Acts 4:23-31 New International Version (NIV)
The Believers Pray
23 On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. 25 You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
“‘Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
26 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord
and against his anointed one.
27 Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. 29 Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. 30 Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
After they were released from prison, Peter and John went back to the other believers. They told them what had happened. Then they prayed together. When we have a problem, we should always pray about it.
We can also learn from the way the believers prayed. First, they called God the ‘Lord of everything’. They were reminding themselves that he made everything. God rules over everything. Often we need to remind ourselves about this. He is bigger than any problem and he can do anything. But we must ask him.
The believers were Jews. So, they called David their ‘father’ because he was a famous king in Israel. They said words from a psalm that David wrote (Psalm 2:1-2). He wrote this psalm about 1000 years before Jesus’ birth. His prophecy there about the Messiah had now happened. And some people in the psalm wanted to stop Jesus. This was so that he would not preach. So, they had made plans to stop him. Together, with their king (Herod Antipas) and their ruler (Pontius Pilate), they had killed Jesus. But they had not stopped his message. He had become alive again. The apostles were curing people in his name. His church was growing and many people were hearing the good news. What had happened had been in God’s plan.
The Sanhedrin had done bad things to the believers. But the believers did not pray that God would stop the Sanhedrin’s actions. Instead, the believers asked God to give courage to them when they continued to tell people about Jesus. They asked God to show his power when they spoke with Jesus’ authority.
At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit had come and he had filled everyone. Here, the Holy Spirit came and shook the place where they were meeting. God answered their prayer immediately. They all spoke God’s message in a bold manner. Oh how powerful the Holy Spirit is to shake their meeting place. Have you been shook lately? Shook so much you can’t help but tell others?
Christians can ask the Holy Spirit to fill them many times like that. It does not just happen once. When the Holy Spirit has filled a person, we know it. We know it by how they behave. The Holy Spirit makes us more like Jesus. The Holy Spirit helps us to do things for God that we could not do alone. HAVE YOU BEEN SHOOK?