MORE POWER!

“Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.” – Acts 2:43

The ministry of Jesus was marked by a breakthrough of the Kingdom of God in word, deed, and power. Jesus announced the Kingdom with words. He embodied the Kingdom with deeds. And he demonstrated the reality of the Kingdom with power, through signs and wonders. It is this power of God we want to focus on today. The power of God, to heal, to cast out demons, to perform miracles (feeding the 5000, calming the sea) was an essential aspect of Jesus’ ministry. It was, after all, these signs and wonders that made the disciples and crowds stop in amazement and pay attention to what Jesus had to say. The power of the Holy Spirit authenticated Jesus’ words and demonstrated Jesus’ authority. “Which is easier,” Jesus asked a room full of Pharisees, astonished onlookers, friends, and a paralyzed man, “to forgive sins or to say rise and walk? But so that you know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…” and Jesus proceeded to heal the paralytic. The healing was a sign demonstrating his authority to forgive. 

Revival involves a breakthrough in the power of God. And especially today, this is perhaps what is most needed. We are comfortable talking about compelling words or deeds…but we also need power. Because our words, even our deeds, are not actually enough to arrest the attention of a post-Christian world and city that is increasingly disinterested in and turned off by the gospel and the church. When we look at revivals of the past, including the revival in Acts 2, we see that in addition to the preaching of the apostles and the habitus of the early Church, there were signs and wonders. It was the tongues of fire and the sound of violent wind that drew the crowds at Pentecost. It was the healing of the beggar at the Temple gate that drew the attention of the whole city and the religious leaders in Acts 3 and 4. 

When the Kingdom truly breaks through to a new normal in revival, it involves the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “I did not come to you with wise and persuasive words but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” Many of us have limited experience with the healing power of the Spirit, or with gifts of wisdom, prophetic revelation, and knowledge. We have limited experience with seeing people delivered from spiritual bondage or demonic oppression. But this is actually what we need and must pray for if we truly want revival. 

To long for revival is to open ourselves up to the possibility of seeing the miraculous – and it is asking God to use us to birth the miraculous. If we are not open to hearing a prophetic word from God, if we don’t ask God to speak or reveal things to us – he will not break down the doors of our mind and barge into our consciousness. If we do not pray for healing or admit the possibility that God can heal someone – he will not use our prayers to heal people. God does miracles, but when he does he always inhabits and incarnates his power through human effort and activity. So if we want to see miracles, we have to be willing to participate in them. We put our hand on a sick person. We speak healing in Jesus’ name, with faith in God’s power. And the Spirit does the healing. 

This year, let’s ask God to see miracles. Let’s ask God to do miracles, healings, signs, and wonders through us. Let’s ask for the gospel not only to be proclaimed or lived out at Sanctuary, but demonstrated through signs and wonders so that our friends, family, colleagues, coworkers who don’t know Jesus would be intrigued and drawn in.

NEXT STEPS:

Have you ever prayed for healing? Asked someone to pray for healing over you? Have you asked God for a dream? For revelation? For a prophetic word? 

Do you want to be healed? To be able to heal? Ask God for the gift of healing and try praying for someone who is sick. 

Ask yourself this: where is the limit of your faith? What do you believe God is able to do in terms of the miraculous or signs and wonders? Admit your unbelief to him and ask him for greater faith.

Prayer Prompts:

Ask God to release the miraculous this year in our church. 

Ask God for people to be healed and delivered. Ask God to demonstrate the Kingdom through signs and wonders this year.

Ask God to partner with you in these miraculous ministries.

Pray for the prayer ministry team and for intercessors to be activated and equipped in new ways this year. Pray for testimonies of healing and deliverance to be shared and spark greater faith in our community.

Pray for the supernatural to become our new normal this year.

“Everyone was filled with awe…every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.” – Acts 2:43, 46

One of the key elements of revival Tim Keller identifies in the early church is anointed worship. The early church worshiped and her worship was marked by awe. Anointed worship has nothing to do with the style of music being played, or even whether there is music at all. It is not about smoke machines or synth pads or the latest hit worship song being played. It is not even really about the level of gifting of the worship leader – although surely God uses gifted worship leaders. Anointed worship is about the presence of God. When people enter into worship, they are aware that God is present. They pray and sing directly to him. They deal with him, sometimes joyously as they give thanks and praise. Sometimes there is crying and tears of repentance and brokenness over sin. But what marks this kind of worship is that God is THERE and everyone knows it.

Obviously, God is always present everywhere. He is omnipresent. And as David asks rhetorically in Psalm 139, “where can I run from your presence?” The answer being, of course, nowhere. But even though God is always there. There are times where in addition to his omnipresence, we experience his manifest presence. His “royal presence,” as Tim Keller describes it. When God shows up and graces our worship with his royal, manifest presence, everyone knows it. Believers know he is there. Non believers know he is there. 

Think of Elijah on Mt. Carmel, in his showdown with the 450 prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. What Israel, in her apostasy, needs to return to the Lord and renounce the Baals is the manifest presence of God. So he builds an altar, as do the prophets of Baal. But unlike when the prophets of Baal call on their god, when Elijah calls on the LORD, He shows up with fire. And the people see it and in awe and terror, acknowledge Yahweh as God.

“Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord—he is God! The Lord—he is God!” (1 Kings 18:38-39)

Next Steps

1. Consider where in the past year you have had spaces where you encountered God. What helps you to become aware of his presence. How can you build space to encounter God into your schedule this year.
2. Put the dates for Heart on your calendar and come to experience God’s presence.
3. Ask God for dreams and visions and an increased ability to hear his voice.
4. Receive prayer ministry on Sunday this year. Do it regularly.

Prayer Prompts:

1. Ask God to see his glory. To see His face. 
2. Ask God for a visitation of his manifest presence in times of worship, prayer and gathering.
3. Pray for Heart gatherings and Altar gatherings this year to be spaces of encounter, prophetic revelation, healing, and deliverance. 
4. Pray for God’s presence to be felt, even by those who visit Sanctuary this year and have no faith background.

“They devoted themselves…to prayer.” – Acts 2:42-47

“Teach us to pray,” the disciples asked Jesus. They had seen Jesus preach in front of multitudes. They had seen him heal the sick. They had even seen him raise the dead. They had watched him cast out demons. And they knew he had called them to be his disciples, to do what he did. But the only time we ever see the disciples directly request for Jesus to teach them something was when they asked him to teach them to pray. 

They must have been aware that at the center of all the life and power that came into the world through Jesus, was their Master’s prayer life. Jesus often stole away to lonely places to commune with his Father. Prayer was Jesus’ lifeblood. 

Prayer is our vital connection with God. If we are like cell phones, and God is like the outlet on the wall, then prayer is the charging cord. Prayer is what plugs us into the power and wisdom of God and enables us to image him to the world. “I am the vine,” Jesus said in John 15 “you are the branches.” How do we stay connected to the vine, receiving its nourishment and life? We must pray.

That is why whenever renewal and revival come into the church, it always begins with prayer and is sustained by prayer. Rev Dr. AT Pierson, who studied revival, writes this: “There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer.” Revivals are all different, but every one began with prayer. In 1857, a great revival broke out in Manhattan. In a few months, over 10% of the city of New York came to faith and joined the church. This revival spread through the entire country. It began with one man in Manhattan, Jeremiah Lanphier, who was watching the decline of his church and sensed the need to pray. It was the same in the Hebrides Islands of Scotland in 1949, or in Uganda in the 1930s, or in Wales in 1904 and Los Angeles in 1906. All revivals begin with prayer. And all revivals are sustained by prayer.

And back to the early church at Pentecost. The lifeblood of the early church was prayer. Before the Spirit fell at Pentecost, they were gathered together in the upper room in Jerusalem. They were seeking God and praying and waiting. It is always upon a praying community that God sends his Spirit. And when the Spirit comes, the church devotes herself afresh to prayer. Lord, do it again, in our time, in this place. May we devote ourselves to prayer and find a fresh, new vital connection with you in our prayers. 

Next Steps

1. Consider joining us on Tuesday mornings @ 9am for our zoom prayer altar.
2. Put Heart dates on your calendar and try to come.
3. Find a prayer buddy. Someone you can open up and pray with on a weekly or bimonthly basis. 
4. Pay attention to the burdens and longings on your heart. Share these with others and pray for them with boldness. 

Prayer Prompts

Ask God to teach you to pray and to show you new ways to pray that cultivate greater love and intimacy for Jesus this year.

Ask God to refresh in you the spirit of prayer and a hunger to grow in prayer.

Ask God to give you and the church a greater boldness and urgency in prayer.

Ask God to launch praying communities in our church and other churches.

Ask God to bring prayer to the center of all our life and activities.

Ask God to raise the bar on the prayer rhythms and prayer practices of home churches.

Pray for our Altar Gatherings @ 9am