Thank you. Greetings, everybody. I want to start just by saying that I went to the Foundations Conference in New York, and lots of wonderful things were said. It was a great experience for myself and a dear brother in our church named Bob. who went with me and we met some of you there. What really struck me among many other things was a message that was brought by Pastor Curtis Knapp, who I think is part of this group. He spoke and he spoke about the importance of being desperate for God in prayer, being too weak not to pray. A tremendous message that I've listened to again since and I shared with my wife. After that message was preached, I went to the back of the room and I met Curtis, who I had not met before. It was very brief. I just kind of shook his hand, thanked him for the message, and I said, I remember saying to him, I need to respond to this somehow. And, and then I don't know if it was before Curtis spoke or after he did, but I had also met just in the providence of God. Another person who's on this call named Alice was sitting right in front of me and she handed me one of these cards which many of you are on and Well, even I was smart enough to figure out that the way that I needed to respond to what Curtis had spoken about was to get on this prayer call. And I've been coming to it just about almost every day since. And we're praying for a revival together, a united prayer for revival and for the advance of the kingdom. And I just, I don't know, having only been part of this for two months, the expectation of what that would be when that happens or what that looks like is, but I want to just start this way because I want to encourage you all to know that the praying that you're doing, I have no question, no doubt, I know for a fact has had a tremendous effect in my own life already. And so I just wanted to encourage you with that. I know that my Being able to be part of things like this is because so many people not even knowing me were praying about these things and and now I'm just delighted and blessed to be part of praying myself. If you could open your Bible with me to Acts chapter four, Acts chapter four and verse 23. And this is a united prayer for boldness that we read in this chapter. And I'm very glad I kind of thumbed through the hundreds of messages that have been preached at these meetings before mine and saw that this is a passage of scripture that has been addressed on a number of occasions before. And that's good because this is a passage of scripture that I think we should be coming back to again and again to remind ourselves of. So really quickly, the background of what happens here, we're gonna talk about this prayer that the early church prayed on this one occasion. In chapter, at the beginning of chapter three is when the section of the narrative starts, just to set a little context. Peter and John are going to a prayer meeting, right? So you could stop right there and just say, good things happen when you go to prayer meeting. So they're going to a prayer meeting and the Lord Jesus grants this tremendous healing of this man who was sitting at the beautiful gate and and it's powerful and he's it says he's walking and he's leaping and he's praising God and it gathers this tremendous crowd and it enables the gospel to be preached kingdom advances as Brother Rick likes to call it. And of course, this arises opposition. It brings great salvation to believers, and it stirs up the enemy. And so Peter and John are arrested, and they're taken in before the Sanhedrin, and they make their defense. And the result of all that, going over all this very fast obviously, is they are forbidden to speak in the name of Jesus, and they are severely threatened. and they're let go. And that little background brings us up to verse 23 of chapter four, which I'll start reading now. And being let go, they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. So when they heard that, they raised their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord, you are God who made heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. who by the mouth of your servant, David, have said, why did the nations rage and the people plot vain things? The kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. For truly your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. Now, Lord, look on their threats and grant to your servants that with all boldness they may speak your word by stretching out your hand to heal and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God with boldness. So, of course, You know, they go back, Peter and John do, to their companions, verse 23 says, and they report everything that had been said to them. And probably the most important statement in this chapter, in this section, is right in verse 24, that says, when they heard that, they raised their voice to God. That was the reaction of the people. It doesn't say that Peter and John led a prayer. It says that when the people heard, when they heard that, they raised their voice to God with one accord. It was just like an immediate reaction. They heard what they had been threatened by. We need to pray, right? So, and here's your united prayer, which is what we do. It says that they raised their voice with one accord. Okay, and eventually what this gets to is down in verse 29. They asked for boldness to speak the word and they asked for God to stretch out his hand to heal and that signs and wonders would continue to be done. And of course, it's wonderful because those are those are the things that got them in trouble to begin with. Right. They were preaching in the name of Jesus and the Lord Jesus had granted the healing of this man that created the scene where they were able to preach the gospel to all these people. They know this is what the Lord wants them to do. So when these threats are made, they asked the Lord basically Lord. give us more of the things that have gotten us in this trouble, right? What is it? What is it in their hearts that would cause them to pray thus, to pray like that? I want to examine in some details here, the middle section of this passage of scripture, the prayer, the part that leads up to where they ask the Lord to grant boldness and to stretch out his hand to do these things. And that starts in the middle of verse 24. There's three points here quickly I want to make. The first point is just the first word, Lord. And why is that a point by itself? Well, I'm not a great scholar of Greek, and I don't pretend to be at all. But there are just, you know, every now and then it's good to know what words are being used to translate into our English. almost always in the New Testament the word Lord is Kyrios in Greek, but this is a very rare instance where the word that's transferred Lord there is not Kyrios. It's actually the word despotis and it's actually the word where we get the English word despot from. So they go to the Lord and the first word of their prayer is despot. Now that's a word that in modern English always has derogatory connotations and this is obviously not what they mean at all a despot is a ruler that wields absolute authority over his subjects even ownership over his subjects like like a master with a slave. So why would they address God this way? Well, I think because what they had specifically been told not to do was to preach in the name of Jesus, and that's exactly what God had told them to do back in verse 18. Says that they were commanded not to speak at all or teach in the name of Jesus. And so they answered and said, Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than God you judge we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. So when they address God as despot is there. What they're doing is they're affirming that, you know, these are the religious leaders of the people, but God outranks that. Do you understand? We ought to obey God, not men. Lord, you are the absolute ruler. Yes, these are human rulers and human rule is important. God has ordained it, but God's rule over arches everything. So I think the idea there is that they're affirming that God is over everything absolute rule and he owns everything right and this is a concept that comes up elsewhere in scripture when Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Warning them about the dangers of sexual immorality famously he said you were bought at a price right you're not your own, you know. You were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. He reminded them that they belonged to the Lord now, all right? So the first point there is basically, God, you own everything. Now, the second point is what comes next. You are God who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. This is very powerful. It's pretty simple to see what the point is too, right? God, you created everything. The fact that God has created everything I believe without promoting any sort of Pharisee ism or legalism. It needs to infiltrate our prayers. And the affirmation of that with great frequency. It's all over the Bible. The Bible, of course, starts by telling us in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The opening of John's gospel says, you know, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God, he was in the beginning with God, all things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made. So with Christ even, creation is what is laid down. All throughout the Psalms, there are affirmations of God as creator. Psalm 100, know that the Lord, He is God. It is He who has made us and not we ourselves. And of course, who can forget in the book of Job, after everything that happens in that account, when God finally appears in the narrative and basically says to Job, okay, Job, settle yourself. I'm going to ask you some questions now. What's the first thing that God says to Job? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Very important to the Lord that we remember that it is He who made us, right? One more quick point on this. We're studying the book of Revelation in our church right now. And in Revelation chapter 10, There's a series of trumpets that sound as part of all of the judgments that God is pouring on the earth right before the seventh trumpet sounds and at that seventh trumpet. It says that the kingdoms of this world that become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his price and he shall reign forever and ever very famous words. You recognize it maybe from Handel's Messiah, right? But right before that trumpet sounds, there's this great mighty angel who, in this vision that John sees, descends from the heavens. And he stands there with one foot on the sea and one foot on the earth, raises his right hand, and makes this great oath to God. And in this, it says that he swore by him who lives forever and ever who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it. So you start with Genesis and you go to Revelation, and all throughout are constant reminders, constant pointings, constant affirmations of the fact that God is our Creator. And this really drove them in their prayer here. All right, so point number one you could say is, Lord, you made everything, You own everything. Point number two is Lord, you made everything. And then here comes the third point in verse 25 who by the mouth of your servant, David had said, then the quotation here comes from Psalm two. Why did the nation's rage and the people plot vain things the kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ, and he could say something there itself about the fact that they had knowledge of Scripture and that made it into their prayer here. But then they say, for truly against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. They draw on their understanding of Psalm 2 to recognize that what the religious leaders are doing there fits into what God had already planned. The gospel is going to be preached. The gospel is going to advance. But as that happens, there will be this constant plotting of the rulers of the earth against this whole effort. And they recognize that. And so when they pray, they turn to the Lord and they're like, Lord, all of this is happening exactly as you have planned. Even the persecution, even the threatenings, it's even what happened to Jesus. It was your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. So you could say here that before they even get to ask God anything, they start off their prayer by affirming that God owns everything, God made everything, and God is sovereign over everything. right? And then they pray, and then they ask for the Lord to give them boldness, to do signs and wonders and miracles, to set up more kingdom-advanced gospel opportunities. And how did the Lord respond to all this? Was the Lord pleased? Well, number one, the Lord showed up and shook the place where they were. Imagine, you know, 20-30 years later, being someone who was in this prayer meeting saying, try to encourage your friends that they should go to prayer meeting at church and saying, hey, I went to prayer meeting once and God literally shook the place while we were there. That's pretty cool, right? But secondly, maybe even more profoundly, God gave them exactly what they asked for. They asked for boldness to speak, and what's it say? They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the Word of God with boldness. So God gave them exactly what they asked for. But thirdly, this struck me as very profound, We're still learning from this prayer today, right? I mean, we like to pray the Bible. We like to take the words of Scripture and pray them to the Lord. They did this here. They did that with Psalm 2. But these people, when they prayed, their words became the Bible, right? And we're reading and studying these things today and learning from it. That struck me as very profound that verbatim the words of this prayer is recorded here in God's response to it. That's God who did that. Now, How do I wrap all of this up? I just took a prayer and turned it into a nice, neat, comfortable three-point sermon. But that's not really what it is, is it? It's a prayer. And I want to say this. When Curtis spoke at the conference that I went to, his message was called, too weak not to pray. And that really has had a lasting impact on me, that message. And I think that's what's going on here. This isn't a prepared sermon, though it's rich in doctrinal truth. This was a spontaneous, reactive prayer to something that they had heard that came out of a heart that was desperate for God. They needed God to continue to give boldness and continue to do his work in order that they might fulfill what he, the absolute ruler, had called them to do. They were so filled with the knowledge of Christ and so filled with the love of Christ that there was this holy weakness in them. How perfect was it that just yesterday, George MacAskill said to us that the weakness is actually like a strength for us, right? Which sounds counterintuitive, but a holy weakness is a great ally. And not just the weakness, because weakness is the reality, whether you admit it or know it or not. It's knowing and realizing that you're weak that becomes a great ally, because it drives you to go to He who is strong. And that's what happened here. They heard these threats, and they turned to the Lord to pray, to ask for boldness, because they know they couldn't go forward if they didn't. And so what comes out is this prayer, Lord, you own everything, you made everything, you're sovereign over everything, look on their threats, give us boldness to preach, stretch out your hand to do miracles, keep doing all the things that you were doing that got us in trouble to begin with, because we want to fulfill everything that you have called us to do. They knew they didn't have the strength in themselves to do it, and it drove them to pray. And so I just want to give you those words, dear brothers and sisters, to encourage you to continue in what you're doing, because I know that the prayers of this group have not only had a great effect in my life in the two months that I've been part of it, but obviously leading up to me joining it as well. I know that. So be encouraged, stay desperate for God, stay weak before God, and continue to turn to him for strength. Rick, I'll give it back to you.