Prayer and the Word of God
Acts 4:1-37
The early church went through a long and very tough period. Those in authority prevented them from preaching and practising while making their lives miserable in many other ways. But they knew in whom they believed and were happy nonetheless. In fact, they were happy because they suffered for the gospel.
In Acts chapter 4, we see Peter and John arrested because they were preaching. Taking this opportunity to preach to the leaders of the people, Peter preached to them about Jesus Christ. “When they saw the boldness of Peter and John and realised that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognised them as companions of Jesus” (TT. 4:13). They were then released. Their friends were so elated to see them. Then they prayed.
Even if we think that our state of things today is worrisome, the situation the disciples were in was much more desperate. They could not do as they wanted, being persecuted for their faith. Nonetheless, they continued to preach and meet and prayed. They were so alive in Christ!
Let us take a moment to reflect on their prayer (Acts 4:22-30). There is so much to learn. Let us take just four out of them:
- As they prayed, they did not lay down numerous petitions to the Lord to save them from their misery. They never grumbled. Rather, they praised the Lord and acknowledged his sovereignty over all the earth. By doing so, they showed that they have a much bigger God than all their problems. We are not saying that we should not appeal to the Lord to save us from our miseries, but we are saying that we should also give God the glory. Let us see the sovereignty of God over our present circumstances.
- As they prayed, they asked the Lord to give them courage to face their difficulties, rather than to skirt over them. The Holy Spirit intervened and gave them the strength and courage to do so. Let us also pray to the Lord to give us the strength to go through our difficulties and to remain faithful to his words.
- From their prayer we can see the zeal they had to preach the gospel and to live it. Do we still have the zeal today?
- As they prayed, they strengthened themselves with the scriptures. Quoting Psalm 2, they identified their present situation with that of the Psalmist to regain their strength to move further on.
