Bold Prayer

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We exist to awaken this generation to life Christ.

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Good morning, church.

Hi there.

My name is Felicia, and I'm one of the pastors here on staff.

And it is my joy to get to be with you today.

Today we're starting a two-week series called Bold, and we're going to be looking at what is it like to be bold in uncertain and unpredictable times.

Today I get to walk us through Acts 4 and talk about bold prayer.

So before we do that, let's pray.

Father God, we just thank you for this time and ask that you would please just shrink the distance over this screen, God.

Would you help us to feel as if we are joined together as one congregation?

I pray, God, for anyone who's joining us for the first time today who may not know you.

God, may today be their day of salvation.

For someone who does know you but has just been wavering in their faith, would you bring them back today?

God, I just pray that you would use my words to bless your people.

God, by the power of your spirit, would you embolden me today?

In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, church.

So what do you do?

How do you pray boldly when you don't know the outcome?

When you have no idea how something is going to turn out?

How do you pray when you have zero idea what is going on even?

Have you felt that way lately?

Well, I want to tell you something.

Sometimes I pray in an effort to try and control the outcome.

Now, confession, I'm sure some of you guys do that too, but I just want to say that we're going to talk about what does it look like to pray bold prayers and to pray and ask God for boldness.

So, the question that we're going to be thinking through is how do we boldly pray when we have zero control over the problems that we're facing, and then when things like our money, connections, education have no control over the outcome.

Let me tell you about a time that I was facing when I had no idea how things were going to turn out, but I was betting on God to show up big for me.

So I had to go downtown San Jose Family Court.

I was going there because I was trying to restructure visitation and custody and get a little bit more child support for my daughter who was stepping into middle school.

And you know, middle school girls, they require a lot of money.

So I was stepping into this situation armed with not only what I thought was best for my daughter, but things that she had asked me to ask the judge to help our family.

You see, we had difficulty paying for things that she needed.

And so she was like, Could you please ask the judge for this?

Could you please share this?

Because she was too young to go to court with me.

Well, in facing that, I reached out to a few of my prayer partners who had gone with me before, but this time they couldn't come to court with me.

You see, I had to go in on my own.

I had to face a judge, and that was scary for me because when it comes to authority, sometimes I tend to get really scared and crumble.

Well, I just want you to know that God is in the details.

You see, I ask you again, have you been in that situation or some other situation where you had to pray boldly and expect God to show up on your behalf when you had zero control over what was going to happen and zero control over the outcome?

What kind of bold prayers may have you been praying lately?

Have you maybe been praying about what's it gonna look like when we go back to school?

Maybe you're the parent who's like, how do I teach my kids at home?

Or maybe you're that high school student or that college student who's wondering, this experiment we call learning, how am I gonna graduate on time?

What does your bold prayer sound like when you need to find a job?

When you are hoping to keep the job you have?

What is that bold prayer when you, in order to keep your job, have to move?

So that means a new town, new friends, and to try and find a new church.

I bet we've been praying some bold prayers around the COVID crisis and the numbers rising every day.

That's scary.

There are those people also who work on the front lines, who work in the food industry and work with the elderly who are scared.

And what does it look like to pray a bold prayer when there are things going on in the streets, people are trying to fight for equality?

And you're wondering how do we dismantle a systemic system of inequality?

Do I even have the energy to stay the course?

Well, I just want you to know questions like this, prayers like this, have been prayed all throughout the church's history.

What do these prayers sound like?

What kind of faith do people have to muster up?

And do you believe that God even cares?

Well, I know he cares, and I know that the church in the early days were trying to figure out what is this like?

How do we pray?

How do we lean into the power of God?

Well, Jesus told them in Acts 1 that He was going to send power.

They were supposed to sit and wait.

And in that sitting and in that waiting, and they were being prayerful in this upper room, Jesus brought about what he had promised them.

The power of the Spirit descended on them.

And only because they were in community, focused on prayer and in the word, did they recognize the power that Jesus had promised when it showed up?

Did they recognize that this power that was going to give them incomprehensible power to do great things?

Jesus said greater things than he had done.

It showed up, and they recognized it because of the power of prayer.

So we're going to step into Acts chapter 4.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

But before we do that, that story actually starts in the middle.

We've got to go back to chapter 3.

Where we land in chapter 4 starts in chapter 3, and let me just give you a quick summary.

You see, Peter and John were walking into a temple, and on their way in, they have to pass by this gate called beautiful, where they find a man who had been sitting there begging because, well, he was crippled.

He couldn't make money on his own, and so he was asking for help from people.

Well, Peter and John look at him and tell him, We don't have silver and gold, but what we have, we will give you.

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.

And so he goes into the temple walking and leaping and praising God and runs into people who recognize him.

You see, he was 40 years old at this point, so he had to have sat at that gate for quite a while.

But when he walked into the temple, into Solomon's colonnade on the outer skirts, people recognized him.

But so did the people who the temple actually belonged to.

The Sadducees.

They came up after they heard the roar of the crowd, arrested Peter and John, put them in jail, so they had to await their trial the next morning.

The next morning they stand before the Sanhedrin, this powerful group of people who just weeks before had tried their own Savior and hung him on a tree.

You see, this was a scary place to stand for Peter and John, because just weeks before, Peter, sitting around a campfire, denied Jesus three times to people with less authority.

But now he stands before them in boldness to answer the questions that they have for him.

Here's the question.

The question was in whose name and under whose authority did you heal this man?

Well, Peter says to them this it is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.

Now, what's important to know about the Sadducees is that they didn't believe in the resurrection.

They did not preach that.

Back in Luke 20 and in Matthew 22, they share this as they're talking with God, as they're talking with Jesus.

But I love what Peter does is he calls them out right in the midst of them accusing him.

And he says to them, This power I speak in, the authority of the name of Jesus Christ, the resurrected one.

In that moment, he talks about Jesus as Messiah and at the same time talks about his resurrection, debunking everything that they're teaching in this temple.

Well, of course, that didn't win him any prizes with them, but because there were people who were around celebrating and praising God, all these people could do was breathe out threats against the disciples.

They told them to stop preaching in this name and stop spreading the gospel.

Well, this is what makes me laugh about Peter because he has a lot of courage to say what he says next.

In Acts 4, where we're about to go, but in verse 19, he says this.

Basically, who do you think it's better for me to obey?

You or God?

To put it another way, who should I disobey?

You, mere men, or should I disobey God?

And then he goes on to boldly state, you can't even shut me up about the things that I've seen and heard.

You see, Peter walked with Jesus when he was on the earth.

He walked with him for three years as Jesus preached and taught and healed people.

And those are the things, along with the gospel and the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection, that Peter was not willing to stop preaching about.

So after saying that, there's the party still going on, the excitement around the healing, and they just have to let him go because they didn't want to deal with the crowd.

The crowd was on their side.

So the Sanhedrin said, All right, fine, go.

What I love about what happens next, though, is that Peter and John and the rest who were standing around didn't just go back and say, see, the power that God gave us, they didn't get all prideful, yeah, Jesus is on the throne, no problem, we've got this.

It wasn't about their strength, it was about the power of the Holy Spirit.

So what they did, they went back to that room and started a prayer meeting.

Let's read this scripture together.

Acts chapter 4, verses 23 through 33 reads like this.

Acts 4:23–33

On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them.

When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God.

Sovereign Lord, they said, you made the heavens and the earth, and the sea and everything in them.

You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our Father David.

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed.

Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed.

They did what your power and the will had decided beforehand should happen.

Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.

Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.

After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

All the believers were one in heart and mind.

No one claimed that any of their possessions were their own, but they shared everything they had.

With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's grace was so powerfully at work in them.

So when they got together to pray, it wasn't to say, see, we won, Jesus worked his power through us, we can do miracles.

No, what they did is they got together with their community and they prayed to the sovereign Lord who had a plan, who's been working out his plan all this time, since time began.

It's why we can hear, count it all joy when you fall into difficult trials.

Why Scripture can say that we are to believe that all things work together for the good of those who love God.

Now that doesn't mean that everything that happens is good and that everything is joyful, but that does mean that whatever is happening, God is working out to a good conclusion.

So they prayed to the sovereign Lord in community, looking for the plan of God in the circumstances they were in, and then they acknowledged the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

And they anchored their faith in God's word.

When they talked about their father David, that scripture there, that was from Psalm 2.

So they were praying God's word right back to him.

At the end of the day, what the apostles and the early believers needed was boldness to move forward in what God had called them to do.

What Jesus said to them when he resurrected, he came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Now go and make disciples.

So the very thing that the leaders and teachers of the law were trying to get them to not do was what Jesus told them to do.

And they were not going to disobey God.

So what they needed was boldness to move forward.

This is what it looks like to pray bold prayers and to pray for boldness.

The four principles that we can take out of this passage is what does it look like to pray boldly and to pray for boldness?

Well, like I said, bold prayers are prayed in community.

What does that mean?

Well, being with people, being with a group of people to pray.

That means one or two, as scripture says in Matthew 18, 20, that when two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst.

God is going to show up when just two or more pray.

Here's what you need to know.

Even if you don't have someone to pray with, the Holy Spirit prays with and for you, so you're never alone.

We also can, as in Hebrews, the end of Hebrews 11 and the beginning of chapter 12 tells us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.

So we have the ability to join our prayers with the faithful ones who have gone before.

See, you're never alone.

Generation after generation, the church has been praying, and we just get to get in flow with those prayers that have been prayed before us.

Because what that scripture also says in Hebrews 11, near the end of that, is that there were those who were counted faithful who had not received the fullness of what God had promised to them.

Now, they received parts of it that they could remain faithful to, but there were things that could not be fulfilled until the church began.

And that's the same even now.

There are people who prayed that could not see things until now the church in this day began.

So just so you know, you're never alone.

You can have a friend, you pray along with the Holy Spirit, or you can pray along with the faithful ones who have gone before.

Bold prayers are prayed in community.

Next, bold prayers are prayed seeking God's plan.

You see, they prayed to the sovereign Lord.

As I said already, God has a plan.

But if you don't go to him and ask him what it is, you don't get to connect with him and the plan that he has.

Whether it's for your life, your community, your family, you have to go to God and ask him what is his plan.

You realize that you can know that even though you're afraid, God wants to join with you.

We are finite.

He is infinite.

He sees the end from the beginning.

And so that's why we go to God in prayer.

Sometimes I know I do this.

I can be all day concerned about a specific thing in my life.

And then I lay my head on the pillow at night and I think to myself, I could have been praying about that the whole day when I was worried about that.

And so I'd say that to you to say, the moment you start to worry, turn that worry into a prayer.

Go to God and say, I don't know what to do with this.

That is at least seeking the infinite God for a plan that's better than anything you could ever come up with on your own.

Then bold prayers are prayed by the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

You see, what happened when they were praying was that they prayed for boldness.

They didn't pray that God would remove their enemies.

That would have been a good prayer, totally, not a problem.

But they also didn't pray that God would protect them.

Also a great prayer.

You can always pray that.

But instead, what they did was they prayed for boldness, that whatever came their way, they would be able to face it by God's Holy Spirit.

When they got together, they weren't praying that they would have the Holy Spirit.

They already had Him indwelling inside of them.

What they were praying for was a clearer manifestation of the Spirit so that they could recognize God speaking through and leading through them.

Sometimes we think that, oh, well, how do I do that?

Well, you just ask God, can you help me to be more aware of your spirit?

Can you help me to walk in step with your spirit, as Galatians 5 says?

So that we can walk in step with God's Spirit, we need to ask for that.

And then we need to wait and listen.

Sometimes He's just waiting for us to slow down long enough to let the Holy Spirit whisper what's the next step.

And then bold prayers are prayed on a foundation in God's Word.

Okay, so I'm just gonna tell you right now, I'm gonna give you what's not such a very good visual, but I guarantee you'll never forget it.

So when we talk about meditation on the Word of God, I've heard this compared to a cow ruminating on its cud.

What that means is that it goes into the stomach and then comes back up to the mouth.

Yeah, I told you it's gross, but here's the point.

As you get the word of God down into you, what rolls out of your mouth comes from the word of God.

So here's the thing I want you to do as you think about meditating on the word of God is what are you memorizing?

What are you reading?

What's your devotional material?

As you get the word of God down into you, it informs the way you pray.

The power you know that you have, the power that you know that God has on your behalf, that is why we meditate on the word of God.

That is why we memorize scripture.

Next, you can simply pray God's word back to him, like they did here.

They prayed Psalm 2, they just opened up their scriptures and prayed it back to God.

The Psalms, there are prayers by Ezekiel and Daniel, prayers by Jeremiah and Paul.

You can just open your Bible and pray those back to God.

It's just that simple.

And also, you can take the stories of the Bible, the different narratives that you read, and you can say to God, You did it for them.

Would you be willing to do it for me?

That's how we use God's word in prayer.

Meditating on it, getting it into you so that it Flows out of you, you can use prayers that are already there or even the stories, asking God, would He do it for you too?

But when you do that, realize that the goal isn't to shape the Word of God to you, but for the Word of God to shape you.

We sometimes don't want to take the Word of God as is.

We want to make it fit us.

But the way to get the mind of Christ is to be like Christ, to let the will of God be the number one thing in your life.

Jesus said, Not my will, but your will be done, in the hardest thing that God was asking him to do.

If we're going to be more like Christ and have the mind of Christ, we have to not make the word fit us, but let it mold us.

Praying bold prayers, you'll see in verses 27 through 30.

I'm not going to read them again, but a couple of other things that may not be some specific points, but I just want to say these to you because as you look at those verses, you'll see they were honest with God.

They said to God the realities of the situation.

Then they didn't assume that God knew, they asked.

They asked God to consider them, to enable them, and to join with them.

And then lastly, they had an expectation that God would show up on their behalf.

They didn't just assume, oh, well, I'm just going to throw this up to the sky and whatever happens, happens.

No, they served a God that they knew would show up on their behalf.

They didn't know how, but they knew that he would.

Let's read verse 31 again.

After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

I bring that verse back up again because what you notice is nothing changed.

There was still a hostile environment outside that they had to go back into to continue preaching the gospel because they had determined to obey God.

So if nothing changed, then why pray bold prayers?

Why pray for boldness?

Well, because bold prayers cultivate hope.

And scripture tells us that hope in God never disappoints, and those who hope in God will never be put to shame.

That is why we pray bold prayers.

Not because we necessarily know the way it's going to turn out, but because we know the God who we believe in and have faith in.

So let's take a look.

When God shows up in answer to our bold prayers, things start to get shaken up.

What does that look like?

Well, God isn't going to necessarily shake things up exactly the way you asked, but he might shake up your perspective about what you asked for.

You see, God is always after our hearts.

He's not always just after like what it is that we exactly want, because he knows exactly what we need.

And because he's a good father, that's what his aim is to give us, is what we need.

He might also shake up our complacency in our faith.

Sometimes God doesn't answer our prayers exactly the way we want or in the timing that we want, because he wants a relationship with us.

He wants to continue to grow your faith.

And so he'll shake things up to grow your faith.

He might shake things up because you're praying too small.

And he wants you to pray bigger and bolder prayers.

That's why God shakes things up.

And he might also shake things up to change your posture and the atmosphere that brings you into prayer.

He might want to embolden you to change what's happening around you.

Next, bold prayers unify God's church.

Jesus in chapter 17 of John prayed his last prayer before he went to the cross.

And he prayed for unity among his believers and then for those who would believe in their message.

And so we pray bold prayers, and when we do that, God unifies his church.

Because prayer is intimate.

And practically speaking, when we pray with someone, when we connect with them in an intimate way, we're less likely to be jealous of them.

We're less likely to envy them.

We're less likely to covet things that they have, and we're more likely to be forgiving.

When we meet with people and we pray with them and we know what's going on in their lives, then when they say something to us that may be offhand, we're like, I let that go because I know their heart.

That's what unity looks like.

When we pray bold prayers, God brings that kind of unity into his church.

He also emboldens the leaders.

Can I just tell you, as a leader of awakening, I hope you are praying for us.

Because we need boldness.

We need to be emboldened as we continue to figure out what it looks like to meet this city right where it is and to continue outside of our walls the things that God is doing in us.

Yes, we start with Del Mar helping those who are in need, but we want to go beyond our walls and into the city to help the vulnerable.

And so we need to be emboldened, not to be another do-gooder organization, but to do it in the name of Jesus Christ.

We want people to know why we do what we do, and more importantly, who is behind why we do what we do.

And so we need boldness for that.

And so do you.

Whether it's in your school, whether it's online or not, you have friends that you've made and that you've met, you have roommates who may not know Jesus, you have family members who may not know Jesus.

And as we say here at Awakening, all of us are leaders.

You are leading in some way in your life, as a student, as a friend, as a mother, as a coworker.

And so you need to be emboldened as you step into the places where you have influence.

And so God does that when we pray bold prayers.

And then God unleashes grace to all.

I don't know about you, but I could use some grace sometimes.

And our city needs grace, and our friends need grace, and our family needs grace.

And grace is, as Ryan has told us many times, doing for someone what they need when they deserve it the least.

But what's important to also understand about grace is that it's the overflow of unconditional love that we have received from God.

It is important for us to understand what that looks like.

So, God shakes things up in our lives, and some things are unexpected the way they turn out.

I want to bring you back to the story I was telling at the beginning because there was a very unexpected ending to this story for me.

You remember I was walking into court armed with my paperwork, with what I thought were reasonable requests of the court, what my daughter wanted, and I thought I'm gonna go stand in the gap for her, I'm gonna speak truth, not diminishing anything and not inflating anything, but simply the truth.

I go into court with my prayer support behind me, and I was devastated at the way it turned out.

You see, I didn't get what I wanted that day.

Everything stayed exactly the same.

I was lied on.

I was actually, believe it or not, laughed at by the judge, and that was really hard because he thought I was after something else that I wasn't.

And I was not so necessarily upset with how that turned out.

I was upset with God.

Because God was the one I was believing in and waiting on to help me.

God was the one who I expected to give me justice.

I don't expect justice from the courts of man.

So that day when I left the court, I was in tears.

And I was like, God, what just happened?

I thought you were on the side of the vulnerable.

I thought you cared about children.

God, I thought you cared about justice.

What just happened?

And as I sat crying, I felt like a little girl myself in that moment, with my head on the knee of my father, just crying out to God.

And I felt as if he just began to rub my head and say to me, sweetie, I know that hurt.

I know that what just happened seems like they won.

And it did.

It felt like a huge punch in the guts to have to go home and tell my daughter that we didn't get anything that she asked for.

But when, in my mind's eye, I could see God lift up my head and take his hand under my chin so that I could look to his face.

And what he said to me was this they've emptied their bag of tricks, and you're still here.

In that moment, I let that reality wash over me.

And I realized he's right, there's nothing else they could do.

And that emboldened me in a way that I never thought was possible.

So you guys know me 12 years after this event.

And so you guys may see me as someone with confidence and boldness, but that was because of that day and many more days like that since.

That God has continued to teach me how to trust him.

That God, even when he doesn't answer in exactly the way that I want him to, that I don't think that he's out to get me, but I know he's up to something for my best good.

And so I want you to know that when God may not answer prayers exactly the way you want him to, that doesn't mean he doesn't love you.

And I want to ask you something.

When that happens, do you run away from him or do you run to him?

Because he can't change your perspective if you run away from him.

He can't change anything about the way you see the situation if you run away from him.

You have to run to him, even as hard as that is.

But here's the thing: he's big enough, he can handle your anger, he can handle your frustration, he can handle your tears.

So run to him.

He wants to shake things up for you, but he can't if you run away.

I just believe truly that there's someone out there who has been running from God and he's saying, Will you come to me?

Will you cry to me?

Will you let me show you exactly what I'm up to and what you're going through?

I may not have answered it exactly the way you wanted, but I have a plan and I'm working it out.

You see, church, I'm convinced that bold prayers, prayed in community, seeking the sovereignty of God, based in his scripture and connected to the power of the Holy Spirit, that God's up to something.

He's a good father and he wants to answer.

Maybe not the way you want, but in the way that's best for you.

So here's what I want you to do.

We're just gonna demystify prayer, and I'm gonna ask you to step into an actual relationship with God through prayer.

This next week, I want you to get one person, maybe two at the most.

And I want you to simply pray.

Get in community with people.

And here's what I want.

If you've got 15 minutes, you each get one minute to share your prayer requests, and then you pray.

If you got 20 minutes, you get two minutes each.

Because here's what I know about people.

We tend to sit with our friends and we chit and we chat, and then they tell us, oh, I'm sorry, I don't really know what to do with that.

We should probably pray.

So then pray.

Pray your request, your request to God and see what he will do.

Because here's what I know: God wants to shake things up in our lives and in our world.

God wants to bring unity in his church and to start, and it starts with small groups of people willing to pray.

God wants to embolden us, and so that happens when we take the invitation to boldly come before his throne of grace, and then he unleashes his grace on the community that we're ready to serve.

Church, what would it look like if awakening became a prayerful church, praying bold prayers and praying for boldness?

Who might we become?

How would God use us?

I know I want to be used.

I know I want to see this church be used to do great things.

So, are you ready to pray?

Are you ready to step out in boldness?

Will you join me?

Because I'm gonna do it.

Pray with me.

Father, I thank you that I know that we have a church of praying people.

I know that you've also woken some people up today to the power of prayer.

And I pray that through your word that they would understand how to continue to connect with you in a real way.

God, you want relationship with us.

And I know relationship does not happen without communication.

And so I pray that you this week will begin to cultivate for your children a new relationship with you.

Would you demystify prayer for them as they step into community to pray with their brothers and sisters?

I pray that in small groups people would start to pray together.

I pray that friends and couples and families would start to pray together this week.

God, would you meet them and embolden us as a church and ready us for what you have for us next.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.