Stay on Mission – 3rd December 2017

3. Acts 2:42-47 – Devoted to Prayer.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
As the first church sought to join Jesus in His mission they were devoted to prayer. It is difficult to be precise regarding how they went about this but I have a feeling that this ‘devotion to prayer’ entailed more than a weekly prayer meeting which was focused on praying only for those within the church. The sense I have is that prayer was a core activity that was the powerhouse behind everything that they did.
I have always found it interesting, since I became a Christian, to discover that we as followers of Jesus always talk about the importance of prayer and how ‘nothing will really happen without prayer’. Yet, whilst prayer is heralded as so important, it is, as A.W. Tozer once said ‘So difficult to get Christians to a meeting where the only attraction is God”. The prayer meeting frequently has the lowest attendance of any meeting in the church.
I am convinced that if we are truly to join Jesus in His Mission then it is vital that we are devoted to prayer. I think that this prayer may be a little different from how we may imagine it. Prayer meetings and individual prayer times are often filled with us asking God to do, or give us, the things that we would like to happen or receive. Sometimes, we even try to persuade God to be concerned for the world!
I would suggest that being devoted to prayer is primarily about being focused on God in such a way that we don’t attempt to change or influence His will, rather, we ask Him to change us, or me. Then we will begin to see things from His perspective and have the passion and ‘confidence-in-Him’ that will enable us to step outside of our own natural limitations and live in the reality of His supernatural, unlimited power to transform the world.
Let me put this simply!
A pastor friend of mine had taken the church that he leads to a Rooftop and encouraged them to look across the community. He instructed them to cry out to God and ask Him to help them to see their community as He sees it and then to transform the hearts of those who gathered so that they would join Jesus in His mission and begin to reach people who are beyond the walls of the church.
Following this he said to those gathered that they could go to ‘The Rooftop’ every day. He encouraged each of them to set aside some time each day to go to a room in their house, open the curtains and look out at the street where they lived. As they looked at the community where they lived they could spend time looking at scripture and praying, the prayer could be something like:
“Lord, transform me, and through me transform what I see as I look out of the window”.
Being devoted to prayer is really about being devoted to God and His Mission. This week, I encourage you to devote yourself to prayer, or, to put it another way, DEVOTE YOURSELF TO GOD.
Dennis