NOV 1 2015 | The Believers Pray for Boldness

Sea Change Church · "The Believers Pray for Boldness" · Adam Stadtmiller · November 1, 2015
Acts 4:23-31
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Chapter 4, verses 23 through 31. And this is an exciting story. We're in the midst of Paul, excuse me, I say that every week, Peter and John sorting out the opposition that came with them living radical and dynamic lives for Christ in the open. And lives lived out in the open and lives of love that made a difference. And so they had healed a man at the gates of the temple.

And this man had stood up and for the great miracle that they did, they were arrested, put in jail, brought before the Sanhedrin and the council who then, does anybody know what they did to them? Anyone from last week? What did they do? They threatened them, but not only threatened them, they severely threatened them. Remember that? You can't just threaten them because I guess a threat wasn't good enough. So it said that they had to severely threaten them.

We're going to be in the English standard version. We've been kind of making the tour. It's kind of a potpourri of different Bible translations. The ESV is a great translation. That's the English standard version. You can look at that online at BibleGateway.com and check it out. If you download YouVersion, you can find that on your phone right now and follow along or BibleGateway. It'll also be up on the screen or you can read both translations at once and see how that they compare.

Let's get into that story. When they were released, they went to their friends. I love that. They went to their friends and reported what the chief priest and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted... This is key. And when they heard it, that transitional word, when. When something happens, what do you do? It's so key. Always look for the transitional words in the scripture.

And when they had heard it, they lifted their voices together. Can we say that? They lifted their voices together. Put an underline. It's already underlined, but put a circle around together. Where there is unity, the psalm says, God commands a blessing. If you as a church get unified about evangelism, you will have a church that has the power of evangelism because God loves to bless unity.

It says, together to God, and said, Sovereign Lord, this is a prayer, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who went through the mouth of our... who threw the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles rage? And why did the peoples plot in vain? Maybe someone is plotting against you. Realize if God is in your mix, it'll be in vain.

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together. We got kings, we got rulers. But who were they against? The Lord. Let's say that a little louder. Who were they against? Let's... wait... do we have coffee on there? Do we have any coffee you can hand out, David? Can you get some coffee? Who were they against? The Lord. That's right. Were they against Israel? Were they against David?

No, they were against who? The Lord. That's right. And His anointed. Let me assure you that if you have asked Christ to come into your heart, if you have asked Him to blot out your transgressions, for times of refreshing to come to your heart, that you also now are His anointed. That God has an anointing over your life, and the enemy wants to speak and say that you are still bound by the curse.

And while the ebb and flow of the curse seems to come to our feet on a regular basis, we will walk through on what kind of land? Dry ground. We will walk through that you are God's anointed. For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. I love that word anointing. We do a word study on anointed this week.

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. We'll get back to that in a second. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with what? All boldness, all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal.

And signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. There's that word name again, the name of Jesus. We've been talking about the name in the book of Acts. And when they had prayed, when they had prayed, because that's what they were doing together. They were unifying. And community prayer is a form of unification of the church, and it brings power.

The place in which they were gathered together was shaken. And they were all filled, not some of them, all filled with the Holy Spirit, and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. Wow. What a church. What a powerful example of a church that wanted to do God's kingdom together. I want to say, if there's something that I see today in America today, it's that I don't see a lot of committing together as a group to do something powerful for the kingdom of God.

I see, oftentimes, people that are involved in many different places. And at churches, oftentimes, you have... And this is one of the reasons I really like small church, because it's easier to get a unified commitment in a small church than it is in a larger church sometimes. And I've been in both settings. I know that it's harder to get that message across.

This was a church that was unified. And in the unification of the body came a power. Comes an innate power. Comes a form of energy or inertia or momentum that moves that forward. God loves when his people come together for purposes. And so, as I spoke earlier about what we want to do in giving, in the same way that God will bless an individual in giving when they are faithful as an individual, when a congregation is faithful together.

Do you see that? When we come together as individual drops of water that flow into a mighty stream, that flow into a mighty river that no one can ford, then it says that God will bless that unity. And he will cause a blessing to come upon that congregation. Because the congregations are also called the body of Christ. You see, when you look at the scripture, the individual congregations are seen as individual bodies.

Made up of many, the scripture says what? Parts. So we are made up of many parts. But we come together. And the more unified we are, the more holistic we are as a group of people saying, this is what we want to do. And this is my job as a leader. To share with you what I feel God has shared with me as the leader of this church. To share what I have shared with the elder board.

And what they have shared back and forth with me. With my church leaders. And to get that trickle effect going down. To we cause such an impact that this place, that this city, will be shaken. That's what I want to see. I do not want to contract our vision. Matter of fact, I want us to go forward. There was a time at this church where 500 people came on a regular basis to this church.

They had 295 people in Sunday school in this church on Sunday before. This was in the late 1940s after World War II. That this church, people were walking in. They had many homes. And in the area, a lot of people walked to church. And they would have Bible studies in the homes before church. This church has made such a huge impact. And I feel that there is still an anointing there.

And I see God beginning to do it. And it's my job to clarify the unity of that vision. But we see here when that begins to happen, that the enemy gets upset. You see that the leaders of the day began to get upset because they were losing their power. And it was ridiculous that they look at this miracle and they even said to themselves, a mighty miracle has happened among us.

If you read earlier in the chapter, in chapter 4, a mighty miracle has happened. We cannot deny it. And I talked last week about living what kind of lives? Undeniable lives. I don't know if I need to live an impossible life. Sometimes we set the bar so high in church. You know, we can't get drunk on vision. I love a nice little vision, okay? Look, everyone likes a little vision.

But you can intoxicate a congregation on vision. I don't know if you get that. But we want to have a vision that is sober in nature, that is sober and uses wisdom within it. But at the same time is moving forward and deeper into that vision. And so we see this church that is under threat. And as they're under threat, they decide to do one thing first.

And the first thing is their go-to thing. Look here in your notes. It says it's a church under threat. And the immediate response to being under the threat of persecution was to gather together and pray. Where two or more are gathered, what does the scripture say? Yeah, there I am, that God is there. There's something about unity. There's something about when a people say, we are going to do something together.

They gather together and their first response was to pray. Let me ask you this. Now, let's just make the, everything has to come back to our own hearts, right? To ourselves as individuals. Because this body of Christ is made up of individual believers. And so I would ask you this. When push comes to shove, when you're living in the when of life, when this happened to you, like it says here, when they heard this, that they had been severely threatened, knowing that the same group that had threatened them was the group that put Jesus to death.

When they had been severely threatened, their immediate response was to go to the Lord. Let me read it in verse 24. And when they heard it, they lifted up their voices, how? Together to God and said, sovereign Lord, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in him, who through the mouth of our father, David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit.

And it goes on down. I love the part where it says, verse 28. Let's go to verse 28. When they cast their hope of their future upon knowing that God was in charge of Christ's death and is also in charge of their outcome as well. You see, no one crucified Jesus. No one killed Jesus. You cannot kill the author of life. But it says in verse 28, or let's start in verse 27.

Right there it says, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand had planned and had predestined to take place. I've got to say, nothing happens in your life that God doesn't know about. Nothing happens in your life that God cannot sort out. You are not in a place right now that God cannot, is not aware of, does not care about, and realizes that you are his anointed.

You are the anointed of God. Do you get that? Do you walk in that identity? That you have a father who dodes over you. Do you have a father who loves you? Do you have a father who gives you red balloons and takes you to the park and wants to spend time with you and shows up and never misses a game, never misses an appointment, never misses a time to be with you.

And he waits there in the morning for us, and he waits there in the afternoon, and he's there in the evening, and he carries us when we're sick, and he wipes our brow, and he wipes our eyes when we cry, and he laughs with us. The anointing, the anointing father God who anoints you and loves you. This is who they spoke to, and he is not unaware of your position in your place, and he can get you out of it, whatever it is.

And that you will walk through the valley of the shallow of the death and get to a place of green pastures and quiet waters. This is the God that we serve. And so they rely on that. And they immediately, what I love about their disposition is that they didn't go into panic mode. You think if you're going to have threats, you saw Jesus die, and then all of a sudden you're being severely threatened.

Instead of going into panic mode, which is what the disciples did, what the apostles did when Jesus was threatened in the garden. You see, they gave up and everyone was scattered. But once again, it says they were scattered. Was that unbeknownst to God? No. It says that as your prophecy had foretold and that Jesus had said, all the sheep, they would be scattered from him that day.

See, God knew that too. Right where you are right now, God knows where you are. He is not unaware of what's going to happen, what's happening, and he begs you to lean into him. Lean into my breast. Believe in me. Trust in me. Trust that we can do it. Rest in me. Be at peace in me. And this is a church that had learned the lesson. How long is it going to be until we learn the lesson?

That when, you know, something happens, something doesn't go right, what is your immediate go-to when the whens of life happen? They immediately call together the church. It says they went to who? Their friends. I want to say I have a prayer partner that I pray with on a regular basis. And we talk maybe two times a week, maybe more. Sometimes it's five, six times a week sometimes.

And whenever there's something, I know that there is a phone call I can call. And I immediately call and we just pray. We talk, you know, there's always a phone call back, you know, right away. I call my mom. I have elders in the church. I have a pit crew, my prayer and intercession team of eight people, who pray for me on a regular basis. I'm trying to put out a weekly newsletter to them of the things that are going on in my life.

Like they said in the movie The War Room, I have a prayer strategy. Do you remember that in The War Room? Anybody see that movie? I said, what's, the woman says, what's that? You know, this is old, old African-American woman. And this young realtor, African-American comes in and the older woman takes her to her room, this little closet. And the lady says, what's that?

She goes, oh, that's my war room. I'm not going to try to do the accent, but the accent's really good. She says, that's my war room. She goes, what's your war room? She says, this is where I have all my prayers, the things I pray for. And she says, you have a prayer strategy? She goes, yeah, you got to have a prayer strategy. I'm going to say I have a strategy.

And I had backed off my strategy about a month, about two weeks ago. I'd backed off. Things were going well. And I thought, oh, you know, it's hard to put that letter out all the time. Wasn't calling my prayer partners as much. And all of a sudden, I realized life just wasn't in the same spot that it was. My heart wasn't in the same spot. My mind wasn't in the same spot.

My mom got a hold of me and she said, you know, maybe you need to start that prayer thing up again. And I thought, yeah, you know, I write a book about it. Maybe I should pray as well. I figured it all out. I don't need to pray anymore. I wrote a book about it. Within moments of pressing send to my eight prayer partners and calling my other prayer partners, within moments, I felt an immediate peace to send on our household.

I noticed a change of disposition in family members. I noticed a peace in my perspective. When. What's happening right now? What is the when that just happened to you? You know one of the worst whens? When things are going well. That's a tough when. I got a hard time getting out of bed to pray when things are going well. Things were going way too well.

I had two really good months. I was like, ah, ha, ha. Spiritual pirate just taking over all the ships. God's so glad. He's so great. All right. We'll just take care of that. You know, it says when God, when you were near, um, what's in my fortress stood tall. There's a scripture that says I was, um, I was unshakable. But when you hid your face, it's basically, it says I wilted.

You know, you start feeling strong. You feel like, how do they ever worry about that? Where are you right now? Maybe it's time to go to prayer. Maybe it's time to bring someone with you. There's a lot of people in this congregation that pray and that know how to pray. And some that don't and get them too. And let's begin to pray and care for each other as a congregation.

So that is what they did with their when. And this is a church that sourced its direction. Remember, in Acts, as soon as Jesus ascends into heaven, where do they go? The first thing it says that they did. They went to an upper room. They gathered together, the women, the family of Jesus, the apostles. And what did they do? They waited and prayed.

They sourced their direction from God. They sourced their protection from God. And the power, and power through prayer. Do you have enough power in your life if you don't? Prayer is powerful. Here it shook, it shook the place they were. I love the idea that God is a force. The Bible talks about forces of energy. And when our sins are blotted out, like I spoke about last week, it actually, there's an energy transference in the spiritual cosmos where sin is a living thing.

You see that, and the scripture talks about sin being living. And it's active. The word of God is living and active. And there is a battle, it says in Ephesians, that our war is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual, the principalities that are in the high places. And that when you pray, there is a shift of power. That the spirit of God moves and there is a shift of power whenever you pray.

You might not be able to see it, but there is a power shift. And if you want to live a powerful life, pray. Because your words might not make any difference if you're just speaking about something that's on your mind. But if you pray to God what's on your mind, you ask him to change, power will happen. That God will incline his ear to you. I was reading Daniel this morning.

Daniel said, God, incline your ear to me. In Psalm 29, it spoke about hearing your people again. The fact that when you call his name, we know his name. And he's such a gracious God that he lets you know who he was. See, that is such a grace that God let us know who he was. He told us his name. Now he told us his name. He sent his son that we could just know him in flesh and blood.

And then he says, I not only want you to know my son, I want to dwell within you within intimacy. And when the Holy Spirit came, the Spirit indwelled you. And now the Spirit of God lives in you. And you can address God. You can address God. Go to God. Go to your Father. Say, Father, I love you. Oh, please help. Please help. You want to know a great prayer?

This is a great prayer. Four letters. Help! Help! Such a great prayer. Seriously. If you just go to God, come into the church, we'll let you in. Come in here and sit. Look at the cross for a while. Hang out. Help! Help! Help! I'm drowning! Help! Help! The Father will run out into that water. He will find you and rescue you. He'll give his very life to save yours.

Matter of fact, he did. That's it. There's nothing he will not save you from. The question is, as we found in John 5 when I first got here a year and a half ago, is do you want to get well? Do you want help? I had a couple weeks season recently. I'm just like, I'm pretty happy. I don't know how well I want to get. Normal person, right? I'm well enough, right?

Walk a little limp, but I can still get there, you know? Who needs to run? I've always been terrified of living at my potential. I have always been terrified of living at my potential because of the cost. So easy. It's, I've just, I've checked in at B minus, you know, all through college. B plus, actually it's B plus. But, you know, I just checked it, right?

Right? Just good enough. No one's going to complain. But what does it take to live a life of, and I mean greatness in God's eyes. To be everything you're called to be. You might not write the book, or I'm not saying everything you want to do. You can be everything you're called to be and still never do everything you want to do. We live in a society that says, if you don't do everything you want to do, then you've failed.

You can fail boldly and be everything you're supposed to be. You can live a life of failing of everything, and at the end, you get to God, and he says, well done, good and faithful servant, because you failed in a way that brought glory to me. We live in a society that says you have to succeed. You do not have to succeed. Show up. Let God be there and be present for you.

We have a couple more verses there. They source their direction, their protection, and their power. I love that. Just circle those and remember it this week. You need direction, pray. You need protection, pray. You need power, pray. We're going to pray. We pray. We have prayer groups here every Tuesday afternoon. We have a great prayer group at noon.

I don't know, anywhere between 7 and 15 people show up every week, and we pray for this church. And I go to bed some nights, and I'm tempted to be worried, and I say, you know, we pray. We're a church of praise. I don't need to worry. We're a church of praise. Lies and threats then. We see that now the enemy, when you start living like this, is going to come, and he's going to threaten you.

You ever got that? You start living for God, and then you start getting this threat. Well, if I really live for God, he's really going to attack me, so I'm going to back it off a little bit. Lies and threats are a primary weapon of the devil. Primary. He's going to lie about your marriage. He's going to lie about your purpose. He's going to lie about your friendships.

He's going to lie about your finances. He's going to lie about God. He's going to lie about God loving you. He's going to lie about him being a good father. He's going to say he's like the father that you had. He's not the father that he is. He's going to lie and lie, and he's crouching there. And if he can lie to you and get you to make a decision on your own, then he doesn't mean to attack you.

See, he wants to drive you into dry and waterless pastures. He wants to shepherd you into the wilderness. And what we know about in the Exodus, the book of Exodus, is that the wilderness can be a pretty comfortable place. You think you're, as a matter of fact, it's so comfortable, you might even think you're in the promise. And there was people in the Israelite community that didn't want to leave the wilderness.

And they asked to stay. And they said, well, if you come and fight with us to take the land and then go back, you can go back and have that wilderness. Because in the wilderness, God's presence was there, right? And it had a tent of meeting. So the wilderness can have God's presence in it. And God will always be with you if you're in a wilderness.

But I'm saying choosing the wilderness. You choose to live there. And the wilderness had manna. It had sustenance. And no giants lived in the wilderness. It was a great place to live. A little hot. But it had a view of the water, okay? Because they were by the Jordan. Realtors know what I'm talking about. Only a $12 million difference between a view of the water here in La Jolla and not having a view of the water.

I found out. 12 mil. Just right around the corner. Does it look that much different than the water in Costa Rica? Probably not. New Jersey? The enemy's going to lie to you. Look at the prayer of these believers. They didn't back off. Oh, God. They're going to kill us. They're going to kill us. Oh, I'm going to die. God, give us boldness. Give us boldness.

Because you know what? You know what's happening. You predestined it before. You've predestined it again. And let us walk. Let us take some ground. Let us take ground. When the lies and the threats come, stand firm. Because the Bible says stand firm. So do everything you could do to stand. And when you stand, stand firm. But in your prayers, take ground.

You know, sometimes the best we can do, God just tells us to stand. Let him fight your battles for you. Be at rest. And he will fight your battles for you. But don't let your prayer life emulate that. Let your prayer life be futuristic. Let it be prophetic. Let it be powerful. Let it ask above and beyond more than you could ever hope, dream, or imagine.

In Ephesians 3.20. I would say we got to get bigger. We need to pray bigger prayers. We need to take more ground. We want to see a city. We want to see a home change. We want to see that broken relationship that you have in your family right now. Whether it be with a mom or a cousin. Healed. God can heal that. Pray into that. Take it. Go to your war room.

Go and pray. Go and pray. And so we see that, that the enemy wants to do that. Let's look at the prayers of the believers. And now look upon the threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness. That was their response. Look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.

What I think is interesting here is they're not even praying for protection. They're praying to speak with boldness. And then they said, you're going to stretch out your hand to heal. They didn't say, please stretch out your hand to heal. They said, while you stretch out your hand to heal. It was a foregone conclusion that God was going to stretch out his hand and heal.

Because they had seen it. And it says, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. You know, sometimes when you pray, rather than asking, it's good just to claim it. Just to say it. That God, you know what? When I go out, you are going to go out in peace. And you are going to, I am going to go out in power. And I am going to go out in praise.

And you are going to show your servant where to go. And you are going to give me favor. And you are going to give me hope. And you are going to give me grace. And you are going to give me faith. Because you are our good father and I love you God. You see, step in it up to the next level. You know, you can write your life. Write the story of your life with your prayers.

Prayer is story creation. It writes the story of your life. And if you want to see God move, begin to pray. Begin to pray in the affirmative. And then we are just finished here. Boldness is a product of prayer. I love it. What did they pray for? God, give us boldness. They had it too. You sit here today because of their boldness. Because of their boldness.

Because they were willing to stand up and say, we have something. We have a message on our tongue. We have a hope and a savior and a name of Jesus that is stronger and more powerful than anything we have ever experienced before. They had been with Jesus. I remember early in the story, it said that they looked at these men and they were uneducated and untrained.

But they realized one thing about them, that they had been where? They had been with Jesus. You got to spend time with Jesus. You get with them, people will know it. You get with them, people will know it. I was telling Carrie on the way here, I'm just, I got to get some more time with Jesus. The heat's upped a little bit lately. Just a little bit, you know.

Just took it from six, you know. It always cooks at five at least for me, you know what I mean, five or six. Maybe it went up to seven. But I just need more time with Jesus. Not, you know, I spent two weeks trying to figure it out. Okay, how can I strategize this and change this and do that? And, you know, because I just need to spend some more time with Jesus.

So that people can see that I know him. I realize in my soccer coaching, which I've talked about so much, my mom brought a picture of me when I was like, you got that, mom? Let me see that. This is the national championship five-year-old team, AYSO, that I was on. National champions right there. There's little Adam. I don't know if you can see that.

I'm going to walk up and down the aisle here. There's little Adam right there. Little guy right there. National championship right there. And that's when you still play with the man-sized ball, number five, okay? But, yeah, the, forgot what I was saying. Yeah, I just noticed, too, that a little edgier on the sidelines than I'd been earlier in the season.

I let Sable coach, well, kind of let her coach. I wasn't very good at it. But she took over the hedging. Oh, two goals yesterday. Yay! We tied. And beautiful goals. Beautiful goals. Crosses. Oh, beautiful goals. We went down one nil. That's it for us. We only scored two goals all season in nine games, okay? So we score a goal to tie it up. And then they score another goal.

And I'm like, oh, it's over. We're not scoring another goal. Then another goal came. We tied. I was so happy. So amazing. But then she started acting like me on the sidelines, which was awesome. Ref, what are you doing, Ref? Make the call. So, no, we had a great time. But God is good. We want to spend time. These people, they had known that they had been with Jesus.

Jesus, I want to be a congregation. I just want to give you guys an assignment. And I'll ask the worship team to come up as well. We're going to take communion. Here's a little assignment. When you get an opportunity, if people ask you why you're different, use the name of Jesus. Let's step out of God. Let's come out of the closet a little further.

The name of Jesus is powerful. Scripture over and over again in this book of Acts. Use the name of Jesus. You know, hey, why are you like this? You know what, I'm a Christian, I try to follow Jesus. However you want to say it. And if they ask you more questions, say, I'm a part of a little community called La Jolla Christian Fellowship. Here's my hope.

My hope is that God begins to have people in this area, in UTC, in PB, wherever we're trying to make these changes. They keep running into these people who talk about Jesus and a small little church on a corner. And they begin to say, wow, there's something happening in that community. We want to have the testimony on our lips. So you don't have to do that.

But I want to encourage you to continue to begin to speak about Jesus. And if they ask more, pray for an opportunity to share those things. And that you tell people about what God is doing in this place. Because I believe that that is how, like the woman who came this week, who said, I just want to be there. There's something I feel that I'm there.

And maybe you feel it as well. Lord Jesus, I want to thank you, God, for what you've done in our congregation. And as we come to the Lord's table, God, we surrender it to you. We bless you, God. And we just thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.