They Prayed

Passage: Verses from Acts on Prayer

You will recall we have been working our way through the book of Acts off and on over the past couple of years. This morning I am going to preach through the entire book of Acts. Sounds daunting, sounds overwhelming, sounds crazy, sounds really long. I am going to preach through the entire book of Acts this morning, but I am not going to play all the notes, I am going to play only one note, one note that is played over thirty times in the book of Acts, and that note is prayer. As you have come to expect at the beginning of each year I challenge us to take up the habit of praying and reading Scripture, to renew our efforts, God helping us. And to the extent that all of us have fallen short or failed to do this, I urge us to fail forward, to make an intentional effort no matter how faulty. In the book of Acts Dr. Luke describes in some detail the beginning history of the early Christian Church. There is one thing that stands out about the early church and it is prayer. The early church was a praying church. The early church didn’t talk about prayer, they didn’t expect just the leaders to pray, they didn’t hold conferences on prayer, they didn’t just “say their prayers,” they didn’t just open and close their meetings with prayer, the early church prayed. The early church had a clear sense of desperate dependence on the triune God.