“The difference between the best we can do, and the best God can do, is prayer”. -Mark Batterson
Scripture: Acts 4:31-32 ESV – “And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. “
There is no doubt that your daily challenge is the tug of war between your fleshly desire to make good things happen, and the truth that God has not called you to accomplish the things that you can do on your own. The purpose of life is not to focus on what is within your capacity to achieve. If this were the case, then what place does an all powerful God have in your life? Why make room in your heart for Him? Walking a path that only you can clear, leads to a destination that only you are comfortable with.
As you continue through Acts 4 this week, the power of God’s sovereignty is on full display. What has been evident is that the vehicle for God’s heart to be imparted into His church was, and is, a steadfast devotion to prayer. Every time they came to a point of not knowing how to move forward, or possibly losing momentum due to opposition, they found their way by turning to God. They prayed continually! The most common problem people have with prayer is that they don’t find what they are looking for in it. That sounds really backward to say, but let’s be honest about it. If most people found prayer to be life changing, then most people would lead lives of transformation. So what is the problem? Has prayer been way over hyped? Does it just take a really long time to receive the benefits of it? In case you are wondering, the answer to both of those is “no”. Even if an answer to prayer is years in the making, the blessing in the waiting is fellowship with God.
The passage for today says that after they prayed, the place where they had gathered was shaken. God changed their environment. Is it possible we are approaching prayer by asking God to shake everyone else’s space but our own? To shift the focus to you personally: Are you asking God to give you peace by not shaking your environment as much as you wish He would shake everyone else’s? The craving of your flesh is to thrive in a realm that is hospitable to its own dysfunction. So if you are not finding what you are looking for in prayer, it’s possible you are turning to prayer as a way of accomplishing your agenda rather than making sure it lines up with God’s agenda. What we see in the early church is that they reached a point where they embraced prayer as the gate to knowing God’s heart, rather than it being the gate for God to know their heart. God knew your heart before your parents knew your name. It says in Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” What the Psalmist is saying, is that the only way to know the depths of your own heart is to allow God to usher you to those depths in order to reveal what He already knows about you. If you really think about it, it’s entirely possible there have been times in your life when you have allowed a heart you’re not familiar with to be the driver of your prayer life. This leads to a fellowship with God that is centered around appeasing your heart rather than changing it.
As we read in Acts 4:31-32 today, God shook their environment, and the church was filled with the Holy Spirit to continue to speak the Word of God with boldness. It also says that the church was unified with One Heart and One Soul. As our church walks this journey together, we are asking God to give us boldness. Boldness in the things we pray for, and boldness in our obedience. It is not difficult to see what is right in front of us and have a vision for what that could look like in the future. What is challenging is letting God make us discontent with that kind of vision. Looking at what seems obvious and logical may make sense in the natural, but that isn’t faith. We desire to invest in what we cannot yet see, because that is choosing to embrace a purpose that can only be accomplished with God’s vision. Remember, as it says in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We are not called to a boldness that is born out of what we can see in the natural. We are called to trust God, believing that as we do, His vision will become our vision.
Where does this begin for our church? It begins with you asking God to shake the ground beneath your current footing. To see your future steps on the path only God prepares.
Reflection Questions:
- How do you honestly feel about your prayer life? Is it fruitful?
- When you approach God in prayer, do you begin with His agenda or your agenda?
- How does God need to shake the space around you today? Ask God to shift your focus away from seeking a hospitable environment for your fleshly desires, to having room in your heart for a shakeup.
- Ask God to reveal to you what boldness would look like amidst the circumstances of your life. Is there one or two things you are aware of that need to change in order to walk in boldness?