Learning to Pray Like The Apostles (Part 1)

In this post we take a closer look at some of the specific instances in the Book of Acts where the early church engaged in prayer as the divinely-ordained means by which God accomplished His will in their very midst. For the early church, prayer was a way of life. Prayer was an act of devotion and discipline which preceded some of the most definable moments in the life of the infant new testament community. Let us consider a few of those instances this morning. 

Devote Yourself to Prayer as a Way of Life

In Acts 2:42-47 we read how the early church was committed to prayer as a practice as fundamental to their spiritual well-being as teaching, fellowship, and evangelism. The text says they “devoted” themselves to prayer – that is, they continued steadfastly and persisted in prayer. There we see how God was actively and intimately involved in the life of the church as the object of her praise and adoration. We also see the result of that divine involvement: “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” The abundant life of the living God was infused into the heart of this early community of believers, and prayer was one of the ways that this life was both received and manifested. 

In an interesting contrast, whereas the early church was filled with the life and fellowship of the Spirit of God, their unbelieving antagonists among the rulers, scribes and priests, according to Acts 4:15, dealt with the growing problem posed by the evangelistic church by merely “conferring with one another,” apparently leaving God out of it. These unbelieving men could not confer with God in prayer, for indeed they were fighting against God by opposing His church. 

This indictment recalls a similar failure in the history of the Jewish nation, a failure to seek divine counsel in a time of need. When Joshua was leading the children of Israel to conquer and claim the land promised centuries earlier to Abraham, a local people known as the Gibeonites, aware that they could not defeat the Israelites in battle, chose a more cunning way to ensure their own survival. They deceived Joshua and his leading men by pretending to be sojourners from a distant country seeking to make a covenant with the Israelites and their God. The Israelites foolishly listened to the crafty sales pitch, but according to Joshua 9:14 “they did not ask counsel from the LORD.” Even though they had witnessed unimaginable God’s power and holiness since the days Moses first confronted Pharoah, they nevertheless suffered a momentary yet severe lapse in judgment that would cost them dearly for decades to come. The Gibeonites would become a snare to the Israelites, and the incident a tragic metaphor for our tendency to seek counsel amongst ourselves, but not of the Lord. 

A well-known proverb instructs us to “lean not upon our own understanding and to acknowledge the Lord in all our ways.” (3:5-6) This we must do, and this we cannot do apart from prayer. It seems that the early church lived out this exhortation. In stark contrast to their adversaries who had no one beyond human wisdom and power with whom to confer, the early church devoted themselves to prayer in all things, apparently not repeating the trespass of Joshua’s generation, to the end that God’s will was manifestly accomplished among them. 

Devote Yourself to Prayer That God May Accomplish His Will Through You

Second, we see in the book of Acts how the early church devoted themselves to prayer as a means of commissioning workers to their appointed ministry. In Acts 6, the Hellenist Jews levied a complaint against the Hebrews with regards to the disparate and prejudicial treatment of their widows. In response to the growing crisis, the twelve apostles gathered together all the disciples of the Lord and instructed them to select seven men “full of the Spirit and of wisdom” to be appointed to the duty of caring for the physical needs of the church. It is important to note the apostles’ underlying motive for choosing these first deacons. One of the twelve, most likely Peter, set forth the apostolic priorities: “We must devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” The same is true today that was true 2000 years ago: prayer and preaching go hand in hand, and those disciplines should ever remain the main priorities of the local church’s spiritual leaders. 

So the twelve chose seven godly men to be deacons, one of whom was a man named Stephen, full of faith and the Spirit, a man we will hear more about in a moment. “These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.” (6:6) That is, they gathered together in prayer to commission the workers to this newly-sanctioned ministry. The fruit of this wise and prayerful commissioning is noteworthy: “And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.” (6:7) The church grew in size and strength in large part because she prayed. 

Another commissioning service is found in Acts 13:1-3 where Luke marks that seminal moment in church history when the Holy Spirit spoke to the leaders of the church to “set apart Barnabas and Saul (Paul) for a particular and divinely ordained work. At this time in history, the Apostle Paul began to be distinguished as the leader of the early church. Luke records their obedience to the Holy Spirit: “Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” Once again, prayer was the means by which the church commissioned workers to the ministry of the gospel. Another similar occurrence is documented in Acts 14:23 when Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in every church, and committed them with prayer and fasting to the Lord in whom they had believed. 

So prayer is one of God’s chosen instruments for revealing and accomplishing His will. It is through prayer that God involves His people in His work. He doesn’t just do His will; He invites us to intimately take part in its very unfolding. By prayerfully commissioning new workers to the ministry of the gospel, we communicate to those workers the fundamental instrumentality of prayer as God’s chosen means. In the book of Acts, we see specific instances where deacons, missionaries, and elders were commissioned through prayer. But it doesn’t have to be restricted to just those particular ministries. Recently our church commissioned a young man as our youth minister. We presented him before the congregation, but more importantly, we presented him before the Lord and prayed that God would imbue him with wisdom, skill, and grace to be an effective Christian worker. Our prayer of commissioning was not a practice we invented, but one that was lived out by the earliest followers of the Lord to commend others to the mission field filled with the power and grace of God. Today as we pray, we can and should commend our husbands and wives and children and friends to their own individual mission field by committing them to the Lord in prayer. 

Devote Yourself to Prayer To Testify to the Grace of God

A third way that prayer was critical to the life of the church was as a means through which believers gave public testimony to the saving grace of God in Christ. We spoke earlier of Stephen, one of those men “full of the Spirit and wisdom” commissioned to help take care of the physical needs of the widows. But in addition to being a humble servant, Stephen was also a great preacher – and would become the church’s first martyr. Stephen’s Spirit-filled eloquence is witnessed in Acts 7 as he boldly preached Christ, the promised Messiah. His mostly unimpressed listeners were offended at his words and turned violent as Stephen’s message cut to the hearts of those who had rejected their Savior. Before long, the enraged mob was out of control, casting Stephen out of the city, stoning him to death. As they did so, a young man named Saul stood by in hearty approval of their harsh judgment on the young preacher. But just before Stephen breathed his last he uttered two brief prayers which, in hindsight, might be two of the most significant prayers ever uttered by a mere mortal. Stephen’s first prayer, offered in spite of the fact that he was dying for preaching in the name of Christ, revealed his enduring faith in Christ all the same: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” (7:59) That simple prayer gave witness to the onlookers, including the murderous Saul, that Jesus the Son of God is the Glorious One in heaven who receives the spirits of His loved ones. 

The second prayer uttered by the dying Stephen cut even deeper as he selflessly testified to the love of Christ that filled his heart: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (7:60) Luke records that those who witnessed the death of Stephen “laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.” Later we read that “Saul approved of Stephen’s execution.” The text does not say so directly, but it seems reasonable and fair to surmise that the manner in which Stephen prayed as he neared his painful death was a clear witness to Saul of the grace of God in Christ. In Stephen’s prayerful departure from this earth, the seeds for the most important conversion in the history of the church were sown that day in the heart of Saul, who towards the end of his life, having been divinely-renamed Paul, would testify to his young disciple Timothy that in his earlier years he had been “a blasphemer, persecutor, and violent aggressor.” “But,” he wrote, “I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” It is quite possible that the first time he ever personally witnessed that overflowing grace and love of Christ was the day he heard Stephen pray out loud for God to forgive those who carried out the crime against him, much as Christ Himself, while hanging on the cross, also forgave His executioners. I believe we are safe in saying that Stephen’s dying prayer was an effective witnessing tool that day before a watchful Saul. 

Consequently, we must view prayer as one of the fundamental “weapons” we have in the cosmic battle for the souls of men. The Apostle Paul exhorted the church at Ephesus to be “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication…that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.” (Ephesians 6:18-20) Engaged in a spiritual war as we are, one of the many critical weapons of which we can and must avail ourselves is prayer itself. Specifically, Paul prayed for the ability to articulate and defend the gospel with boldness. Prayer is one means by which God opens the eyes of the blind – as He did with Saul. It is also a way that God sharpens the effectiveness of the evangelist. As Paul himself reminds us, no preacher can long be effective without the prayers of the church undergirding him.