Acts 1:12-26
From Passover to Pentecost was 50 days. Jesus spent 40 days on Earth from His resurrection to His Ascension. This passage deals with those other 10 days. Luke makes a point of the number of followers as being about 120. In the next few years, Christianity would multiply across the Roman Empire and beyond. In this moment there are about 120 disciples in all of Palestine, which had a population estimate of about 4 million. That is a ratio of 1 to 30,000. That would be like having 10 disciples and all of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. What if there were only 20 believers in all of Louisville, Kentucky? Or imagine Gainesville, Florida with only four believers. In all of Florida you would find only 721 believers. In the years, indeed in the weeks, after Pentecost, the number of disciples would explode. Do we see that happening in any of our communities?
An important moment and an explanation for the church's growth comes to us in verse 14. This describes both functional and personal unity among the Believers. The greatest weapon Satan has in his arsenal is disunity. Denominational divisions and congregational splits have done more harm to the church than all the sexual and addiction vices of ministers combined. Churches have gone from growing and dynamic to dead in a matter of weeks because of the influence of disunity. If every disciple genuinely “dies to self,” unity is not very far off. Without self-dying, unity is impossible, and so is effective ministry. Note second, and related to unity, is the emphasis on prayer. “They were continually devoting themselves to prayer.”. They were constantly driving and pushing themselves for constant and consistent prayer. Is the absence of power of ministry and disciple-making the result of the degeneration of prayer in our churches? Without a doubt, prayer is the hardest practice and discipline of the Christian life. Listening to sermons is child's play. Singing songs that worship is a walk in the park. Attending gatherings takes almost no effort. Even giving our offerings is easier than focused, committed, passionate prayers.
We have, for the most part, never been taught to pray. By and large, we never try to learn to pray. We don't believe it is important or powerful, and if we do happen to believe it is powerful, we attempt to exercise that power to secure benefits and blessings for ourselves. Look at the prayer list of most churches, and you will see a who's who of the sick. You will almost never see prayer requests about dying to self and sin or for the evangelism of our lost neighbors. People might pray in vague terms for missions or church leaders, but the prayers of most Christians and churches are sanctified versions of the secular mindset of “personal peace and affluence.” There are, no doubt, believers who do earnestly pray for the Lord's will and Kingdom to be manifest. Otherwise the whole church would have already collapsed. I suppose the condition of the church is as good a barometer of our prayers as we might ever find. Prayer is hard even at this moment. The temptation is to talk about, teach about, and advocate for prayer and then to go off and do anything but pray. Pray, just go do it. Prayer is where the fight is the hardest; it is therefore the place where the fight will be won or lost.
"Lord, teach us to pray. Lord, help us to pray. AMEN"
