“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 was 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 all (Acts 4:29–33)”.
I was stopped in my tracks by this beautiful verse that tells us how prayers literally shook the building where these early Christians worshiped. Can you imagine being at a gathering and having walls shake from the power of your prayer? (That would be no laughing matter where I live in California!) But honestly, this story makes me wonder if we take the power of our prayers seriously enough in the modern church. Maybe we’ve forgotten about the firepower that the Bible clearly tells us we wield when we come to prayer. But this story should encourage us to pray bold prayers for the Kingdom of God. And those prayers should change the way we live our lives. The people gathered in this story weren’t superheroes of faith; they were just everyday people like you and me praying bold, earthshaking prayers with the Spirit of God. Nothing qualified them that doesn’t qualify you and me.
I remember being on a mission trip to Russia in my early twenties, and there was a room of about a thousand people who had packed in to see the “American rock band” that had come to town to play. Just before it started, the pastor who was on the trip with us asked me to be the one to preach the gospel that night and give the people a chance to respond. I just about melted in fear. I’m a singer, not a preacher! What if I messed it up? What if I lost my train of thought through the translator? I remember hesitantly telling him I would do it, and right then and there, Pastor Jeff prayed for boldness for me and asked the Holy Spirit to guide my words. My hesitation and nervousness melted away immediately, and God gave me the exact words I needed to say to that audience. It was incredible to see people all over the room raise their hands and receive Jesus.
I’ve seen the Spirit move in worship services on many occasions, but I long to see the power of prayer impact the way the church moves to action the way it did in these stories about the early church. I want to see it in my life and in yours. I want my heart to be focused on the truth that prayer leads to boldness—boldness in the way we care for one another, in the way we work for peace and justice, and in the way we share the good news of the gospel with the world! I want to approach prayer with the belief that it can shake the very foundations not just of buildings, but of the heart of our culture.
As we have seen throughout Scripture, the God of the universe hears our prayers, and we should be open to what He can do when we gather on our knees in praise and petition to Him! I want my prayer life to fill me with the Holy Spirit and make me bold about proclaiming the resurrection, bold about loving my neighbor, bold about being the husband and father and worship leader that God wants me to be.
An excerpt from “On Our Knees” by Phil Wickham
