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Building the Church Through Prayer Acts 4:23-37

Over the next five weeks we will be studying five foundational characteristics that existed in the New Testament church. This would be the church that existed in the years immediately following the return of Jesus Christ to heaven. The history of this church is recorded largely in the book of Acts. The reason it is important is that it is a record of church in its simplest form.

The church today is often cumbered with structure and traditions that have evolved over thousands of years. The church is to be a living organism, not an organization. I am basing this series on the description of the church that is found in Acts 4. Over the next few weeks we will look at the early churches:

    Commitment to Prayer
    Commitment to Unity
    Commitment to Sharing
    Commitment to Grace
    Commitment to Ministry

We have experienced many things as a church. We have enjoyed watching the growth over the last couple of years. Many of you enjoy coming here but feel like you are new and don’t know very many people. We have grown so fast that I believe that all of us have had that feeling. While the growth has been fun to watch I must tell you that I have no interest in just being a part of a church with a lot of people coming. A few years ago I probably would have been impressed with numbers. You will hear this a lot in the near future: At Newark Church of the Nazarene, we are concerned with church health rather than church growth. Growth may be fun but health is essential.

If we want to be more than just a large group of people who gather on Sunday morning we must focus on being spiritually healthy as a church.

In Acts four there is a great story. A couple of the first followers of Jesus, Peter and John, had been out preaching and telling people about Jesus. They were arrested more or less and brought in before the religious judges of the day. They were threatened and told to cease their preaching and teaching. They were told to quit using the name of Jesus. This was a serious incident. Following the death of Christ, many people were put to death for their faith. (Persecuted church Sunday)

Peter and John would go on to eventually experience beatings and tortures for sharing their faith. There was something dynamic happening in the church in those days. There was a real and living faith. Anemic and weak Christianity was unheard of.

What I want to look at with you for a few minutes this morning is one of the foundational truths that a healthy church will be built on.

You cannot and will not experience the full power of God in your personal life or in the life of this church if we are not praying people and a praying church. There is no way around it. We are wasting God’s time to just show up and have our little structures and forms while denying God the ability to work like He wants to do.

He will not inhabit what we do if we don’t practice prayer. You will not experience the power of God in your own personal life if you don’t pray. Some of you wonder why you never seem to grow any closer to God, yet you do not stay in daily communication with Him. The primary purpose for prayer is to grow the most important love relationship in your life. God simply wants us to know Him. He wants us to talk with Him and share our lives with Him.

When you are in a human relationship, it will not grow without regular communication. If you don’t spend time with each other, talk to each other, share what’s on your hearts and minds, then that relationship will go nowhere.

With that in mind let’s look closer at this scripture to learn a little more how prayer was vital in the early church.

There are six characteristics of a healthy church regarding prayer. Let’s look at them together.

1. In a Praying Church there is recognition of the importance of prayer, and there is a spontaneous desire for prayer.

“As soon as Peter and John were let go, they went to their friends and told them what the high priests and religious leaders had said. Hearing the report, they lifted their voices in a wonderful harmony in prayer:”

Peter and John had been imprisoned, and immediately upon their release they joined the company of Christians in Jerusalem and reported on all that had been happening to them. When the Christians heard their report, what did they do? Did they hold a conference? No they did what seemed to be as natural as breathing, they prayed. They recognized that prayer was fundamental, and not supplemental, and they all felt the same about it. Do we recognize the supreme importance of prayer and have we a spontaneous desire to unite in prayer?

We must learn that prayer is critical to everything we do in this church. Without prayer it is just you. With prayer it is you and God. What a difference that makes.

I cannot emphasis this enough. We must become a praying church.

2. In a Praying Church faith looks toward God.

The prayer of the church in this story is recorded for us to read.

"Strong God, you made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. By the Holy Spirit you spoke through the mouth of your servant and our father, David:

Why the big noise, nations?
Why the mean plots, peoples?
Earth's leaders push for position,
Potentates meet for summit talks,
The God-deniers, the Messiah--defiers!

"For in fact they did meet--Herod and Pontius Pilate with nations and peoples, even Israel itself!-met in this very city to plot against your holy Son Jesus, the One you made Messiah, to carry out the plans you long ago set in motion.”

They turned their eyes away from man and from the problems on hand, and they turned to God who could solve every problem and Who is in control of every situation. Whatever problem faces us it is God Who matters, not the meetings, the preacher, man or money. These are all and always secondary; it is the up-look which counts. The eyes of a praying Church are upon God Who is:

(1) He is the Sovereign Lord. Verses 24 and 28 indicate this. God is the all-powerful Creator and Sustainer, and He is the One Who knows the end from the beginning.

(2) He is a Self-Revealing Lord. Verse 25 tells us that God has spoken, and verses 26-27 tell us that He has spoken not only through the Prophets and in His Word, but finally and primarily in His Son. (Hebrews 1:1-2.)

(3) He is a Seeing Lord. We are told this in verse 29. God does see all, and He waits to intervene and to accomplish His will in answer to the prayers of His people.

We have no place to go except God. He is our refuge and strength. In Psalm 62:8 we read, “Trust in Him at all times you people, pour out your heart before Him, God is our refuge.”

We must naturally look to God to support everything we do as a church.

3. In a Praying Church there is obedience to the Great Commission.

I spoke about this last week. We are becoming a missional church. That means we are driven by our mission. While I believe in our mission (Leading people into a growing relationship with God.) it is directly connected to the mission that Christ left fort the church. We are to: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing, teaching and training people in the things that God commands from His word.”

Listen to the prayer of the church as they prayed with Peter and John:

"And now they're at it again! Take care of their threats and give your servants fearless confidence in preaching your Message,”

See how they prayed. Notice that they did not pray, "Grant that we may be kept safe"; "Grant that Peter and John may be protected"; "Lord, don't let it happen again!"; they prayed, "Lord, help us to get on with the job of proclaiming the Message.” In a praying Church the overwhelming desire of the members will be to make Christ known to a lost world. Does this characterize our Church? Is there a constant effort being made, not to organize, but to evangelize; not to denominationalize, but to bring lost people to God?

If we begin to spend time with God as a church in prayer than I believe that our hearts will enlarge, spiritually speaking. Some of us will begin to look on this neighborhood and see creative ways we can reach the people that are living right next door to this church. (Paint a picture of what it will be like someday to stand before God with our neighbors.)

If we pray, only God knows what will happen in this community through the efforts of this church.

4. In a Praying Church there is faith to expect miracles.

“Take care of their threats and give your servants fearless confidence in preaching your Message,” as you stretch out your hand to us in healings and miracles and wonders done in the name of your holy servant Jesus."

Where the importance of prayer is realized and where prayer is really practiced, God breaks in with His supernatural acts, His "signs and wonders.” (verse 30) These Christians prayed that God would perform miracles. We say that the apostolic signs are no longer required, and since the canon of scripture is closed we must not expect to see miracles performed. There is certainly truth in this, but often when we say these things we are excusing our prayerlessness. When the Church really prays then miracles take place. Miracles are wrought in the spiritual realm; souls are saved, and even desperate people are converted. In the physical realm also God is often pleased to heal the bodies and minds of His people.

Don’t you long to see God do more than just show up and give you a religious warm fuzzy on Sunday morning?

My prayer has been of late, God deliver us from our lukewarmness. Deliver us from the fact that we have settled for so little of You in our lives. Listen, God is powerful and posses the power to radically change lives. The worst thing that we can do is to give out just enough of this message to cause people to be really hungry for God but not practice it enough to see the power of God delivering people from their sinful ways! Either the message of Jesus Christ makes a difference in people or it doesn’t. If it does than we have a lot of praying to do. We have a lot of work to do.

5. In a Praying Church the Holy Spirit is there in presence and power.

“While they were praying, the place where they were meeting trembled and shook. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit...”

Prayer is the secret of every Pentecostal outpouring; but notice, we are not considering what happened on the Day of Pentecost. This happened after Pentecost, and it can happen again and again and again!

Please understand something. Did you know that the Church of the Nazarene when it was founded in 1908 was originally called the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene?

The name was dropped because of some of the excesses that began to occur when the “Pentecostal movement” was born around the same time. What happened in Acts chapter two on the day of Pentecost has nothing to do with speaking in unknown tongues. The disciples full of the Holy Spirit spoke in their own language people who were in Jerusalem from other parts of the world heard the message in their own language. The miracle in Acts 2 was in their ears not in their mouths!

The message that the Nazarene church historically has taught and preached and needs to get back to is that there is a sanctifying power and presence that comes into a believers life that enables them to partner with God an “do exceedingly abundantly more than we could ask or think according the power of the Spirit which works in us.”

The Holy Spirit of God will not inhabit the lives of people who are not surrendered to God. He comes as a comforter but He also comes as a cleanser and purifier. There are some people who love to run around talking about the power of the Holy Spirit who turn and run when you begin to talk about the power of the Spirit of God to clean up your life. When we draw close to God in prayer as a church He will cleanse and clean up the areas of our life that prohibit us from being effective in our sharing of the message of Jesus Christ.

6. In a Praying Church there is power in the presentation of “The Message.”

“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God's Word with fearless confidence.”

What happened after they had prayed? It always happens in a praying Church. People are stricken down by the power of the Word, and multitudes are saved; but in every case where great things have been accomplished through the preaching of the gospel it has always and only been in answer to the prayers of God's people. Conviction and conversions follow the preaching that is backed up by a praying Church.

Use Chpt. Five from the message.

2003/11/09