Speaker 1: When Andrea and I were missionaries many years ago, the organisation we were a part of had a compulsory prayer meeting on Thursday night.
Speaker 1: It ran from 8 till midnight.
Speaker 1: If you were getting up early in the morning, you were allowed to leave early, at around 10 o'clock.
Speaker 1: That policy was self-policed, and guess who left at 10 o'clock on the dot just about every prayer meeting.
Speaker 1: Let's just say I didn't have a dynamic prayer life back then, but prayer is fundamental to the Christian life.
Speaker 1: Yet, like me, I know that many Christians struggle with it, and so that's what I want to talk about this morning.
Speaker 1: We're going to read from Acts, chapter 1.
Speaker 1: Acts, chapter 1,.
Speaker 1: We're going to read from verse 12.
Speaker 1: Last week we looked at Jesus' command to the disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they'd received the Holy Spirit, and I guess today we're looking at how they remain.
Speaker 1: So Acts, chapter 1, verse 12.
Speaker 1: To remain in Jerusalem until they'd received the Holy Spirit, and I guess today we're looking at how they remained.
Speaker 1: So, acts 1, verse 12.
Speaker 1: Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away.
Speaker 1: When they arrived, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying.
Speaker 1: Peter, john, james, andrew, philip, thomas, bartholomew, matthew, james, the son of Alphaeus, simon the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James.
Speaker 1: They were all continually united in prayer, along with the women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
Speaker 1: When Jesus ascended to the Father, the disciples' first instinct was what?
Speaker 1: To gather together to pray.
Speaker 1: And throughout the book of Acts, whenever we see a significant move of God, it's in the context of united prayer.
Speaker 1: Whenever the church faces a significant challenge, their instinct is to gather together to pray.
Speaker 1: One of the questions we might have about prayer is why together?
Speaker 1: Why is that particularly special?
Speaker 1: Well, jesus said that he would be present in the gathering of even just two or three of his followers.
Speaker 1: Bible tells us God has made us a body with every part needed and needing every other part.
Speaker 1: You know, the reality is, when we're alone, we become an easy target for attack.
Speaker 1: We become an easy target for attack.
Speaker 1: When you see predators chasing a herd of animals.
Speaker 1: One of the things I'll do is maybe lions chasing zebra or something.
Speaker 1: One of the things I'll do is try to cut off one of those animals from the herd and that becomes their target.
Speaker 1: But together there is strength and safety.
Speaker 1: And in fact, did you know that if you get a group of average IQ people and pit them up against a single genius, the group will outperform the genius.
Speaker 1: There's something about us that we become better when we're together and there's something powerful when Christians agree in prayer.
Speaker 1: Now, coming out at night or in the morning or whenever together in prayer isn't always easy and it's rarely convenient, but it is necessary and it's powerful.
Speaker 1: And, friends, if we're going to see God moving in our context, in our time, in our community, it will be in the context of a praying church, a church that prays together.
Speaker 1: And if we're going to be effective in mission, it won't be because we work harder although it often will involve hard work but because we pray more, and not just Christians praying in their personal devotions, but a church gathered together in prayer.
Speaker 1: Well, I wonder if one of the reasons we so often struggle in prayer is that we don't really know how to pray.
Speaker 1: I mean, how many of you, I wonder, struggle in prayer in your own prayer times?
Speaker 1: And we sometimes struggle even when we come together to pray for all sorts of reasons.
Speaker 1: You know, in some traditions prayer can become very rigid and dead.
Speaker 1: You pray out of the book and there's no life to it.
Speaker 1: We certainly don't want that, and so what we sometimes do, though, is we have almost no structure to our prayer, no rhythm, and we get lost in it.
Speaker 1: Maybe we pray for our needs and the needs of our family and for some missionaries, pray for Africa, and that's all good, and then we run out of things to say.
Speaker 1: What else do I say to God?
Speaker 1: Well, the disciples in the upper room prayed continually.
Speaker 1: What were they praying for?
Speaker 1: What did their prayer meeting look like that?
Speaker 1: They could sustain it for 10 days between Jesus' ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and for any Pentecostals here today.
Speaker 1: They did this before the Holy Spirit had come, so they couldn't cheat by praying in tongues the whole time.
Speaker 1: We don't know for sure what their prayer meeting looked like, but we can take a guess.
Speaker 1: Jewish prayer around that time generally involved singing hymns, reciting scriptures and reciting prayers, and I think it's reasonable to assume that the disciples continued this pattern, but with a particularly Jesus style twist.
Speaker 1: You see, jesus had taught them the Lord's Prayer.
Speaker 1: Now we recite the Lord's Prayer sometimes, and that's fine, but the point isn't the words themselves, it's the pattern of prayer that it provides.
Speaker 1: And where does the Lord's prayer start If you're familiar with it.
Speaker 1: Our Father in heaven, your name be honoured.
Speaker 1: As holy Prayer begins with worship.
Speaker 1: Worship isn't just something we do in church to warm up the crowd, speaking as a pastor, to get ready for the sermon.
Speaker 1: It reminds us of who God is and who we are before him.
Speaker 1: It prepares us to enter into his presence and it invites God to manifest his presence among us.
Speaker 1: We're saying please come.
Speaker 1: When my kids were young, I was away at a conference, and when I got home and I still remember this, so it was obviously significant to me my middle daughter came tearing out of the house and wrapped me in the biggest hug.
Speaker 1: Her three-year-old arms, or however old she was at the time, could manage.
Speaker 1: There's no place.
Speaker 1: This father would rather have been in that moment than in my daughter's embrace.
Speaker 1: Of course, my embrace is bigger than hers.
Speaker 1: She could hug my leg, but I could pick her up, and so can God, and worship is how we invite the embrace of God.
Speaker 1: Then Jesus said your kingdom come, your will be done.
Speaker 1: So we begin by seeking communion with the father through worship and then we move on to father, what's your agenda?
Speaker 1: His kingdom?
Speaker 1: Praying for god's kingdom to come is a desire to see his glory manifest in a transformed world.
Speaker 1: If you want to know what God's kingdom come means, look to the ministry of Jesus Wherever he went.
Speaker 1: He called people to repent of their sins and follow him.
Speaker 1: He called them into community, he called them to forgive one another, he called them to live justly, he healed the sick and he set free those who were captive to demons.
Speaker 1: So the kingdom means transformed lives, transformed families and transformed communities.
Speaker 1: And while he does call us to work for these things, seeing his kingdom come begins with the prayer meeting, and I wonder if that's what the disciples were praying in the upper room.
Speaker 1: But there's more.
Speaker 1: Last week, as I said, we saw that Jesus told them earlier in the chapter to wait in Jerusalem for the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: I can imagine them in this time sitting there combing the scriptures to pray into them and learn more.
Speaker 1: What about this Holy Spirit?
Speaker 1: Jesus had spoken about it when he was with them.
Speaker 1: I think of Genesis.
Speaker 1: Maybe they went there.
Speaker 1: Genesis, chapter 1, verse 2, where the Spirit of God is brooding over the watery depths and begins the work of creation.
Speaker 1: Do they pray, god, let your Spirit do a new work of creation in us.
Speaker 1: Or the Old Testament prophets who the Holy Spirit would come on and they'd have visions, visions of heaven, and they'd pronounce the word of God Spirit, give us a vision of heaven, bring your living word to us.
Speaker 1: Or Ezekiel's vision of dry bones, in which the spirit of God breathed into human bones to put flesh and skin on them and bring them to life, and he promised to put his Spirit in his people.
Speaker 1: Spirit of God, bring life to these dry bones, amen.
Speaker 1: And it goes on and on and on, until the day of Pentecost, when God poured out his spirit on the church and Peter saw it in the coming of the spirit, the promises of God.
Speaker 1: In Joel, you can read on the next chapter.
Speaker 1: As they search the scriptures, their prayers go up to God to make it so, to fulfill what he has promised.
Speaker 1: So we pray for God's agenda after we've worshipped, and then the prayer of Jesus goes on and we start to pray for our needs.
Speaker 1: Now that raises a question, though why should we bother praying if God has already promised, said he's going to do it?
Speaker 1: Why can't we just wait for him to do it?
Speaker 1: Several years ago some of you know this story my son was far away from God.
Speaker 1: He considered himself an atheist and a prophetic ministry came to the church we were part of then, never met these people, didn't know them, didn't tell them our story, never met them again.
Speaker 1: But out of the blue, this woman looked at my wife and said are you worried about your son?
Speaker 1: Of course we were.
Speaker 1: And then she said he's going to be back in church and on stage within a year.
Speaker 1: Now that's a really specific word, that's not vague.
Speaker 1: That is one you can test.
Speaker 1: You've got to wait a little bit.
Speaker 1: But it either comes true or it don't.
Speaker 1: Well, what do I do?
Speaker 1: What do we do during that time?
Speaker 1: Do we just wait?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see about this.
Speaker 1: I've heard that before.
Speaker 1: Every time I thought about that word, I was just convicted to praying into it.
Speaker 1: I mean, why?
Speaker 1: Why would I bother if God's going to do it or he's going to not?
Speaker 1: At the end of 12 months, my son returned to our old church We'd been Ellenbrook Baptist.
Speaker 1: He's still there and joined the worship team.
Speaker 1: Would that have happened without my prayer?
Speaker 1: I think so.
Speaker 1: Actually, probably God had said he was going to do it.
Speaker 1: It was a promise, as it turns out.
Speaker 1: But you know what I wonder, if I hadn't been praying and waiting and someone else may have had the joy of leading him back, perhaps the spirit would have found someone else to work with, with him, someone else, perhaps more eager, more believing, and I'd have missed it.
Speaker 1: That was 12 months of waiting for us.
Speaker 1: As time gets closer, it's like the expectation goes up.
Speaker 1: Are you going to do this, god?
Speaker 1: It's getting close.
Speaker 1: Why hasn't it happened yet?
Speaker 1: 12 months of waiting, it's 10 days of waiting for the apostles in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: What about Bentley Baptist?
Speaker 1: What are our hopes and expectations of God?
Speaker 1: How long will we wait?
Speaker 1: What will we do while we're waiting?
Speaker 1: Because you know, friends, the spirit is stirring in Perth.
Speaker 1: I've been around long enough now to have heard words about what God is going to do in Perth and to have heard words that came before I was ministering in Perth.
Speaker 1: But there's a sense that he's stirring, stirring not just in Perth but around the world, stirring among missionaries and communities.
Speaker 1: We support places we haven't even heard of.
Speaker 1: Is God going to move?
Speaker 1: Well, you know what?
Speaker 1: I think he's going to do it, whether we pray or not, because he's sovereign.
Speaker 1: The question is do we want to be part of it If there was to be a move of God in Perth, what would our disposition be?
Speaker 1: Do we want to be part of that?
Speaker 1: God?
Speaker 1: Bring it on with that expectation and that hoping, and perhaps a little bit of.
Speaker 1: Is this really true?
Speaker 1: But when it happens, you're on the front lines, or do we?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard this, I've heard it.
Speaker 1: But when it happens, you're on the front lines, or do we?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard this.
Speaker 1: I've heard it.
Speaker 1: I've heard these sorts of things multiple times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll just wait and see and it moves on and it passes it by and the blessing comes to those who believe and expect and wait.
Speaker 1: Will we be expecting and waiting?
Speaker 1: Waiting whether that's for 10 days, whether that's for 12 months or whether that's for a few years?
Speaker 1: Waiting in prayer?
Speaker 1: The disciples prayed continuously while they waited for god to move and pour out his spirit.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not saying we need to have a 24-hour prayer meeting although wouldn't that be amazing but will we wait?
Speaker 1: So in this season, andrea and I have decided we're going to commit to coming into church on thursday.
Speaker 1: For those who don't know, we actually live up in Allenbrook, so it's a slightly bigger logistical exercise than just coming around the corner, but we're going to do that Thursday evenings Every other week to start with, to pray Now.
Speaker 1: I mention that because it's an open invitation from seven o'clock on Thursday night this Thursday.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to join us, you are more than welcome to come.
Speaker 1: But whether you join us, whether that's in your discipleship groups, whether you have prayer partners I know some of you do we must come together to pray if we're going to see God's blessing, if we're going to bear fruit in mission, if we're going to support these guys, cosmos, the other missions we support in prayer, we need to pray for the Spirit, we need to pray for God's kingdom, we need to pray for his mission in our city and beyond.
Speaker 1: And then, yes, we pray for one another and our needs, knowing that we have a good God who wants to bless us.
Speaker 1: So, friends, as we pray, may God's kingdom come and his will be done on earth as in heaven, as his church, as we gather to pray, let's pray while the team comes up.
Speaker 1: Father, my prayer is that you will increase our prayer, my prayer, our prayers individually, but our corporate prayer life.
Speaker 1: Father, we just confess our struggle with it, for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: Confess our struggle with it for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: Father, transform this part of our church life.
Speaker 1: We pray that we will become a powerful praying church, praying for your kingdom to come and seeing it come in our community.
Speaker 1: In Jesus' name amen.