Tuesday Prayer Room – 9am 

28  “And it shall come to pass afterward,

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;

your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

your old men shall dream dreams,

and your young men shall see visions.

 29 Even on the male and female servants

in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

30 “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 32 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.

PRAYER GUIDE

On the Day of Pentecost, when the Spirit fell upon the disciples in tongues of fire, enabling them to proclaim the gospel in other languages, and when the crowd gathered in amazement and confusion, and when Peter stood up to explain the meaning of it all, he quoted these verses from Joel 2. 

The main point of Peter’s sermon on Pentecost was essentially this: Joel’s prophecy is now in effect. These are the “last days” of Joel 2; we are living in the “afterward.” How do we know? Because the Spirit of God, Who only rested on a select few in the Old Covenant, was just poured out on the 120 gathered in the upper room, on men, women, free, slave, young, and old. 

Nothing has changed since Pentecost. We are still living in the last days, in the era of the Spirit. Which means that we can continue to expect to see the words of Joel 2 fulfilled in our time. The democratization of the Spirit among all people, signs and wonders in heaven and on earth, and salvation for all who call upon the name of the Lord. 

PRAYER PROMPTS

• Praise and thank God for the gift of the Holy Spirit and these promises
  • Thank God for his promise of fresh outpourings and fresh fillings of the Spirit
  • Thank God for his promise to pour out the Spirit among all classes and kinds of people.
  • Thank God for the universal availability of salvation for all who call on the name of the Lord.
• Let’s lay hold of these promises in prayer and apply them to our time and our moment in history.
• Ask God to do what He here promises to do.

Tuesday Prayer Room – 9am 

33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together 34 and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” 35 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. – Luke 24:33-35

PRAYER GUIDE

These disciples had just spent the past several hours of their lives walking away from Jerusalem. By the time they arrived at home, and prepared a meal for Jesus, it was already dark. Put yourself in their place. They are weary and tired, physically and emotionally. They finally arrived home safe. And it’s almost bedtime. The idea of getting up, and returning to Jerusalem, the place they just came from (in the dark) would be the very last thing on their minds. A journey of seven miles in pitch black in the ancient world, a world with no street lights, no cell phones, no google maps, no 911 in case they met with bandits or animals on the way – would be utterly ridiculous.

And yet it is exactly what they did. Because something utterly tremendous and unexpected and world shattering just happened. They encounter the Resurrected Jesus. And when you encounter the Risen Jesus, truly encounter him, you cannot keep it to yourself. They had to go back to Jerusalem, seven miles, in the dark, in order to tell the others. News this good, this amazing, could not wait…it had to be shared.

And so it is when we truly encounter Jesus. Whether it is in a chapel at Asbury, or in a healing or miracle, or in an encounter with the Holy Spirit. In revival, whether personal or corporate, the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to behold the Risen Jesus…to make Jesus real to us. And the result is that we tell others. 

Tim Keller once said that the reason we don’t share about Jesus with others is because on the deepest level, he is not real to us. But when the Spirit makes Jesus real to us…to our hearts…then it is hard to keep us from telling others about him. Let’s pray for that to happen to God’s people in this season!

PRAYER PROMPTS:

• Pray for the Holy Spirit to make Jesus real to you, to your family, to your church, and to Christians throughout New England.
• Pray for encounters with Jesus – for Jesus to be revealed to us at a heart level in the Scriptures and in the breaking of the bread.
• Pray for God to activate his people in witness…in telling others what we have experienced of the Risen Jesus.
• Pray for God to motivate us to go to great lengths to tell others. To inconvenience ourselves as these two did. To cross barriers of discomfort, to tell others about Jesus.
• Pray particularly that the barriers that have been erected in the hearts of Christians in past years and seasons would be torn down, so that we would begin telling younger generations (Gen Z and Gen Alpha…many of whom have never heard that Jesus rose from the dead…and are interested in knowing more) about Jesus.
• Pray for God to activate evangelists, like these two disciples on the Emmaus Road, to share the good news that Jesus is alive. 

Tuesday Prayer Room – 9am 

³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. ³² They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” – Luke 24:30-32

PRAYER GUIDE

Resurrected hope. That is the need of the hour among God’s people…for those of us who have watched with sadness in the West as the Christian church has dwindled. For those of us who have watched as generations of Americans and New Englanders have increasingly turned away from the Lord. For those of us who have watched our attempts to remedy the situation fail. All our attempts have failed, whether we were those who tried work harder to exegete the culture, or those who fought back to try to regain the political power and cache of Christianity in a past era, or whether we were those who appeased the spirit of the age, or cloistered ourselves in the hopes of becoming a holy remnant. We who have been through tragedy, despair, disillusionment, and deconstruction…we who have lost hope…what we need most in 2024 is resurrected hope.

We do not need our old hopes back…not the ones that have died. They died for a reason. We do need our old hope that by our own efforts we can rescue and save a dying church in the West. We do not need our old hope that if we find a silver bullet strategy, fancy graphics and branding, the right location and space, the right sound mix on Sunday morning, the right sneakers and clothes on the pastor, that the church will turn the corner. We don’t need our old hopes that if we play our PR game right, if we appeal to the coastal elites and the intelligentsia, if we quote the right secular thinkers enough, that people will come back to the church. We don’t need the hope that if we separate ourselves from a decadent culture, if we homeschool our kids, if we avoid all social media and cell phones (not a bad idea though), that somehow the church will be rescued. The problem with all these old and dead hopes, the reason they need to die, is that they were all based on us. On things we can do, in our own strength, in our own flesh. None of them required Jesus to rise from the dead and show up among us. 

In the same way Jesus needed to die and rise again…in the same way he was the same, but different after his resurrection…the hope of God’s people needs to be crucified and resurrected. Resurrected hope is a hope that comes after death, after despair, after disillusionment. After the worst, the unthinkable has happened. It is the hope that comes after you had hoped. It is the hope that sneaks up on you and surprises you on the road to Emmaus…when you thought you were done. It is a hope you almost don’t recognize at first. Until you discover it is giving you holy heartburn. 

The Emmaus Road disciples’ hopes died with Jesus. But now, after he showed up, studied the scriptures, and ate with them, their hopes have been resurrected. But like Jesus’ own body, they have changed. They are no longer based in what they can do on their own. They are based in God. In God’s promises. In God’s faithfulness. And ultimately, in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. They are based in the same Spirit that spoke the universe into existence just raised Jesus from the dead. They are based on the experience of walking and talking with the risen Jesus. But in order for resurrected hope to burn in our hearts, we have to allow the old hopes to die. 

The only hope for the church is the actual resurrected Jesus, walking with us, opening the scriptures to us, and fellowshipping with us at the table. Once we allow our other hopes to die, we are ready and open for this, our ultimate hope. 

PRAYER PROMPTS:

• Pray for the church to renounce our other hopes, whether they be political power, safety and retreat from the world, the ability to be relevant or social acceptable, or hard work and the right strategies and tools and tactics and resourcing. 
• Pray for us to come to the end of ourselves, our own wise and persuasive words, our own flesh, our own abilities, our own ideas, our own talents…and to throw ourselves on the mercy of God.
• Pray for revelation of the Risen Jesus, to those in the church and to all those refugees of post-Christian culture who wash up on the shores of despair.
• Pray for burning hearts, for the revelation by the Spirit to human hearts that the Gospel is actually true and actually good news worth running to tell others.