Good morning. That was, I was trying to be careful and I failed. But that is okay. Oh, these last several weeks we've actually been going through the Gospel of Luke and we've been looking at Jesus's, not only his teachings, but actually his examples and his model of prayer. We looked at some of his recorded prayers and as we go through, as we went through the Gospel of Luke, we saw that prayer was a very, very important part in Luke's Gospel. He mentioned the prayer 19 times throughout his entire gospel, and that's about twice as much as Matthew and Mark. They did it more like 10 times, 11 times, but it's about 4 times as much as John, who mentioned prayer about 5 times. So, for Luke, we can tell that prayer is a very significant part of the gospel and part of our Christian walk. And when Luke writes Acts, he continues this reflection, he continues writing about prayer in the church. In Acts, where he's talking about the formation of the early church, he mentions prayer 32 times. So he's almost doubled what he did before, and clearly Luke knew the importance of prayer in the church. And he encouraged those that follow Jesus to follow the instruction on prayer that Jesus gave that said they, talking about followers of Jesus, ought to always to pray and not lose heart, that we just need to be persistent in our prayer. And from the very beginning of the book of Acts, Luke sheds light onto the activities of this newly formed church, the early believers. and central to the life of this new baby church was the role of prayer. Prayer wasn't just some spiritual discipline that they practiced when things weren't going well or when somebody was sick. It wasn't a formal ritual. It was more than just a religious routine. It was an integral part of the church. It was a foundation of their faith and an expression of their devotion to Jesus as their savior. The early church not only knew of whom they were praying to, but they knew what to be praying for. They knew for what they were praying. We see that the early believers were God-centered in what they prayed for. They prayed for God's purposes to be achieved. They prayed for God's people to be appointed. And they prayed for God's power to be unleashed. The local church in Acts prayed with persistency and intensity. They prayed with unity as a local church body. And as a church, as a unified body, they prayed passionately rather than just speak apathetic or routine prayers. This sort of dedication and passion for prayers portrayed in the formation of this early church throughout Acts, we see it over and over and over again. and it should be equally true for the church today. This wasn't something that was just reserved for the first church, but it is for us today, and this is my heart as the pastor of this church, that we would have passionate prayers, that we would follow in the steps of this early church, and we would be known in this city and in this community for our passionate prayers. And over these next few weeks, we're gonna be looking at prayers that are found in Acts, specifically prayers that the church prayed together, that the church prayed as a body. And what can we learn from them and what can we put in practice to have our prayers reflect those prayers of the early church? How awesome, right, how incredible would it be if when we prayed the ground shook? Right, if when we prayed we felt the Holy Spirit's presence here and when we walked out of those doors we spoke with boldness God's truth and God's word. How awesome would that be? This is what I think we all would say, yeah, we want that. That's what we hope for. That's what we pray for. That's what we want. And as the pastor of this church, I want us to be bold in our witness. I want us to be able to pray boldly and then be bold in our witness as we walk out in those doors and be bold as we speak the truth of the gospel in our communities. Man, we want the ground in West Hills to shake. Forget about the foundations of this building. We want this city to shake and be a light to the world. The question isn't really, what do we want? Because I think it would be easy to get us to all agree on that. But the question is, how do we get that? How do we move in that direction? We know that we need to share. We know that we need to be witnesses. We know that we need to speak with boldness. We hear it all the time. But the truth is, it is hard to be a bold witness when we have a whole bunch of questions, when we have doubts, when we have fears. Sometimes we even have more questions than we have answers, and we're supposed to be bold in our witness. Try explaining the Trinity. There's a question. Try explaining the book of Revelation, or maybe the incarnation of God. There's a lot of questions that are wrapped up into these things. J.I. Packard, one of the greatest theologians of our time, he said this about the incarnation. Here are two mysteries for the price of one. The plurality of persons within the unity of God and the union of Godhead and manhood in the persons of Jesus. And he goes on to say the more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as it is this truth of the incarnation. That's a leading theologian. He's saying when you think about it, it's hard, it's tough, there's questions that arise and it's hard to be filled, it's hard to be bold when we are filled with those questions. When we maybe have those doubts about what we know or what we believe or maybe even fears. Now if you take all of your individual questions and all of your individual doubts and individual fears and times it by 100, then it seems almost as impossible as a church that we would be bold together in our witness. The early church had the same questions and doubts and fears that we have. When is Jesus coming back? Is it today or tomorrow? Is it next week? Is it next year? Has he really defeated death and sin? Is that done? Gosh, and when we talk about following Jesus and speaking truth, that that could lead us in jail or maybe to death or suffer the same fate as Jesus. Many of them saw him and talked to him and saw him hanging on the cross. Jesus' words of take up your cross and follow me doesn't evoke as much fear in us as it did for that first century church when every time they walked out of the city, they saw men hanging on a cross. However, Scripture tells us that in Acts 4.31, when the believers gathered and 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. And if these believers could face such opposition and deal with such uncertainty and still speak the Word of God with boldness, There's definitely something for us to learn from them. There's something definitely worth looking at in what they did. So this morning we're gonna go back to verse 40 of chapter 4, 31. We're gonna back up a few verses and we're gonna see what we can learn from a church that is praying boldly. So go ahead and turn or click on your Bibles into Acts chapter 4. And here we are, picking up from where Tim left off last week, is now Jesus has been crucified, he's been resurrected, he's ascended, the Holy Spirit has now descended, that's what we call Pentecost, it went on the believers, and the early church is now starting to be formed. The church is preaching by the power of the word of God, and they're healing by the grace of God, and they're being thrown in jail and persecuted as promised by God. And Peter and John, they've been warned by the ruling council not to speak or teach the name of Jesus anymore. They politely declined. Said, we can't help it. We can't help not talk about what we've seen and what we've heard. And the people, the ruling council could do really nothing about it because the people were praising God for the work that they were seeing God do and for what they were seeing the peoples teach. And so the ruling council just let them go with a warning. However, Peter and John knew that this was only the beginning, right? That the persecution was just gonna get harder, that it was gonna get tougher, that the church was gonna face persecution like they've never faced before, and they were gonna face it from many directions. They were gonna face it from the religious leaders, they're gonna face it from the government. And so that's where we are going to pick up in verse 23, is right now, Peter and John have been released by the council, and they go and they find this new church. Verse 23 begins, And when they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, Why did the Gentiles rage and the people plot in vain? The king of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed. For truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. 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. Yes. That's what we want as a church. That's what we are looking for. To be able to come together and pray before God and to see His work and His power unleashed before us. To be able to go out into the world and to speak the Word of God with boldness. And as a church, we wanna be bold witnesses to the glory and power and love of our Lord and Savior Jesus in our community. In our communities, we each have individual communities that we are a part of and we wanna speak the word of God with boldness in each of those. So let's spend a few minutes to look at a few things about the prayer that this bold church prayed. First thing that we wanna look at is that the prayers of a bold church are united in one voice. This is really important, because we know about the disciples. We know that they were all very different people. Some were fishermen, some were businessmen, some were zealots, some were government employees. And if you've ever been in a church, you know that a church with 100 people usually has about 120 different opinions. In the last year, COVID and masks and vaccines, they've all given pastors endless illustrations of this truth. We could all go on and on and on about the division that can be caused in a church when the church loses its focus on Jesus. When the church becomes divided on anything and everything, and the church forgets about the power and the blood of Jesus that unifies the body. We can hardly sit together, much less come together and pray together as one body. But we see in this passage that the whole church lifted their prayers together in one voice. And Jesus promises us that if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven, for where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. This is actually a promise by Jesus specifically dealing with brothers in Christ when they are dealing with a conflict. This is a promise from Jesus. Jesus affirms that he will be divinely present among his disciples as they seek unity in rendering decisions and trying to restore relationships. Here's the thing. When the church, when we, when we lift our voices in prayer together, we can't be seeking our ways. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. When we come together and lift our voices, we're not trying to manipulate the person that we're praying with, spiritual manipulation, and maybe they will hear my prayer and come and see my point of view. We're not just praying to pass the time because we're not sure what else to do at the time. But when we lift our voices united in prayer, we lift it united for Jesus. That His name be glorified above all else. When we lift our voices united in prayer for His church, That the church would be the light in the darkness, that we would be unified and that we would be strong. And when we pray for the church, we pray for one another, not against one another. We pray for the lost. That the lost would be saved and added to the chorus of singing holy, holy, holy and giving glory to God forever and all eternity. And we pray for our communities. that they would turn from their wicked ways, that they'd be forgiven, that they would be healed, that they would be redeemed for the glory of God. And when we read Scripture, we don't have to guess what's on God's heart. He makes it clear that these are the things that God is focused on. These are the things of God's heart. These are the things that the church, without question, can be united in for prayer. These are the things that bring a church together. The prayers of a church focused on the mission of God are united for the mission of God. You've heard the term that a family that prays together stays together, well that's the same as a church, right? We are a family and the church that prays together stays together. We keep the main thing, the main thing. Jesus and his church and the lost and our communities and God, we glorify God in our prayers. A bold church that prays united in one voice. God, your kingdom come, your will be done. That is where we pray united. That is where we lift up our prayers in one voice for God's will to be done. And second, the prayers of a bold church depend on the promises of God. How different would our prayers be if we accepted the promises of God as facts? if we didn't question them, if we weren't sure if they were true or not, but we said that these are facts, that there's no doubt that these things are going to happen. I remember on the 4th of July, I was in the house walking around and I see Selah getting a card table and cards and a Monopoly board and food and getting all that stuff and throwing it in the back of my truck. And I remember saying, Selah, what are you doing with all of this stuff? And he says, oh, we're going to watch fireworks. Mom promised. Well, Melissa worked on the 4th of July. But we have a habit of committing the other person when we can't be available. And so I said, hey, what's up with this thing with Melissa? And she said, oh, we promised Selah that we would go do fireworks. So when you're married, you're one. So I got Selah into the car, and we went to see fireworks. I spent about four hours in the bed of my truck, and I think we have a picture, waiting for fireworks to happen for like 20 minutes. Right, Selah said, hey, it was a promise, and she had already started making plans, and she made a decision based off promises of her mom and dad, and I'm gonna be really honest, we bat like 50% on our promises. We're not even that good at this. Right, but our kids are already making decisions based off what we do. But here's the thing, is that God is sovereign. God has complete and total control and authority over all things. All things are under God's control. That means that really God is the only one that can promise anything and have it mean something. Like when God promises something, it goes against his character to lie. His character, being holy, doesn't allow him to lie or to break a promise. So when God promises something, you can speak of future promises of God as if they've already happened. As if they are historical facts. That is how sure God's promises are. And while there's some debate, I tried to give you an answer of how many promises God has fulfilled, and there's a debate on if God is 5,467 for 5,467 promises kept, or maybe he's 7,487 for 7,487 promises kept. And there's no one that says, no, no, no, God has kept all 8,801 promises that he has made. And while we can't seem to determine the exact number of promises in Scripture, we can agree with King Solomon that not one word has failed to come from God's promise. That every single one of his promises have come true. We don't know the exact number of God's promises, we know that God is batting a thousand. That he has hit every single one. We can also agree with Paul that no matter how many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ. You will be forgiven. Shame and guilt and fear gone. You will be healed. You will be redeemed. You will be victorious. And because of Jesus, the answer to every single one of those is yes, yes, yes, and yes. Because of Jesus. We don't have to act out of doubt or fear. We just have to depend on the promises of God. It helps if we know what those promises are. Memorizing scripture isn't just some mundane spiritual discipline, but it is life-giving when we can be reminded of the promises of God. We've heard the scripture that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That should actually give our hearts joy because we know that following that becomes the promise of God that all are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. That is a promise, that all are justified by His grace as a gift. And in this passage that we read today out of Acts, they quote Psalms 2. And this would remind those present of this psalm that most of the early church would sing in their worship services. This was a familiar song, it was used, they sang it often when they gathered. And just to give us a full understanding of this prayer, I'm gonna read Psalm 2 in its entirety. It's not for psalms, it's actually not that long. But we're going to read Psalm 2 just so we can understand what was being said. Psalm 2. Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in direction. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree the Lord said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod and iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the sun, lest he be angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. I just read it. They would sing that as a song. That was a song of worship that the early church would often sing. And when you read Psalms 2, it's telling of the crowning of the new King of Israel. And it's probably making a direct reference to King David. But ultimately, it points to the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, and by the promises made by God and fulfilled by the gospel events that this early church just witnessed, that they just saw. And they point to that in their prayer. In verses 27 and 28, they're referring It says, "...for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place." And what they're saying when they started with Psalm 2 and then they go in to say the events, they're praying and they're praying and they're saying, God, you promised. This is your promise. And their prayers are dependent upon the promise of God and the gospel of Jesus. They're dependent on his life and his death and his resurrection and the promise of his victorious return. And they are based that blessed are those who take refuge in him. And just as God promised, Jesus defeated sin and death with his resurrection. He promised that Jesus will return in total victory, and there is no reason for any of us to have fear. We are victorious through Jesus. When we depend on His promise, our prayers mimic Paul's praise. When Paul said, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no question, there is no doubt, there is no fear in finding joy and victory in Jesus. And a bold church is not bold for anything that they have done or not done. They are simply bold because of who He is and what He has done and that they can depend on the promises of God. That is what makes them bold. And so the prayers of a bold church are united and dependent on the promise of God. And then finally, last point we're gonna look at today is that the prayers of a bold church seek God's will over its own comfort. God's will is our main objective. And as followers of Jesus, as Christians, that should be our highest priority. We should be willing to give up our discomforts, or our comforts. We should be even willing to give up our lives for God's will. Believe it or not, because I know a lot of you guys have watched movies and think that Marines are really mean to each other, but throughout the world, United States Marines are known for taking care of their own. Throughout history, foreign militaries and other branches of U.S. militaries have been awed by the way that Marines take care of each other. Matter of fact, the Marines only have two leadership objectives. No matter what their job is, they have two leadership objectives. And the second one is troop welfare. That they are to take care of their troops. This includes providing some level of comfort, physically and emotionally, to the Marines under their charge. But the number one leadership priority, without questions for the Marines, is mission accomplishment. Mission accomplishment comes before anything else. Every single Marine leader, from the Commandant of the Marine Corps to the Marine leader PFC that is just walking off the deck at graduation, every single time, they will choose mission accomplishment over comfort. And in the disciples' prayer, Jesus taught us to pray that God's will be done, not our own comforts met. That that is our goal, is that God's will be done. And if you look at the prayer of this church in Acts, the threats of the Sanhedrin, they were real. Those were warnings that we are coming for you. Stop what you're doing. This is not going to end well for you. They had been warned by Jesus a world that had crucified him was not going to love them. The world that had crucified me was not gonna welcome you with open arms and coddle you and love you and make sure everything was great. That is not what Jesus said. Jesus said the world's going to hate you. So would they, right, do we see them as we see so often today ask the Lord to remove that threat or to remove the men who threaten them? To just have the comfort go away so they could get on with their lives. We don't see that in the prayer. Nowhere did they ask that. They asked the Lord to give them courage to continue to speak His word with boldness as they face their persecution and their problems and their pain in their lives. The subject of their prayers were not the threat of persecution, it wasn't their problems, and it was not for their comfort. It was that the will of God be accomplished, that they would meet the will of God. They simply asked God to give them courage to continue with the task that he had given them to be his witnesses and to share the gospel in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. That is what they asked for, the courage to speak with boldness. The church prayed for boldness and perseverance in their mission rather than for comfort in their own lives. And when we look at this element in the prayers of a bold church, does it change how we pray? If we look at our prayers and the things that we have said, does it change how we do that? When we face pain or persecution or other problems and we go to the Lord in prayer, it is no longer sufficient for us to just pray, Father, just remove this discomfort. Just, Father, make me comfortable. That's not how bold churches pray. Bold churches pray, bold churches that are on mission for God will continue that prayer. But Lord, if you choose not to, may the gospel advance, may your kingdom come, your will be done because of this struggle that I'm going through. Whatever you have faced me with, may you use it to further your kingdom and to give you more glory. Too often in our own prayers, our comfort just takes priority over His will. That quickly becomes the focus of our prayers. The easiest way to insult a marine leader is to tell him or her that you made a comfort-based decision, right? Which you just told that person is you just chose your comfort over the accomplishment of the mission. You made a bad decision because you chose comfort over mission accomplishment. You made a comfort-based decision. Those are like fighting words in the Marine Corps. If your boss said you made a comfort-based decision, you're ready to fight. And as a Christian, we should feel that same disgust in our own lives if our prayers are centered on our own comforts and not on God's will. Right, if we become the focus of our prayers, if we are to be a bold church and to do bold things for Jesus, our prayers need to be focused on the power of God, not on our limitations and not on our discomforts or our comforts. We need to keep our prayers focused on Jesus. Pastor Philip Brooks, he once said this, do not pray for easy lives, pray for stronger men and women. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks. We have been given a task. We see it out there, it's on the wall, the Great Commission, we've been given this task to make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that he has commanded us. There's a task that we were given by God. So if we take all of these things together, all these things of a bold church, and say, Lord, we wanna be bold witnesses for you. Lord, we wanna be bold in accomplishing our task for you. If we take this model of how bold churches pray, that bold churches are united in one voice, that we depend on the promises of God, that we seek God's will over our own. If we see those traits in a bold church, what are some things that we can do to be a bold church praying? What are some of the things that we can just look at? I think one thing we can often do is just pray together more often. We could pray together more often. We could pray with our families. We could pray in our small groups. You can invite people from the church over to your house. You can have a meal if you want to, but you could pray. Like what if prayer was the focus and the mission of that time together, not a meal? But as a church following Jesus, we'd have spent more time in prayer together. The other thing that we could do is we could pray for opportunity to share Jesus in our communities. We can just pray for those opportunities. God give me the opportunities. I think it was David Platt that said, there are endless opportunities to share the gospel in your communities if you just look around. And so what if we just prayed for those opportunities? What if we just prayed for God to open our eyes? So we would see those opportunities. And you can see it up on the board right now. Once we pray for those opportunities, we need to pray for boldness to actually take advantage of them. Pray for boldness to go out into our community and speak the word of God, to speak truth into people's lives. That's what we need to be praying for. That's what a bold church prays for. We pray together, we pray more often, we pray for opportunities to share Jesus. And we can share Jesus in word, we can also share Jesus in deed. We can pray for that courage to actually do it. That we would set aside our fears and our doubts, we'd set aside our questions, and we would just have courage to be bold witnesses for Jesus. I just want to close with the words of Richard Blackaby. Richard Blackaby wrote this in his book. He said, there is divine power in the united prayers of God's people. It brings to earth that which is in heaven. It is one thing for an individual to be moved, but when a gathering of believers encounters the living Christ through his spirit, the world will know it. Then God's people will participate in God's eternal purposes, experience deep peace, be swept into action, and speak his word with boldness. Church, let's be bold in our prayers so that we'll be bold in our witness as we walk in God's will. Just be bold in our prayers. Be bold in our witness. And walk in God's will. Dear Holy Father, we just take a minute to come before you. Lord, you are so great and you are so powerful and our hearts can be quickly burdened. Lord, sometimes as we sit here and I know for me as I was studying for this prayer and I could look back. and just be filled with time of prayers that were not passionate, prayers that were not powerful, prayers that were anything but dependent on you and your promises, Lord. We just ask for forgiveness for that. Lord, we just ask that you would just grab our hearts, that you would change our hearts, that you would transform our hearts, that you would fill us with the Word of God and the Spirit would fill us and we would go out into this community and speak the truth, speak the Word of God with boldness. That when people see Calvary, when they see somebody from this church, they say, man, those are bold witnesses who love Jesus. Those are bold witnesses who are praying to see hearts and communities transformed by the Word of God. Lord, we would just pray for this church, that your hand would be on this church, that you would fill this place, that you would shake this place, that we would be a light to this community. That these people in this community would have their hearts transformed, would come to know you and to walk with you and to love you. that we would look forward to that day when we are just gathered together singing holy, holy, holy in your throne room. Lord we love you. We thank you for this time that we have been able to come together and worship you. Lord we love you and we thank you and it's in your precious name of Jesus we ask all of these things. Amen.