will had predestined to take place.

And now, Lord, consider their threats, and grant Your servants

may speak with all boldness while you stretch out your hand.

For healings and signs and wonders are performed throughout

the name of your holy servant Jesus.

And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled

was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and

began to speak the Word of God boldly.

Amen. Amen.

You can be seated and what a what a beautiful and powerful

prayer. This whole idea of this ancient

prayers present power series is we want to do this.

We want to learn from these stories and from these prayers

and learn how to integrate them. So my prayer this week is that

the Holy Spirit would shake this place and fill us with boldness

to proclaim the gospel with greater clarity and greater

boldness than we ever have. So just so you know what you're

in for, and then we're going to stop at the end of our time

together and we're going to pray that together.

So brace yourselves. And so we're going to jump into

this conversation. And what I want to look at is

not just boldness. I'm using the term biblical

boldness because like I said, there's some people who boldness

isn't the issue, It's the direction that the boldness is

taking you. And so we want to frame this

around what the Word of God says and what we've seen happen

throughout history and throughout Scripture.

And so number one thing we want to see here, the first thing

that we see is biblical boldness flows from people and prayer.

So this is the first thing, like I said, this is the first act in

the playbook. They're released from prison and

they go to their people and then they start to pray.

So people and prayer, man, we need each other.

This is a fundamental reality that God has woven into the

fabric of creation. It doesn't matter if you're a

follower of Jesus. This is just how we function.

Isolation destroys people's souls.

And so we need one another. You cannot YouTube your way

through this life. There's a lot of stuff on

YouTube, but you can't live life that way.

There's no such thing as a DIY Christianity.

I struggled with how to say this because there's a lot of people

say like, I'm a Christian, but I don't go to church.

It's not really my thing or I got hurt in the past.

And, and I don't want to say that you, you can't be a

Christian if you're not a part of a church because I think the

power to save is in Jesus and what he's done, the finished

work accomplished for you on the cross.

But I will tell you with absolute authority, it is not

the design. It is not what the Scriptures

teach and ask us to live into. We are called, you know how we

say it at former churches, Love God, love others and serve the

world. You can't love others if there's

no one else around you. We need one another and so we

need a church community. We need people and places where

we gather and are are pointed to the word of God and prayed over

and and growing with other people in our discipleship to

Jesus. And that doesn't only happen

here on Sunday mornings. That happens in discipleship

groups and serve teams and and your neighborhoods and

workplaces. If you're trying to be a

missionary to your workplace, are you trying to do that on

your own and just muscle up and, and push through it and, and

work hard in Jesus name? Or are you praying for other

followers of Jesus to come to light so that you can work

together to accomplish so much more than you ever could on your

own? To see the Kingdom break into

the places that you live and work and serve your kids sports

teams, your the stuff that you do on a Tuesday night when

you're out with your friends, to see God move in power in those

places, not just in this one. And this is a reality that we

need people around us and it makes us bolder, right?

Sociologists call this a group thing.

If you've ever seen those like riots on TV, people are like, I,

I don't normally stand on top of cop cars and jump up and down

and smash out the windows. But the crowd grew and it got a

little crazy, right? There's this reality where when

we get in a group of people moving in a direction, it

emboldens us and sometimes in not so helpful ways.

If you want to see this on full display, I had the joy and honor

of serving students for about 17 years.

And if you just put a bunch of high school boys in the same

vicinity, the the IQ gets shared.

It's not it doesn't get accumulated.

It gets split amongst the group and they will do things,

especially if there's another group of young ladies within the

close proximity, right? And we can see on display that

like we get a little bolder when people around us.

So the kind of people you surround yourself with matters

deeply. Are you surrounding yourself

with the kind of people who point you to Jesus, who asked

the kind of questions like what's God doing out in your

life right now? Do you have the kind of people

who when you come to them with a problem, their first instinct,

immediately after they hear what's going on, they raise

their voice to prayer, in prayer to God Almighty.

Is that the first instinct of you and your friends?

I can tell you I have some friends in my life and they are

a gift to me to go, oh, we heard that.

OK, let's pray. That's that's what we do

together. And the scripture here says they

went to their own people. Who are your people?

Who are the people that you would call your own?

Is it a discipleship group? Is it the people you serve with

on a serve team? Is it some of the people in your

neighborhood? Is it the people who you sit

around every Sunday, who know you, who see your life, who can

hear your stories and point you to Jesus?

Everybody, man, we need this. We are wired this way.

And so don't neglect that. And so we need people and we

need prayer. We need people whose instinct is

to pray. So as pray your instinct or is

it your last resort? Because there's a difference

between people who will pray for you if you ask.

And there's people who pray, right?

There are people who just pray. I again, I didn't come to know

Jesus through my family, but I got grafted into a beautiful

family. And so my 2 grandma's by

marriage have been bastions of prayer in this church for

decades. And so if you've been around a

while, you may remember the name Betty Connor.

Betty was the patron St. of Florida church for a stretch

there. And she when she couldn't serve

anymore during what was then Vacation Bible school, what is

now our camps, she had a list with every name of every kid in

that camp. And she would have a chair there

were they placed a chair outside of every room.

And she would sit and pray by name for every kid.

And when Grandma Connor said, hey, you know, you've got this

test going on, you got a thing happening, she would break out

her day timer and write it in at that time on that day.

And you knew that Grandma Connor was praying.

And now I have Grandma Kuntz still with me in the back there.

Hi Grandma. And she is she prays every day

for every sight of Forward Church.

And when we were launching, she made sure she prayed two or

three times a day for Ford ran like we have faithful people who

pray. And the reason God is blessing

our ministry, it's not because we're really good or really

gifted, really talented or really smart.

It's because the Spirit of God is that move and people are

praying and interceding and seeking the face of God for the

for his glory, not the glory of forward Church, but for the

glory of the King of kings, the Master, the sovereign Lord of

the universe. So we need to be people who are

praying. This was the practice of the

early church. Acts 114 says that they were

constantly united in prayer. And here's my confession.

So often my prayers are at the end of my rope.

I'm going to go out there and I'm going to work hard and I'm

going to do my best. I'm going to use what I have in

front of me and I'll call people and I'll do things.

And then when I'm like, God, I don't know what else to do, I'll

pray. That's so dumb.

We have the sovereign Lord of the universe who created heaven,

earth, the sea and everything in them who knows the beginning

from the end. And we have access through faith

because of what Christ has done to the throne room of God.

We can ask him to come and give us his mind and and be directed

by him. But instead I'm going to go and

figure it out on my own and then try to like attach his blessing

to my plan. What an idiotic thing I do, and

I hope you're smarter than I am. Is prayer our instinct or our

last resort? If your discipleship group

spends an hour and a half catching up on life and then you

throw in a random prayer at the end, that's not a discipleship

group. That's a social conversation.

Those are good and important things, but don't call it that.

Let's be people of prayer who pray first, who our instinct is.

Oh, you've got that going on. Let's pray together.

We have the sovereign God of the universe who wants to speak, who

wants you to know his mind. And so let's turn there first,

rather than exhausting ourselves in our own effort, in our own

wisdom, and then throwing a Hail Mary out to him at the last

minute. And when we start to understand

who God is and how much he loves us, prayer becomes a way more

natural response. Our boldness is rooted in the

people that that we surround ourselves with.

It's rooted in prayer, and it's rooted in who God is.

Biblical boldness must be rooted in God, His Word, and His work.

See what's going on here? These people, when they start

praying, they understand who they're talking to.

And one of the reasons we struggle to be bold is because

we think the results rest on us. We think it's about what we know

and what we say and what we do. And if you actually walk through

this story starting in Acts 3, you see that Peter and John

constantly take the attention off themselves.

Acts 3, everyone's rustling because this guy's been healed.

And they're like, what's happened?

Who's how've they done this? And he says, why do you look at

us as though by our power and our righteousness, this man was

healed? But let me tell you, this was

done in the powerful name of Jesus Christ.

It's not about us, it's about the God that we serve.

And then when they get dragged before the religious leaders of

the day, it says that they looked at Peter and John and

recognize that they were ordinary unschooled men, but

noticed that they had been with Jesus.

Understanding that our power and authority is not something that

we have in and of ourselves that we can sort of summon up from

our own strength. It's the Spirit of God.

It's a power of God at work and you and I.

And so that's why the first thing out of their prayers, out

of their mouth and prayers, master.

Other translations would say, sovereign Lord, God, you're

actually the one in control and not me.

This isn't actually about me and my strength and my wisdom and my

ability to execute here. It's actually all about you.

And so I'm going to step into what you have called me to, even

though it's scary, even though I am under threat right now,

because of who you are, your power, your authority, your

glory, your mind. And they know this.

God reveals himself in a couple of different ways.

We want to know who God is. So we go to His Word because

we're rooted in and who God is and we know who He is because of

His Word. God's word is God's revelation

of God's self. Here's here's what they they

pray you said through the Holy Spirit by the mouth of our

Father David. The scriptures are not some sort

of like helpful guidebook through life.

They're not just strong suggestions and the best way

forward. This is the inspired, infallible

word of the living God, the same God who created the heavens and

earth and seas and everything. And he has spoken to us.

And so we can know him. He reveals himself to us through

this incredible gift, and most of us just have it in our pocket

all day long and ignore it. This is how you know the living

God. And so it even informs the early

church's prayers. They pray scriptures back to

God. One of those beautiful that's

that's a whole idea of this whole series is we're learning

the scriptures and the prayers that rest in them so that we can

pray those back to God because that is how we understand and

interact with the God of the universe.

Have you ever done that? Have you ever just walked

through the book of Psalms and and found ones that connect with

your heart? Whatever season of life you're

in, you'll find it in the Psalms and pray that back to God.

Let God's word shape how you speak to him and to watch

throughout you see what happens here.

They, they start with creation and they see like this is who

you are God. This is what I, I have seen your

scriptures reveal to me. And so they, they know God and

they know God through his word, and they also know God through

his work. What's interesting is this, this

part of Acts 4, that's scripture and historical in the past to

us. But for them, that's happening

in real time. That is their life.

And so they can look back on some of the Old Testament

scriptures and see what God is doing in their day.

And they can have a bolder faith as a result because they go,

hey, this, this Scripture in Psalm 2, we're seeing that

fulfilled. This is what the Gentiles plot

in vain. And when the kings and rulers

come against the Lord's anointed, we just watched that

happen. And so we know that all of this

is in your sovereign hand. And so we don't need to fear.

We're bolder when we know who God is and what he said and what

he's doing. And the word of God roots us in

that. And so I want to ask you, are

you can you recognize what God's doing around you today?

One of the most powerful experiences for me growing as a

young man and as a leader in the church was actually a five year

revitalization process. And one of the pieces of

homework we had to do, it sort of ramped up, but we had to get

to the spot where we told a transformation story.

Every day you had to somewhere in your day talk to somebody

about what God was doing in and around you.

And then it changes what you see in the world.

When you're looking for the doom gloom of a Facebook news feed,

you're going to find it and it's going to feel really dark.

But if your eyes are attuned to what the living God is doing

around us, and we live with so much more hope, so much more

boldness because we see what God is doing.

So I just want to tell you a couple of stories I have seen.

God, in the last six months, God break the chains of addiction in

the lives of some of the people of our church.

A guy who's addicted to alcohol, used it as a crutch.

And then Holy Spirit. Saturday we prayed over him and

he said I felt something leave me and something else come in

which we know is the Holy Spirit.

And he said, and then the next week I had all these situations

where there was health scares and these things going on and in

my flesh, what I would have done is gone to drinking and I didn't

even want to. It's not like I fought it off in

my own strength. It's like the Holy Spirit had

just like changed me. And he said like I'm I can go to

parties where there is alcohol and I just don't desire what I

used to desire in an instant because the Spirit of God was at

work. Yes, you can.

You can be excited about that. I had two conversations inside

of three days with two young men who were wrestling with

different issues in their lives where there were patterns of sin

and behaviors that were being really destructive.

One was lying, one was addicted to pornography.

And we were praying together. And then the next week they came

back two separate conversations, three days apart.

And they said, I don't know what happened, but I don't, I don't

want it anymore. I don't want to lie.

I don't want to hide myself. God has just changed.

And, and not only that, both of them said, not only do I not

want those things anymore, I'm actually desiring the things

I've got. I've never read my Bible every

day in my entire life. And I can't stop.

I'm just excited about what God's word is doing.

And so God is on the move, people.

Let's be excited about it. And so let me let me tell you

what's going on here in this prayer in Acts 4, as they see

what God is doing and they jump on board.

And this line is incredibly important.

Like, do you want you get to do whatever your hand and your will

has predestined to take place, that God's will is unstoppable.

So the family member who God very clearly asked me to pray

for and I didn't, was walking through Sobeys and somebody

walks past them and says, your back was hurt.

And he's like, excuse you. He said, Holy Spirit just spoke

to me. This is a human atheist who

believes in aliens, not Jesus. And he's like, I'm sorry, what?

He said, yeah, The Holy Spirit said, your back, Sir, can I pray

for you? He said, oh sure, put his hand

on him and prayed over him and he said like I'm not fully

healed. But I felt something.

I felt like this warmth go through my whole body and God

had to use some random guy in Sobeys because I was not bold

enough to walk in obedience to what the sovereign God of the

universe commanded me to do. What an absolute waste for me to

let somebody else be used by God because I wouldn't be obedient

because I was scared of how that would affect our next family

gathering. What a miss.

What a miss by me. God is at work and His work is

unstoppable. And so let's walk with boldness

in that. Friends, there's a danger in

what I've said so far. You could go, OK, so we get some

people and then we pray together and then we read the Bible and

then we go, all right, let's go, let's do the things, Lord.

And then Jesus follows along with our enthusiasm and energy.

And what I want you to know is things like this, spiritual

disciplines, the active community and prayer and getting

in God's Word aren't tickets to some sort of like Christian

merit bad system where you like level up in your walk with

Jesus. These are gifts handed to us by

God Almighty so that we can know him more.

The goal here is abiding in Christ, resting in his presence,

knowing him deeply so that he can lead all of our steps.

There isn't a road map here. The goal is a person, and that

person is intimacy with God, with God himself.

And what we see here in the early church and what they do is

that biblical boldness is empowered by the Holy Spirit.

If you want to walk through the 1st 4 chapters of the book of

Acts, the Holy Spirit is laced throughout it just absolutely

full of the Spirit descending before Pentecost, empowering the

disciples. And Peter's full of the Holy

Spirit before he gives these messages that people are being

healed and they're confessing like this isn't us.

This is the power of the Holy Spirit at work through the name

of Jesus. And remember, we talked about

people who maybe need to dial it back, not ramp things up in the

boldness department. Man, that was our guy Peter.

Peter's problem was not being bold.

It was actually the boldness wasn't lacking.

The results seemed to lag behind or at least a little scattered

at times. He was the kind of guy who would

run his mouth and jump headlong into situations and then Jesus

would have to call him Satan and rebuke him and stuff like that.

You know, the huge. So what changed?

How do we go from the guy who can't get his foot out of his

mouth to the guy who thousands of people are falling on their

knees and repenting and being baptized in the name of Jesus?

Acts 1. Jesus says, wait, I'm going to

send you a helper and you will be clothed with power from on

high when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

We don't want the fruit of people being drawn to a really

great service or a really charismatic teacher or somebody

who's really sharp and smart and can respond to good questions.

What we want is the Kingdom of God being the in breaking

Kingdom of God moving on, people being transformed more into the

likeness of Christ, broken stories made whole people

trapped in addiction set free. We want the Kingdom of God to

come. We can't do that with a really

great five year strategy. And we have some really

brilliant leaders in this church, but we can't, we can't

do it. This is only accomplished by the

Spirit of the living God. I don't want you to go out and

be bold because you've got a better evangelism strategy and

you know what to write on the napkin of the guy at the

restaurant beside you. It's the power of the living

God. The Holy Spirit is at work

today. I told you a few stories and let

me tell you what's happening around the world right now.

In the UK, they're going through what people are starting to call

the quiet revival, that the Spirit is doing something.

The UK, if you follow church trends, they're usually 15 years

about ahead of Canada in terms of what's happening there and

how dechristianized they were. All the stuff that we're

wrestling with right now. They were a decade or two before

us. But read this from a report from

the UK Bible Society. Church attendance in England and

Wales is on the rise. This represents A startling

changes to a decade long trend and presumptions, with the most

dramatic increase seen among young people, particularly young

men. In 2018, just 4% of 18 to 24

year olds said they attended church at least monthly.

Today that's risen to 16%, with young men increasing more from 4

to 21% and young women from 3:00 to 12:00.

This is now the second most likely group to attend church

regularly. Overall, church going Christians

now make up 12% of the population, up from 8 in 2018.

In numerical terms, that's from 3.7 million to almost 6 rise of

56%. God is on the move.

And what if you read the rest of that report?

It'll tell you things like they're not just going to

church, but they're also reading the Bible regularly and actually

believing that this is authoritative and has something

to say about how we live our lives.

It's not just people walking into a building it, but God is

on the move and transforming people.

His Spirit is doing something. And so we're going to pray

because what happens here is in the middle of the situation,

Peter and John get together with their people and those people

lift their voice to the sovereign God of the universe

and pray Scripture back to him. And then the Holy Spirit comes

and shakes the room. And because the Holy Spirit has

come, that church was unshakable.

They proclaimed the word of God with great boldness and

thousands of people came to know Jesus.

You and I are sitting here today because those people kept

proclaiming that truth. And so I'm going to invite us

into a posture of prayer right now.

And what I want to ask you to do is we're going to we're going to

start. I want you to ask the Holy

Spirit what your next step of boldness is, because some of you

have ideas that the Holy Spirit needs to hit the brakes on, and

some of you are so scared you can't even let your mind go

there. And so I'm going to pray and

then I'm going to leave some silence, and then I'm going to

pray again that the Holy Spirit would fill us and empower us.

And then we're going to worship. So adopt whatever posture of

prayer. If you need to get on your

knees, if you need to raise your hands, if you need to stand or

sit, adopt A posture of prayer. Holy Spirit, help us not to make

prayer and dependence on you our last resort when we've exhausted

ourselves, but our first instinct.

And so God, we want to come to you in this moment.

And we ask, Spirit of the living and sovereign God, would you

minister to our hearts today? Draw clearly to each one's mind

the next step of boldness, however great or small.

Draw it to mind. We ask this, and we leave you,

space, Lord, to speak. Lord, would you put in our

hearts and minds, faces and names and dates, make it so

clear, God And Lord, we want to surrender

ourselves to you. God, I know for some of us,

we're just ready to go out and charge hell.

And for some of us, we're scared to death.

And so we ask, Holy Spirit, that you would come in this place,

that as we lift our voices to the Almighty God, that you would

send your Spirit to clothe us with power from on high, that we

wouldn't do any of this on our own strength and our own wisdom.

But God, we would rely and depend on you and you alone.

So, Spirit of God, fill us with boldness, not with arrogance,

not with more information, but with a boldness that's rooted in

Your word and your character and empowered by and led by your

Holy Spirit and nothing else. Lord, we pray God, that you

would let loose a revival in this place, the Spirit, as we

proclaim the name of Jesus, that you would stretch out your hand,

perform signs and wonders and miracles and work and do the

things that only you can do to set people free, to restore

broken marriages, to bring lost children back home.

God, we can't. And so we want to rest in your

presence, Holy Spirit. We don't want to just run good

church services. We don't want to run run great

discipleship programs. We want to be formed into the

image of Jesus, empowered by your spirit and building your

Kingdom together. And so come, Holy Spirit, I

invite you to invite the Holy Spirit.

Ask him aloud. Ask, invite Him to come and move

in your life to make you bold. Surrender ourselves to you,

Lord, as we lift our voices in prayer and in worship.

Would you meet us here and shake this place, Lord.

Amen. Amen.