Just Sort of Slips Them in There

Royal Priesthood, Holy Nation                                        Acts 1:14

Just Sort of Slips Them in There

by Robert T. Cooper

 

I had been a member of this Glee Club in college. Now I was a graduate, attending one of their concerts in Dallas. There was a fellow still in that choir who had been in the choir at the same time I was. When the concert ended, this fellow made a beeline for me. He wanted to let me know that he had in the intervening time placed his faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. My friend is still walking with Christ today. Sometimes we “accidentally” discover that someone has become a fellow believer in Christ.

 

Acts 1:14 mentions some people who were in this 24/7 prayer meeting during the days between the Ascension and Pentecost. We aren’t surprised to find the Apostles there. We aren’t surprised to find Mary, the mother of Jesus, there. It isn’t even particularly surprising to find “the women” there. (This was a substantial group of women who traveled around with Jesus and His disciples during the 3½ year ministry of Jesus. They frequently were the source for funding for the ministry.)

 

But we are surprised to discover that Jesus’ four brothers were part of the prayer meeting. The last we had heard of these brothers, they had been taunting Jesus about how He behaved as a public figure, taunting because they were not believers in Jesus or in His mission. In fact, at the crucifixion, Jesus gave a verbal will as He hung on the cross. He gave the care of His mother to John, the youngest of the Apostles, rather than to any of His brothers. Yet here, not two months later, the four brothers are with the Apostles at the prayer meeting.

 

What had happened? How had they turned from mockers into disciples? Frankly, the Bible does not tell us. It is a mystery, and will remain so until we see them and can ask them for ourselves. Yet they were converted. And when Luke mentions they were participants in the prayer meeting, he doesn’t make a big deal of it. He just sort of slips them in there. Moreover, two of those brothers ended up writing books of the New Testament. One of those brothers ended up being the Senior Pastor of the Church at Jerusalem, pastor of the Twelve Apostles.

 

It is not an uncommon thing. The person it never occurred to you would eventually come to faith in Christ does become a believer. In fact, God seems to enjoy bringing salvation to unlikely candidates. So don’t give up on people. Perhaps all won’t be converted, but you never know. Only God knows.

 

In the Comments section, we’d love to hear any stories you may have of someone who came to faith in Christ, someone He just sort of slipped in there.

One Key to Answered Prayer

Royal Priesthood, Holy Nation                                        Acts 1:14

One Key to Answered Prayer

by Robert T. Cooper

There was this person in the community. His whole attitude toward God had to do with God being there for him. There was this woman who felt like she just couldn’t get God to give her answers to her prayers. Then there was this other fellow on social media who was upset with God because God didn’t ever do what he wanted; he felt that God was never there for him. There are lots of people like these I have mentioned.

Perhaps you can identify with these acquaintances of mine. Yet do you realize there are some keys to answered prayer? If you applied these keys to your prayer life, you just might find you had more answers to prayer. Even when your prayers seemed to be unanswered, use of these keys would perhaps allow you to better understand what was going on and why things were the way they seemed.

So, what can we learn from Acts 1:14?

The verse begins with the word “they”. The people who were praying in this verse were disciples of Jesus. They had been following Jesus for as long as 3½ years. And it wasn’t casual following. These were people who were known by the fact that if Jesus told them to do something, they did it. Lesson for us: To have your prayers answered, you must be a long-term committed follower of Christ who will do whatever He says, even when you don’t understand, even when no one understands.

The next word in the verse is “all”. We aren’t talking about one person praying. We are talking about a group of people praying. Lesson for us: Find you a dozen or more people who are praying people. Be part of a group like that.

The verse says they were joined together. The notes say that a literal rendition would be that they were continuing with one mind. This group of praying committed followers of Christ had agreed as to what they should pray and they stuck with their agreement. That way everyone in the group was praying the same thing, not necessarily with the same words, but essentially the same request. And this agreement as to what to pray went on over an extended period of time. Lesson for us: Get with your prayer group; agree what everyone in the group is going to pray; then stick with that agreement for an extended period of time.

The verse says they were constantly in prayer. Most people pray a little here and a little there. Not this group of committed Christ followers. They were together frequently and often. In this case, the prayer meeting was 24/7 for 10 days. They had to sacrifice certain other things in order to pray like that, but they were intent on getting an answer from the Lord. Lesson for us: Be with your prayer group as frequently and often as you can. Pray in such a way that your group prayer would be termed “constant” by an outsider.

Leave a comment now about which of these “Lessons for us” you are already employing and which you intend to adopt. If you also want to share your object of prayer, feel free.

Come back in a few days and share what has resulted from your change in prayer strategy. Remember, prayer doesn’t work; our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ works. He is the One Who answers prayer.

Power: Dynamite or Dynamo?

Royal Priesthood, Holy Nation                                          Acts 1:8

Power: Dynamite or Dynamo?

by Robert T. Cooper

When most preachers speak on Acts 1:8, they will mention that the word for “power” is dunamin. Then most preachers will mention that this is the word from which we get our modern English word, “dynamite.” Some preachers are quite comfortable with this comparison. In their minds, the Holy Spirit gave the first believers an explosive power that resulted in the spread of the Gospel across the known world in one generation.

Other preachers are quite uncomfortable comparing Holy Spirit power to dynamite. These preachers find dynamite to have a bad connotation. They find it a symbol of destruction. One might say that in many places the Gospel destroyed the old worldview and the old way of living. It destroyed idolatry and false religion. It was destructive to immorality. But that seems to be grasping at straws in order to hang onto an analogy that does not quite work.

With the construction of modern turbines and electric-generation facilities, a better choice of a modern term might be “dynamo.” When one reconsiders the spread of the Gospel during the years immediately following Pentecost, the Gospel did not exactly explode across the known world. The year in which Pentecost occurred, it is not apparent that any of the new disciples left Jerusalem for several months. When they finally did leave, it was because of the persecution instigated by Saul of Tarsus. At that time, while Luke doesn’t report foreign disciples finally returning to their homes, most must have done so. But the domestic disciples didn’t scatter far, perhaps in a radius of 100 – 200 miles. And still the Apostles were hanging back in Jerusalem.

No, the spread of the Gospel in that first generation was more like a dynamo than like dynamite. It may have taken a couple of decades, but the Gospel did make it from England to Ethiopia, from Iberia to India, and perhaps beyond.

Still, what the verse says has more to do with the manner in which the Holy Spirit will empower disciples than with the speed of the spread of the Gospel. The witness of the disciples would be empowered.

Which brings us to the crucial questions. Why is it that in our sight there are only a few people whose witness appears to be empowered by the Holy Spirit? Should we not expect the witness of every disciple, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, to be empowered? Shouldn’t my witness be empowered?

The first couple of decades of my Christian witness, I considered myself to be a 30-fold disciple. In Jesus’ parable of the Sower and the Seed, the seed sown on good soil produces crops, some 30-fold, some 60-fold, and some 100-fold. I figured that over the course of my life, if the Lord blessed, perhaps 30 people might come to a saving knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But then a few years ago I found myself in a situation in which there were several people coming to faith. It seemed to me that the Lord had blessed that I might be a 60-fold disciple. I am so grateful for what the Lord has done, and I give Him all the credit, all the glory.

What about you? If you are only a 30-fold disciple, that is still a witness empowered by the Holy Spirit. Face it! There is no getting out of it! You and I might not be 100-fold disciples, but our witness is still dynamic; the message of salvation is still spreading. Perhaps it is like yeast in a lump of dough, hard to realize what is happening until the whole lump is leavened. And still the Holy Spirit is empowering our witness.

Questions: Can you tell at all that the Holy Spirit is empowering your witness? In what ways?