The Great Revolution of Prayer
The prayer life of the early church in the book of Acts
“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”
“Prayer is in essence rebellion—rebellion against the world and its fallenness, the absolute and undying refusal to accept as normal what is pervasively abnormal. Prayer is the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation that is at odds with the norm as originally established by God.”
“The book of Acts speaks of revolution. We must never forget this. It depicts life in the disrupting presence of the Spirit of God.”
Prayer as Revolution
At the end of 2021, there was talk of the Great Resignation. In America, more people resigned from their jobs than at any other time in history, this largely due to the pent-up lingering effects of COVID-19. Throughout this season, many people discovered more about who they are or wanted to be as well as where and how they wanted to work. Then, the turn of the year brought about the cyclical, annual declaration of many Great (and not so great) Resolutions. People want to change, improve, refine, and enhance themselves, many declaring these desires with difficult to keep resolutions.
The Great Resignation and many Great (and not so great) Resolutions have me thinking about a Great Revolution that began over 2000 years ago. The numerical growth of the early church throughout the Book of Acts and in the subsequent three centuries was simply phenomenal! Rodney Stark, in his important book, The Rise of Christianity, estimates there were 1000 Christians in 40 AD (0.0017% of the global population). By 100 AD there were 7530 Christians (0.0126% of the population), by 150 AD there were 40,496 Christians, and by 200 AD, that number had reached 217,795! The church grew exponentially. By the year 300 AD there were 6,299,832 Christians (10.5% of the population), and by 350 AD there were 33,882,008 Christians (56.5% of the 60 million people living at the time)!
What sparked the exponential growth of this movement? Stark writes: “Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world…. Christianity revitalized life in cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships…. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachment. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fire, & earthquakes [sound familiar?], Christianity offered effective nursing services and care….”
Rodney Stark has given us a beautiful picture of the early church. Christians in the church were committed to:
- evangelistic relationships with family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers
- vibrant and vulnerable community
- family health and the valuing of children
- and, care for others amid crisis, chaos, epidemics, etc.
However, one engine for growth that does not get much attention in Stark’s work is the power of prayer. And yet, I would suggest that the expansive growth of the church was premised upon the Great Revolution of Prayer.
In 2022, as I consider what life might be like and the role of the local church in the aftermath of a pandemic, I hope we don’t too quickly rush back to the many good things we do at the expense of being a people devoted to prayer.
I would imagine this comment is met with enthusiasm by a few and dread by many. After all, when it comes a “prayer life,” what most Christians hold in common is the assumption that “it stinks!” Our desire as pastors at WCPC is to help you work through your dread and paralysis in the hopes that you find yourself on the other side–participating in a Great Revolution of prayer that just might change you, change those in relationship to you, and begin to effect change throughout our entire community.
Over the next four months, we will be exploring the Prayer Life of the Early Church as found in the Book of Acts. We will engage with the fifteen prayers that show up in its pages: prayers of waiting, belonging, boldness, leadership, perseverance, power, conversion, resurrection, connection, deliverance, commission, salvation, parting, intervention, and healing. Along the way, we will introduce you to four different prayer practices (explanations for each are found at the end of this overview) you can try by yourself, with your family, and hopefully in your community group.
| Date | Teaching Title | Scripture | Prayer Practice |
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January 23 |
Prayers of Waiting |
Acts 1:1-14 |
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January 30 |
Prayers of Belonging |
Acts 2:42-47 |
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February 6 |
Prayers of Boldness |
Acts 4:23-31 |
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February 13 |
Prayers of Leadership |
Acts 6:1-7 |
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February 20 |
Prayers of Perseverance |
Acts 7:54-60 |
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February 27 |
Prayers of Power |
Acts 8:9-25 |
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March 6 |
Prayers of Conversion |
Acts 9:1-19 |
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March 13 |
Prayers of Resurrection |
Acts 9:32-42 |
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March 20 |
Prayers of Connection |
Acts 10:1-23; 30-33 |
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March 27 |
Andy Crouch Visiting |
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April 3 |
Prayers of Deliverance |
Acts 12:1-11 |
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April 10 |
Week of Palm Sunday |
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April 17 |
Week of Easter |
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April 24 |
Prayers of Commission |
Acts 13:1-5 |
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May 1 |
Prayers of Salvation |
Acts 16:16-34 |
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May 8 |
Prayers of Parting |
Acts 20:17- 21:1-6 |
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May 15 |
Prayers of Intervention |
Acts 22:14-21 |
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May 22 |
Week of Student Sunday |
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May 29 |
Prayers of Healing |
Acts 28:7-10 |
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Table of Contents
The Prayer Life of the Early Church…
As a movement with Jewish roots, the early church adopted the rhythm of praying thrice daily. This practice was typically engaged individually and in a household (in that day a broader context than family). Additionally, as demonstrated throughout the book of Acts, the church regularly met for prayer and leaders were always quick to pray. Again, prayer was the revolution and it was fertile ground for the expansion of Christ’s Church.
…In the Book of Acts
“Jesus did not come bringing an interesting philosophy of life. He came calling people to a new way of living and dying. The stories in Acts not only depict an author, God, not only render a new world, God’s world, but they also render a new way of living, discipleship in the church. Given who God is and the way God’s world is, this way of life makes sense.”
“[Luke’s] two-volume work, Luke-Acts, exemplifies master storytelling because he follows God on the ground, working and moving in and through the quotidian realities of struggle, of blood and pain, suffering and longing. He never loses sight of God or of humanity, both locked in the drama of life together aiming toward life abundant.”
Why should we explore the Book of Acts?
Here are three reasons:
The Book of Acts connects Jesus to the Church.
Many in our culture are agnostic or atheistic. Still, several of our friends, neighbors, and co-workers in the Bay Area might have an admiration for Jesus but a disdain for the church…
Lord Jesus, save us from your followers. -bumper sticker seen in Berkeley
If it weren’t for Christians, I’d be one. -Gandhi
The Book of Acts does not allow us to admire Jesus while staying disconnected from the church. Instead, it intricately connects Jesus’ mission to the mission of the church and the mission of the church to Jesus’ mission.
The storyline of the Book of Acts suggests that God is personal and alive rather than impersonal and detached. And we connect to this God through prayer!
Deism suggests God’s direct and personal involvement with his creatures ceased after the moment of creation. While God is upstairs, we are downstairs trying to muster up the energy to do God’s work. In contrast, throughout the Book of Acts, the power of the Holy Spirit is at work in the church. And the connection to the Holy Spirit is established through prayer!
The Book of Acts offers an inspiring yet honest accounting of the early church.
Acts allows today’s church to recapture something of the early church’s spirituality, confidence, enthusiasm, vision, power, and forward movement. It captures the dynamic of the church as both organization and organism. And, because Acts reads more like a newspaper chronicling recent events and less like a history book recounting stylized remembrances, we get to see the church on-the-ground and up-close-and-personal. We get the church, warts and all…when it is rife with discussion, disagreement, and debate. And, when it is tapped into the power of God and demonstrating the love of God!
When and Where was the Book of Acts Written?
The prologue (Acts 1:1-3) tells us that the author desires to follow “all things from the beginning,” “accurately,” and in “an orderly account.” Luke was an organizer and interpreter of actual history, and also a preacher and artist who is both a careful collector and a critical arranger.
Acts was written in the late 70s. Luke wrote Acts after one or more stays in Rome. It was a sequel to the Gospel of Luke. While in Rome, Luke no doubt obtained a copy of Mark, which served as at least one stimulus for the composition of his Gospel. Luke wrote during a dark era, after Nero’s persecution of Christians and the sack of Jerusalem. Thus, Luke and Acts were dangerous documents, exalting Jesus in a way only befitting the emperor and eulogizing people the Romans had executed. Given their defiance to Rome, these manuscripts had to be carefully and privately protected and kept secret.
Luke and Acts are respectively the longest and second-longest compositions in the New Testament. Luke’s writings (Luke-Acts) contribute 28% of the total volume of the Greek Scriptures!
Luke is following ancient Greek historiographical conventions in that Greco-Roman authors often tried to keep the size of books roughly symmetrical. A constraint faced by ancient writers like Luke was the length of composition one could get on a papyrus roll: Luke’s Gospel (19,404 words) would have fit on a thirty-five-foot roll and Acts (18,374 words) on a thirty-two-foot roll.
The first volume covers roughly the same amount of time (4 B.C. to A.D. 30) as the second volume does (A.D. 30-60). Also, the last quarter of Luke’s Gospel presents the events leading to and including Jesus’ trial, death, resurrection, and ascension, while the last quarter of Acts deals with Paul’s arrest, trials, and arrival in Rome.
Who wrote the Book of Acts?
Acts was written by a second-generation Christian named Luke. He was not among the elite of society but certainly in contact with them. Luke was on retainer with a well-to-do person, Theophilus, who provides him the means and leisure to write this two-volume work.
Luke possessed considerable education – an adept doctor, rhetorician, and historian. He was bi-cultural, at home in the Greco-Roman world while familiar with its Jewish subculture. Luke was deeply concerned that Christianity be accepted among the social elite and those in power. In this regard, Luke was a cosmopolitan person who insists that Christianity is a universal and inclusive religion that climbs up and down the social ladder (up-and-in and down-and-out) and also bridges geographic and ethnic boundaries. In this respect, Luke includes merchants, artisans, slaves, women, and children.
Luke was a traveling companion of Paul. Perhaps he was Paul’s beloved physician who treated his ongoing physical malady, a “thorn in the flesh,” thought to be an eye disease? He was also with Paul during his periods of imprisonment.
It is worth noting that Luke was perhaps the only Gentile contributor to the New Testament, and wrote the best Hellenistic Greek in the Scriptures. He was a non-Palestinian Gentile with a clear knowledge not only of Christian traditions but also of the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures. Thus, as a non-Jew, Luke was perhaps a “God-fearer,” a synagogue adherent before becoming a Christian.
Notable Quotes on the Book of Acts
May these three quotes be grounding coordinates for you and your community group as we more deeply explore this book together:
“We can be thankful that many recent studies have focused on the theological message of Acts without denying its historical value…. This approach to Acts can be called “theological history”—a narrative of interrelated events from a given place and time, chosen to communicate theological truths. This commentary likewise does not place false dichotomies between theology and history. It views God as acting in the arena of history and through that revealing his ways and his will to his people.”
“The book of Acts beckons us to a life-giving historical consciousness that senses being in the midst of time that is both past and present and that pulls us toward a future with God in the new creation. That future with God, however, does not discount the now, the present moment. This is the work of the Spirit, who relishes each moment with us, never discounting our time and never treating the time of creation and each creature as inconsequential time.”
“The Christian claim is more than that the stories of Acts are interesting, exciting, or historically valuable—which they often are. Our claim is that these stories, the ones you and I must preach and teach in our church today, are nothing less than true. That is, they help us see the world as it really is. The world really is a place where God’s promises make a difference, and that makes all the difference to us.”
Themes in the Book of Acts
There are perhaps twenty themes we could explore in the Book of Acts. However, for this teaching series, I want to focus our attention on four: (1) Power via the Holy Spirit, (2) The Church as Witness to the world, (3) Reconciliation between peoples, and, obviously, given the series title, (4) Prayer.
1. Power: The Holy Spirit or Worldly Conventions?
“The story of Acts brings us into contact with the carnal weapons of this world: violence and the threat of violence. These weapons represent the seductive power of death that tempts us to envision a world made right through its uses. Death invites us to imagine creation through its power. We are often seduced into believing that killing and destroying can create and sustain peace and order. This has always been a fool’s gold. The enemies of the Way repeatedly believed that violence would thwart the Spirit of God and end discipleship to Jesus. They misunderstood not the power of religious conviction but the nature of divine desire.”
“The deepest reality of life in the Spirit depicted in the book of Acts is that the disciples of Jesus rarely, if ever, go where they want to go or to whom they would want to go. Indeed the Spirit seems to always be pressing the disciples to go to those to whom they would in fact strongly prefer never to share space, or a meal, and definitely not life together. Yet it is precisely this prodding to be boundary-crossing and border-transgressing that marks the presence of the Spirit of God.”
2. Church as Witness to the World
“Jesus’ statement of the Great Commission in Acts 1:8 is the key text in this book, highlighting the two main themes of Acts: the Holy Spirit and witness. Jesus’ disciples will become witnesses only after the Holy Spirit comes on them. Jesus then gives the geographical sequence in which the task of witness will be carried out—they will begin with Jerusalem, then move to Judea and Samaria, and culminate with witness to the ends of the earth.”
As contemporary witness too (How Acts speaks prophetically to today’s culture)
- To a society where individualism reigns and where the church also seems to have adopted a style of community life that “guards the privacy of the individual,” the early church presents a radical community where the members held all things in common.
- To a society where selfishness is sometimes admired and each one is left to fend for himself or herself, Acts presents a group of Christians who were so committed to Christ and the cause of the gospel that they were willing to sacrifice their desires for the good of others.
- To a society where pluralism defines truth as something subjective and personal, Acts presents a church that based its life on certain objective facts about God and Christ—facts that were not only personally true but also universally valid and therefore had to be presented to the entire world.
- In an age when many churches spend so much time, money, and energy on self-preservation and improvement, Acts presents churches that released their most capable people for reaching those who don’t know Jesus.
- In an age where many churches look to excellence in techniques to bring success, Acts presents a church that depended on the Holy Spirit and gave top priority to prayer and moral purity.
- In an age when many avenues are available to avoid suffering and therefore many Christians have left out suffering from their understanding of the Christian life, Acts presents a church that took on suffering for the cause of Christ and considered it a basic ingredient of discipleship.
3. Reconciliation between Peoples
“The book of Acts takes place in empire—the Roman Empire—and this is not a fact that we should ever let escape our attention. The goal of the Roman Empire was to shape the world in its own image. This is always the desire of empire. Rome understood its task as the reconstruction of land, space, and life under its rule. This was a civilizing mission at its deepest level where construction of place would mean reconstruction of life. As Justo González notes, ‘. . . Romans understood their civilizing task was precisely the ‘cityfication’ of the world. For them, the greatest human creation was precisely the city, and their purpose in history was to promote city life throughout their empire.’ That city life came with a cost as peoples were displaced by the expansion of large agricultural estates that serviced the growing markets of the city.”
“Thus life under empire is always life under threat of assimilation and transformation through the weakening and even loss of cultural identities and religious sensibilities. For Israel, such threat was woven into its history, and in the book of Acts we see the agonizing pain of such threat. Israel in Acts is diaspora Israel. Diaspora means scattering and fragmentation, exile and loss. It means being displaced and in search of a place that could be made home. For Israel it means life among the Gentiles. Danger and threat surround diaspora life. Diaspora life is life crowded with self-questioning and questions for God concerning the anger, hatred, and violence visited upon a people. We must never confuse voluntary migration with diaspora, because diaspora is a geographic and social world not chosen and a psychic state inescapable.”
“The peoples who inhabit diaspora live with animus and violence filling the air they breathe. They live always on the verge of being classified enemy, always in evaluation of their productivity to the empire, always having an acceptance on loan, ready to be taken away at the first sign of sedition. They live with fear as an ever-present partner in their lives, the fear of being turned into a them, a dangerous other, those people among us.”
“In Acts we find faith caught between diaspora and empire. Faith is always caught between diaspora and empire. It is always caught between those on the one side focused on survival and fixated on securing a future for their people and on the other side those intoxicated with the power and possibilities of empire and of building a world ordered by its financial, social, and political logics that claim to be the best possible way to bring stability and lasting peace. The book of Acts is read poorly when we forget this double-bind or forget the pain of Israel in its pages. There is palpable fear flowing through the narrative and not just the fear of the Israel who resists Messiah Jesus and his followers but also the fear of the Israel who embraces King Jesus but is unclear about the Spirit’s leading. The Spirit always confronts our fear in order to free faith to live in its true home in God. But this is not easy.”
“Indeed the context of Acts is struggle. The content of Acts is also struggle. It is struggle in two senses. It is the struggle against the powers and principalities that exploit the emotional currents of diaspora and empire, seeking to drive people to kill, steal, or destroy for the sake of securing diaspora or empire’s futures. The second sense of struggle is the struggle to yield to the Spirit, following God into the new that God imagines and is bringing about for the world.”
“The Spirit of God intervenes between diaspora and empire, offering a new world to both. Both diaspora and empire have just cause for their visions of life.”
“We must hear in the Acts story the pathos of life caught in the grip of diaspora and empire—of people angry, confused, and frustrated as the resurrected Jesus calls them to envision the new creature in the Spirit, which is a mind-altering new life together. Fundamental to that new reality is the joining of Jew and Gentile.”
“Acts renders the Gentiles as a profound question to the Jews of diaspora: What will you do if I join you at the body of Jesus and fall in love with your God and with you? The Gentiles of Acts are on their way to communion with Jews while remaining Gentiles. This is the most terrifying aspect of interruption: love.”
“We have yet to hear the message of Acts of an erotic God who seeks to place in each of us desire for those outside of us, outside our worlds of culture, clan, nation, tribe, faith, politics, class, and species.”
4. Prayer
“Prayer. Fourteen of the first fifteen chapters of Acts (ch. 5 excepted) and many of the later chapters mention prayer; in Acts, as in Luke’s Gospel, prayer is a key theme.”
Impactful Quotes on Prayer
Our prayer is that your individual, family, and community group prayers would be shaped by these powerful quotes on prayer:
“One reason why the experiential reality of perceiving God is unfamiliar country today is that the pace and preoccupations of urbanized, mechanized, collectivized, secularized modern life are such that any sort of inner life... is very hard to maintain. To make prayer your life priority, as countless Christians of former days did outside as well as inside the monastery, is stupendously difficult in a world that runs you off your feet and will not let you slow down. And if you attempt it, you will certainly seem eccentric to your peers, for nowadays involvement in a stream of programmed activities is decidedly ‘in,’ and the older ideal of a quiet, contemplative life is just as decidedly ‘out.’ That there is widespread hunger today for more intimacy, warmth, and affection in our fellowship with God is clear... but the concept of Christian life as sanctified rush and bustle still dominates, and as a result the experiential side of Christian holiness remains very much a closed book.”
“Day by day, dear Lord, of Thee three things I pray: To see Thee more clearly. To love Thee more dearly. To follow Thee more nearly.”
“Coincidences occur much more frequently when I pray.”
“I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.”
“For those explorers in the frontiers of faith, prayer was no little habit tacked onto the periphery of their lives; it was their lives. It was the most serious work of their most productive years.”
“Souls without prayer are like people whose bodies or limbs are paralyzed: they possess feet and hands but they cannot control them.”
“A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening.”
“We are face to face here with one of the most vital subjects in connection with our Christian life. Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when, upon his knees, he comes face to face with God.”
“For many years I was bothered by the thought that I was a failure at prayer. Then one day I realized I would always be a failure at prayer, and I’ve gotten along much better ever since.”
“Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.”
“There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer.”
“So what about my life of prayer? Do I like to pray? Do I want to pray? Do I spend time praying? Frankly, the answer is no to all three questions. After sixty-three years of life and thirty-eight years of priesthood, my prayer seems as dead as a rock… I have paid much attention to prayer, reading about it, writing about it, visiting monasteries and houses of prayer, and guiding many people on their spiritual journeys. By now I should be full of spiritual fire, consumed by prayer. Many people think I am and speak to me as if prayer is my greatest gift and deepest desire. The truth is that I do not feel much, if anything, when I pray. There are no warm emotions, bodily sensations, or mental visions. None of my five senses is being touched – no special smells, no special sounds, no special sights, no special tastes, and no special movements. Whereas for a long time the Spirit acted so clearly through my flesh, now I feel nothing. I have lived with the expectation that prayer would become easier as I grow older and closer to death. But the opposite seems to be happening. The words darkness and dryness seem to best describe my prayer today… Are the darkness and dryness of my prayer signs of God’s absence, or are they signs of a presence deeper and wider than my senses can contain? Is the death of my prayer the end of my intimacy with God or the beginning of a new communion, beyond words, emotions, and bodily sensations?”
“To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ.”
“People who aren’t Christian don’t pray because they are afraid God might be there. Christians don’t pray because they are afraid He might not be.”
“More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”
“There is nothing that we are promised to expect from the Lord, which we are not also bidden to ask of him in prayer. It is absolutely true that it is by prayer that we dig up the treasures that were pointed out by the Gospel of our Lord, and which our faith has gazed upon longingly.”
“Tears are a biological gift of God. They are a physical means for expressing emotional and spiritual experience. But it is hard to know what to do with them. If we indulge our tears, we cultivate self-pity. If we suppress our tears, we lose touch with our feelings. But if we pray our tears we enter into sadnesses that integrate our sorrows with our Lord’s sorrows and discover both the source of and the relief from our sadness.”
“Prayer is as much outer as inner. It is the most practical thing anyone can do. It is not mystical escape, it is historical engagement. Prayer participates in God’s action. God gathers our cries and our praises, our petitions and intercessions, and uses them. The prayers that ascend to God now descend to earth. God uses our prayers in his work.”
“Prayer is God’s way of providing man with the dignity of causality.”
“Prayer is access to an environment in which God is the pivotal center of action. All other persons, events, or circumstances are third parties. Existence is illuminated in direct relationship to God himself. Neither bane nor blessing distracts from this center. Persons who pray are not misled by demons of size, influence, importance, or power. They turn their backs on the gaudy pantheons of Canaan and Assyria, Greece and Rome, and give themselves to the personal intensities that become awe before God and in intimacy with God. And they change the world.”
“Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or for bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his. It is by prayer that we seek God’s will, embrace it and align ourselves with it. Every true prayer is a variation on the theme, ‘Your will be done.’ Our Master taught us to say this in the pattern prayer he gave us, and added the supreme example of it in Gethsemane.”
“The Church will win the world for Christ when—and only when—she works through living spirits steeped in prayer.”
“When we have met our lord in the silent intimacy of our prayer, then we will also meet him … in the market and in the town square. But when we have not met him in the center of our own hearts, we cannot expect to meet him in the busyness of our daily lives.”
“This is the supreme command. Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God.”
Community Group Guide
This Community Group Guide is designed to be used every week in conjunction with the Prayer Practices you will find at the end of this Series Overview.
Introduction:
- Read this week’s passage two times through.
- Pray: Ask God to illumine your heart and prepare your mind for discussion.
Questions for Exploration:
- What stands out to you / disrupts you / grabs your attention in the Scripture? (Everyone who would like to, share. Please take less than 1 minute per person to share as this section is intended to be brief.)
- How is God’s Word connecting to your life / your work / your neighbors in this moment? (Read this question and then read the Scripture passage again for a third time. Take a moment to ponder the passage. Then, take 1 minute each to share.)
Questions for Discernment:
- What themes are arising for the group? How might the Holy Spirit be raising something to your collective awareness?
- In light of this week’s passage and theme, what action or spiritual practice is God calling you to that you can commit to individually or collectively this week?
- Pray through the Prayer Practice for the week (see the chart).
Prayer Practices
During this series, we hope you will learn more about prayer, and in particular, the way it shaped the early church. But we also hope you will grow in your own life of prayer. In prayer, we are invited to speak to God, hear from God, and most importantly, be with God. It is an essential aspect of our Christian formation.
The following prayer practices are meant to be simply that, practices. There is no special formula for prayer, no magic words that give us access to God or His power. At the same time, just as an exercise plan can keep you on track and help you cover all muscle groups, prayer practices do the same. These practices will stretch your capacities in prayer and help you experience God more fully.
These practices can be used to guide personal prayer, times of family prayer, or prayer in community groups. Each week we will take up one practice as a church and will cycle through each practice four times during this series in the Book of Acts.
1. Praying with Scripture
Scripture is where we hear God speak most clearly, which makes it a powerful guide for our prayers. Select a verse or passage of Scripture to read today as you move through the following four movements of prayer. The Scripture passage might come from a reading plan, the daily lectionary, Sunday Worship, or a Psalm. If you are unsure where to start, try Psalm 23 or the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13. Set aside 10-15 minutes for this prayer time.
Center
Begin by focusing on God. Ask God to be present, and to speak to you through Scripture.
Scripture
Carefully read the passage 2-3 times. What are one or two things from the reading that strike you? It might be a truth about God, an insight about yourself, an encouragement, or a correction. As you discern those 1-2 things, let them lead you into the next step: prayer.
Prayer
Allow your prayer to be informed by the insights from your Scripture reading. This may mean praising God or petitioning Him. Asking for God’s comfort or forgiveness. It may mean asking for more faith or courage. The goal is to let the Scriptures lead our prayers, even, and perhaps especially, if they take us down unfamiliar paths.
Thanksgiving
End your time by thanking God for who He is and what He does.
2. Praying for Others
We are invited to pray on behalf of others. Adopting a simple structure can help us be more diligent in this practice. Allow these three steps to guide you in your prayers for others. Set aside 10-15 minutes for this prayer time.
Create and Maintain a Written Prayer List
Begin by creating a written list of people to pray for. This could be individuals, families, groups, churches, even nations. Expect the first time doing this to take longer, since the list is being created. Once a list is created, this time can be brief, simply look over your existing list, adding or removing as appropriate.
Pray the List
Move methodically through your list, praying for each listed item. Often during these types of prayers we are prompted toward some action, so it can be helpful to have a place to write down ideas as we pray. This way you can continue to pray through your list without forgetting something you felt prompted to do. As you become more practiced in praying through a list of others, you may consider having particular days of the week to pray through different lists (e.g. Monday- Neighbors, Tuesday- Family, Wednesday- Church, Thursday- the nations, etc.)
Plan Action Steps
If you were prompted to some kind of action during prayer, make a plan for action before you leave this moment.
3. Listening Prayer
While we are invited to speak in prayer, we are also invited to listen. Listening can be a challenge, as can quieting our minds. To help yourself enter into this time, remove as many distractions as possible. This is a good time to be separated from your phone. This is also an ideal practice to do outside. It is perfect for a short walk. Set aside 5-10 minutes for this prayer time. Extend it for longer durations if desired.
Invitation
Begin by praying the prayer of Samuel from 1 Samuel chapter 3: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” Repeat this prayer several times, using it as a genuine invitation for God’s presence and voice.
Listening
Spend 5-8 minutes in silence. Do your best to quiet your mind, setting aside your to-do list, your plans for the day, and even your worries. Aim your mind towards the Lord. The expectation for this time is not that you would audibly hear God, but that you would experience God’s presence and leading.
Response
Spend 1-2 minutes responding to God and anything you may have felt or heard during your time of listening.
4. Reflection Prayer
Many of our prayers focus on the future, asking for God’s guidance, wisdom, or intervention. In reflective prayer, we look back, thinking about where we have seen God’s presence in our lives. This prayer creates an opportunity for gratitude, as we thank God for things He has done, and prayers He has answered. It can also, however, remind us of the things we have prayed for over a sustained period of time. Set aside 10-15 minutes and move back and forth between these two movements.
Reflect
Think back, and if you are a journaler, look back over the prayers you have prayed. Let your mind wander through recent prayers, perhaps ones even prayed earlier in the day, and more distant prayers, perhaps prayers from decades ago. Take the time to examine how you have seen God move in these areas.
Pray
Having considered how God has moved, take time to respond. Thank God for the prayers He has answered. Thank Him for His wisdom and timing, as His responses are often different than our expectations. And also, petition God for those areas in which resolution or an answer has not yet arrived.
Works Explored on the Book of Acts
Fernando, Ajith. Acts, The NIV Application Commentary.
Green, Joel. The Theology of Luke’s Gospel.
Jennings, Willie James. Acts, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible.
Johnson, Dennis. The Message of Acts in the History of Redemption.
Johnson, Luke Timothy. Acts.
Loveday, Alexander. Acts in its Ancient Literary Context.
Padilla, Osvaldo. The Acts of the Apostles: Interpretation, History, and Theology.
Stott, John. The Message of Acts.
Witherington, Ben. The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary.
Willimon, William. Acts: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.
Wright, Tom. Acts for Everyone.