Acts 5:17-32

Praise the Lord. It’s always a privilege to be able to share the word of God with you. Pastor Sanil and several of our young people are on the way to Nashville right now for a conference called Sing. I had an opportunity to go to that back in 2019 and it was such a transformative experience. I hope that we as a church can pray for their safety on their very long journey to Nashville, but also that they too can bring back a lot of good things for the church, and good things especially when it comes to worship and singing in the life of the church.

So Pastor Sanil for the last few months has been going through the book of Acts. If your experience has been like mine, it has been an amazing series so far. We have been learning verse by verse, every single thing that started in the life of the church, beginning with the Ascension of Christ, going to chapter two with the filling of the Holy Spirit, and then the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the upper room. We’ve been systematically approaching every single part of Acts so far, and I hope not to ruin that with a less than ideal interpretation of the passage that I’ve been given to you.

Our passage today will be from the book of Acts 5:17-32. If everyone can turn to that.Thankfully, there isn’t any deep theology, for your sake and my sake, there isn’t a lot of deep theology to cover; thankfully it’s a lot of narrative, a lot of story, but a lot of just powerful moments in the life of the church, a lot of application I think for our lives individually, but also in the life of this church and as it relates to our community.

If you haven’t noticed so far, the book of Acts is a lot of things but in some ways, it’s almost like our genealogy tree. If the church is a family and we’re all part of one big spiritual family, the book of Acts is kind of like a family tree. And with a family tree, like if you did Ancestry.com, they would try to tell you all the pieces and parts of your family, going back hundreds of years sometimes. And so a part of knowing your family tree is knowing all the good people that are part of your family tree and all the bad people that are part of your family tree; uncles and aunts that you kind of wish weren’t in that family tree, you find out about when you do Ancestry.com. And similarly, in the book of Acts, like we learned last week, there are some people in the life of the church that we really wish weren’t there. But they serve as reminders, sometimes very certain reminders, of what the beginning of the church was like.

Let’s read 5:17-32. I’ll read it here:

“Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. But during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. ‘Go, stand in the temple courts,’ he said, ‘and tell the people the full message of this new life.’ 

At daybreak, they entered the temple courts as they had been told and began to teach the people. When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin, the full assembly of the elders of Israel, and sent to the jail for the apostles. But on arriving at the jail, the officers did not find them there. So they went back and reported, ‘We found the jail securely locked, with the guards standing at the doors, but when we opened them, we found no one inside.’

On hearing this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were puzzled, wondering what would come of this. Then someone came and said, ‘Look, the men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people.’ 

At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force because they feared that the people would stone them. Having brought the apostles, they made them appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. ‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,’ he said, ‘yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.’

Peter and the other apostles replied, ‘We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior, that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.’”

Praise God for His word.

So far, we’ve seen from the very beginning of Acts that Jesus begins with His ascension up to heaven and with the ascension of Jesus brings down the Holy Spirit. The bringing down of the Holy Spirit and indwelling, and the filling of the upper room with the Holy Spirit was the genesis, the beginning of the church.

And we see that with the filling of the Holy Spirit, this ragtag group of disciples who have no qualifications, barely any education, no credentials or laurels under their name are suddenly transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Peter, who is, you know, a wimp for all accounts and purposes, a wimp who went back to fishing along with the rest of the apostles after the resurrection of Jesus, seeing it firsthand, goes back to fishing, is filled with the Holy Spirit, and begins this amazing work by God through the Holy Spirit, changing this group of men into people who set the world ablaze. That is the work of the Holy Spirit.

And so we see thousands, so many that Luke doesn’t even stop to count, thousands come to faith in Christ, and then we see people’s hearts being transformed. We see charitable giving like we’ve never seen before, especially in the beginning of the church, giving that is so sacrificial. We see hearts change and love being poured out in ways that we’ve never seen, only in the way that the Holy Spirit can do. We see that miracles, even greater than what Jesus himself did, are being done in the church and in the surrounding areas of Jerusalem. We’re seeing that in certain areas, even the shadow of Peter is powerful enough to bring about miracles.

And we don’t know if it’s truly a shadow or if there’s a bit of hyperbole, but that’s how powerful the move of the Holy Spirit was at the time of this embarking of these first few days of the church by the filling of the Holy Spirit. And we see, unfortunately, we see threats slowly creeping in from the outside, from the Sanhedrin, and from the inside, as we learned last week when Ananias and Sapphira, with their pride and their deception, tried to fool the Holy Spirit. They tried to make fools of the church, and God cast capital punishment on account of that because holiness cannot be undermined in any way.

Because we see in the early church that God makes an example out of those two, that where holiness and the Holy Spirit Himself cannot be deceived, cannot be transgressed in any way, at the fear of judgment. And so we see in the beginning of the church, mighty works being done, internal threats coming, external threats coming, but the work of the church has finally begun. And this is again our beginning, where we begin as a church, where our faith begins, many, many thousands of years ago.

And so we see that in the book of Acts, in chapter five, we see this next narrative of the Sanhedrin rising, out of jealousy against this movement that’s engulfing the city, taking thousands by the day. The Sanhedrin is fierce, the Sanhedrin that’s corrupt, that’s very nepotistic, that’s very family-driven, that’s trying to keep rule over the people, trying to keep cozy with Rome at the same time and bringing corruption to what God had initially ordained as the law givers and the law interpreters of the people, of His own people.

And we see that there is this rising of jealousy among the Sadducees, and we see that in their jealousy and in their absolute hatred of this movement, they put all of the apostles, it doesn’t say just Peter and John this time, but all of the apostles are put into this public jail. It’s funny that it’s a public jail because everyone sees it. If it’s a public jail, it’s meant for humiliation, it’s meant for really sticking it to the disciples by putting them into public jail.

But the last laugh is on them because this miracle of epic proportions happens, that we see here. It says that during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. The angel said, “Go, stand in the temple courts. Go stand in the temple courts and tell the people the full message of this new life.” 

If you’re the disciples, imagine yourself in the shoes of the disciples at this point. You’re just fishermen, you’re a tax collector, you’re just twelve ordinary men. You’re not soldiers, you’re not hardened criminals, you’re not used to being sitting in a jail all night. And yet we see that there is this amazing move of the Holy Spirit. The prison doors open somehow, somehow the guards are still awake, the doors are still closed, but somehow they get outside and they’re immediately given this mandate to – go back to where you came from and give the full message of this new life.

Unbeknownst to these disciples, there are days and weeks and months and years of preparation that was happening for this very moment. If you recall back, there’s something called the Upper Room Discourse in the final few days before the crucifixion, Jesus gathers His disciples and He’s starting to prepare them. They don’t realize it, but He’s starting to prepare them for what lies in waiting after His crucifixion, after His resurrection, ascension. 

And as part of that upper room discourse, in John 16:18-21, I’ll read it here real quick, as part of that discourse, Jesus is warning them, saying, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I’ve chosen you out of the world. This is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.”

So, imagine Peter, John, the apostles, they’re sitting in the prison just like we would, thinking, “Oh my gosh, this is not what I bargained for when I became a Christian, when I chose to follow Jesus.” And then the words of Jesus must be crossing through their minds at that in the night, reminding them that this persecution was foretold. It was going to come because they hated Jesus; they’re going to hate them also. 

There is a preparation that happened in the life of the apostles, of the disciples that were sitting there that night that I believe that we also should prepare ourselves for. It doesn’t mean that persecution is gonna happen tomorrow or that we’re going to be cast into jail anytime soon, though that has happened to families, even in this church. Persecution can come in various forms, in various ways, and something that I talk about with young couples, with young parents especially, is they don’t know what the future is going to hold, even in America. 

They don’t know if they themselves or their kids will even be able to be professing Christians in a safe way in schools or in the public arena anymore, in the near future because that’s already being seen in certain fringe parts of the country. But we don’t know if that’s going to come to our hometown in conservative Dallas and conservative Texas. We don’t know what the future holds. And so there’s this time of preparation that was happening in the life of the apostles that Jesus was preparing them for. We see it in the Upper Room Discourse, and now we’re seeing it in full-blown here in the book of Acts. 

There is a missionary by the name of Esther Kim that was born in the early 1900s. She was born in Korea, and as part of the Japanese aggression against Korea, Japan overtook Korea and they forced this idol worship on the people of Korea. Now many people opposed this, and one person that opposed was Esther Kim. She did everything she could to escape within reason this forced worship of idols, sun gods and things like that. She did everything she could to avoid it, but in the days and in the years before the Japanese would incarcerate her for six years in the 1930s and 40s, she intentionally spent time learning as much scripture as she possibly could. She tried to memorize a hundred chapters, she tried to memorize as many hymns as she could during that time. She tried to remember everything she could from scripture because she knew her time was coming and that time would be imminent. 

She tried to spend nights outside in the cold, shivering in the cold because she knew that what was to come might involve just terrible suffering. She fasted because she knew that there would be times where she wouldn’t have food to eat. But in that time of preparation, that would give her an opportunity for six years to infuse that jail that she was in with as much of the word of God that she could remember, to sing to the fellow prisoners as much as she could. She endured the suffering because she was prepared for it.

Now, persecution like that is unfathomable for us, but that’s not the case for 50, 60, 70% of the world right now. Persecution is a daily fact for much of the Christian world right now. So, are we preparing ourselves for potential persecution that might happen?

I know several of our kids got baptized, and you’re probably scared out of your mind about having to prepare for persecution. But I remember in 2004 when I was baptized. I was in line with 10 or 12 people, kids that were getting baptized that year, and the pastor at the time was saying just before the dunking part, “You have to, even to the point of death, live for God. You will obey His commandments, even to the point of death.” 

I remember hearing that as a kid, sitting in line like that, I was like, “Wait, I don’t remember that part in the baptism talks, in the baptism lessons.” And so one kid after another would go through that line of baptism, and I was thinking, “Wait, I don’t remember this being part of the contract. To the point of death? Am I okay with that?” In my, I don’t know, 13-year-old self, however old I was at the time, you know, of course, I obeyed the Lord in water baptism, but that’s kind of what we’re agreeing to now. 

God forbid that happens in our present setting, but it might. You might be called to areas where that might be the case. That is the call to which we’ve been called. Are we worthy of it? Are we ready for it? Are we preparing ourselves for it, or are we wasting our time every moment that we have? Especially to those of you who don’t have two-year-olds yet. There is a lot of free time that you have right now that you won’t have in the future, where you can spend time in fervent prayer, in studying scripture, memorizing scripture. 

There’s so many things that we could be doing in preparation for hard times, and it may not be in a jail, but it could be in a hospital room. It could be in places that you don’t think you’ll ever be in, where you can prepare yourself for what’s to come. 

So, Peter is released, him and the apostles are released from the jail, and the angel, perhaps God himself, gives us this one mandate. And I had to read this like 10 times to understand that there is a deep meaning here. It’s in 5:20, “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people the full message of this new life.” 

And if you skim that quickly, you’re going to miss it, just like I did. But I read again and again and again, “Wait, what is this new life? Why not just tell them about your experiences in jail, tell them about this miracle that took place in your life?” Because you know what would happen if something like this happened in modern day? The prison doors would open, the people would escape, it would be world news, it would be a 24-hour news cycle on CNN. 

People would write a book about how they broke out. The book’s name would be “Prison Break: How God Allowed a Miracle to Happen in the Lives of His Children.” And there would be a foundation called “Prison Break,” and you donate to Prison Break Ministries, and you wear Prison Break t-shirts, and there’s a Prison Break TikTok opened up, and the Prison Break dance. That’s how we would take a miracle right now. 

But the miracle, and the theology of miracles in the New Testament especially, is always that the miracle is always for the sake of the Gospel. It’s never for your own sake. It’s never for the sake of your comfort. It’s not that there is an alleviation of suffering that might happen when there’s a miracle; it is not for you. It’s for the sake of the Gospel. It’s for the sake of being able to proclaim what this new life is all about. 

This new life isn’t about having your best life. It’s not about wealth. It’s not about having as much as you possibly can in this life, but it’s about something deeper. And all those things might be true, and there might be again some good things that might happen as part of being a Christian, but part of being this new life is truly living a new life for the sake of Christ. Everything changes, everything transforms. 

And this is the mandate that’s being given to the apostles: to go back to the public, go back to the temple courts and say that you are part of this new life. Tell people about this new life. It’s the gospel. It’s telling people what the gospel is. 

You’re not going to make a name for yourself by telling people that you broke out of prison somehow. It’s gonna happen again. Your shadow might heal people, and handkerchiefs and aprons might heal people in the future, things that you possess, but that’s not the point of the miracle. It’s to tell others about this new life. 

Now I’m going to take it one step further. In this time, in this ancient Near East time, life isn’t given a lot of respect. In fact, if you were a Roman, or a Greek, or a Babylonian, or part of some sort of people group, and frankly America isn’t that far away, you will learn to give life as much value as life gave you. If life was strong and it could work for you and it could make profit for you, then life is really important. But if life is kind of inconvenient, in the case of a baby or the elderly, then life just wasn’t given that much importance. 

It’s not until this new life is proclaimed that not just life for the individual, not just this life-giving gospel, but life in general, the Imago Dei, the fact that you’re made in the image of God, everything is given a new life because of the gospel, because of the saving grace that is applied at every stage of life. That is the new life that is given in Christ. 

We see that in Acts 17, that God is the giver of life. In Psalm 36, He is the fountain of life. In Psalm 27, He’s a defender of life, the prince of life in Acts 3. He’s the restorer of life in Ruth 4. He doesn’t leave men to anguish hopelessly in the clutches of sin and death. He not only sent the message of life or this new life in 5:20 of Acts, but He is the word of life Himself in John 6. He is the light of life. He is life Himself. He is the resurrection and the life. 

Are we proclaiming that? It’s easy to say, “Proclaim the gospel here, do it there, or do it in your school, do it in your neighborhood,” but are we proclaiming the new life and the transformation that we have in that by sharing the gospel, if we share the gospel at all? That is the new life that the disciples are mandated to share again, within hours of their release from prison.

As we read forward in this passage, we see that they’re released, and then there’s this astonishment. The high priests don’t know what to do. They go to the prison, thinking that they’re maybe going to flog these people or even proclaim death on them, but they’re gone. The prison door is locked, the guards are there, but the people are gone. 

So what was meant to be a public humiliation, a way of shaming these people, ended up going back on their own heads, because now they’re ashamed. Now, the guards don’t know where they are, the high priests don’t know where they are, the Sanhedrin don’t know where they are. Then someone comes from somewhere and says, “Hey, look, the people you put in prison are now standing again in the public, in the temple court, and proclaiming the same thing over again.” 

So, very scared this time, knowing that something they didn’t intend to happen happened, very scared, they try to coax them back before the Sanhedrin, and this time things get pretty heated. Peter and the apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than men. We must obey God rather than man.” You know, that phrase has been a little bit politicized these last couple of years. Sometimes we refer to those in the areas of civil disobedience.

A few years ago, during the era of COVID, some people said, “I’m not going to wear my mask. I’m going to take horse pills to cure my COVID. I’m going to take hydroxychloroquine. I’m going to shake my fists in the face of the government because we must obey God, not man.” 

But that was never the intent of what Peter is saying here. We must obey God, but we must also obey civil authorities, except when God’s law and when God’s words and when the Holy Scripture oversees or supersedes that. That’s the true meaning of this verse. It’s not as political as we sometimes think. It might have been cited during movements like BLM or during the COVID pandemic, and over the years this verse and this phrase has been abused. But truly, the New Testament asks us to pay our taxes, to obey our civil authorities, but in this case, it’s for the sake of the Gospel that we’re asked to obey God, not man. 

Obedience—it’s a simple concept. Sometimes you see me and Justina chasing around Levi because he is an act of disobedience. But in the Christian life, obedience is kind of a cornerstone of our faith, of our walk with the Lord. Obedience is better than sacrifice. We hear this all throughout Scripture. We’ve heard it all our lives. Obedience is essential in the Christian life. 

But what if obedience isn’t very convenient? Richard Greenham was a pastor just outside of Cambridge, England, from 1570 to 1590. For about 20 years, he was a pastor just outside of a city in England. He rose daily at four and each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, he preached to his congregation at daybreak before they went into their fields. And on Sunday, he preached twice, and on Sunday nights and Thursday mornings, he taught the children. He was a godly and faithful man, and as he put it, he preached “Christ crucified unto myself and the country people.” Yet his ministry was virtually fruitless. He told his successor that he perceived that no good was wrought by his ministry on any but one family in 20 years. 

In contrast, Richard Baxter ministered in another area of England from 1640 to 1660, also for 20 years. It was in a town of about two thousand adults. When he arrived, he found them to be ignorant and essentially a bunch of party people. Hardly one family on any street professed to follow God. The church could hold about a thousand people, but they found the church to be too small by the end of his ministry. As his ministry progressed, they had to build five more galleries in the church just to hold the crowds on the Lord’s day. As you walked the streets, you would hear hundreds of families singing Psalms and repeating the sermons. When Baxter left, on many streets, there would be hardly a single family that did not follow the Lord. 

What was the difference between the ministries of these two men? Nothing. Maybe you could argue that Baxter’s methods were better, maybe he read a book on church growth, but essentially there was no difference other than the sovereignty of God acting differently in one area compared to another. But the ministries were exactly the same. What was critical, and what we need to take away from this, is that whether you’re Greenham or Baxter, the point is to obey the Lord. And that’s exactly what they did. Both men obeyed God, no matter what God’s sovereignty had in store for them. 

Both men will receive the Lord’s commendation, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Both simply obeyed. So, before we delve too deeply into discussions of civil disobedience and shaking our fists at the government for various issues, maybe we should take ten steps back and simply obey God’s commands. We should obey God rather than men, even when it’s inconvenient, even when man taunts and humiliates us, calls us names, denies promotions, or let go of us at our jobs, they do all sorts of things. Before raising our fists to anyone, maybe the command here, what Peter is saying, is to simply share the gospel. We cannot care what the government and the high priests say about this. We are going to share the gospel. It’s that simple, not too complicated. 

In this passage so far, we’ve seen a group of apostles who were untrained and uneducated, not very fit for the task that awaited them. Yet, being filled with the spirit, we see the church filled with the spirit and things breaking out in ways we’ve never seen before, and haven’t seen since. When the church is filled with the spirit and its individual members are filled with the spirit, there is no limit to the potential of that church.

And so, as we go on, and this is more of a personal—I’m not a pastor so I can say this on a personal note—if we engage in this book of Acts with Pastor Sanil and whoever else teaches this book over the next year (and I think that’s how long he plans on this series being), and there is no change in the life of the church, and there’s no change in the hearts of the individuals, it’s nothing more than a really interesting book club. You can go to Oprah and join a book club if that’s what you want, something that makes you feel really good. 

But if at the end of this, if at the end of every Sunday service, and in our family prayers at night, and in our times when we’re deciding on doing something really fun or reading the Bible, when we’re doing all of that, if we’re keeping these things that we’re learning every single Sunday to heart, there is going to be a transformation unleashed on this church, and individually on us, from bottom up, young to old. There’s gonna be a transformation that is going to be seen throughout this community, throughout this world even. 

There’s going to be Lydias who open up their houses for new churches to open and new church plants. There’s going to be Aquila and Priscillas who engage in workplace evangelism, who may be tent builders but at the same time they’re teaching, and they’re preaching, and they’re telling others about the gospel of this new life. There’s going to be Pauls, there’s going to be Peters, there’s going to be all sorts of people that we see throughout the book of Acts who are empowered by the Holy Spirit, who are just ordinary people where God used their abilities, their talents, filled them with the Holy Spirit, and they turned the world upside down. 

And if you truly believe that, if you truly believe what’s being spoken up here throughout the series of Acts, you know that there’s some change that’s going to happen. And that could be in your personal walk with the Lord, that could be as a church. Maybe we become more like the Berean church, people who are assessing and analyzing and interpreting and going through Scripture word by word, verse by verse as much as possible, because we want, we’re so hungry for the word of God. Maybe we’re going to be prayer warriors coming out of this series, maybe even in these next few weeks as we go through the book of Acts. The potential is limitless as long as we are engaging, as long as we are truly sitting at the feet of these words and at the feet of the Gospel here, we’re not going to be able to contain what can come out of this.

So my challenge, first to myself and then to the church, is prepare. First thing is we need to prepare. We don’t know what the future is going to look like. We don’t know how governments will change, we don’t know how school systems will change, we don’t know how even the friends and the coworkers that we have will change. We don’t know how the world is going to look like 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. We don’t even know what it’s going to look like after the ’24 election, for that matter. 

So prepare. Fill your heart with the word of God. Spend any time that you have praying unceasingly for your families, for your churches, for your communities, and allow the Holy Spirit to slowly mold you for the times that may be very dark in the future. I pray that that’s not the case, but Jesus does say that trouble will come. It’s not a matter of if, but trouble will come, but I will be with you. Have peace on account of that, trouble will be there. 

So let’s prepare, let’s prepare for times of personal and maybe corporate persecution. We need to realize that when we pray for miracles and we ask people to come to the front and we ask for our headaches and our joint pains and our cancers and all those things to be relieved and healed—and I believe with all my heart that that may be the will of God—but we also need to really realize that that may not be the will of God. And in those times where we’re seeking miracles and we’re seeking God to move in powerful ways, if He doesn’t, that may also be a move of God. 

That may also be a way of you being transformed to God’s will and in God’s path, to how the gospel can be proclaimed in various ways. Are we open to that possibility of miracles potentially not happening? Remember, every apostle died: 11 were martyred, one died of old age but only after being boiled, history says, in a vat of oil, after being exiled.

Miracles happen, but at the same time, every single one of them were martyred for their faith, and everyone faithfully approached their martyrdom with full assurance of knowing who they are and where they’re going to go.

Are we carriers of this new life or are we simply reservoirs of this new life? Are we branching out? Are we telling our neighbors, co-workers, and others about this new life that we have? Or are we simply holding it all in, hoping that somehow through osmosis it’s just going to pass through us and somehow, magically, everyone is going to hear about the gospel?

It doesn’t work like that. It has to be through us intentionally telling, praying for, and stepping outside of our comfort zones to tell others about this new life that we’ve been given.

Let’s be challenged by this passage. Let’s be challenged by this series in the book of Acts. As the choir comes back up, let’s continue to engage in this book, not as simple listeners but as people who are honestly engaging with the word, trying to live it out in our daily lives. There is no age limit, there’s no limit that God has placed on our ability to be effective with the gospel that he’s given us, with this new life that he’s given us. Let’s be a church, individuals who truly seek this out in our own lives.

Let’s pray.

Dear God, we thank you, Lord, for these minutes that you gave us to look at the scripture, to give us this word that you’ve given. God, we thank you for the example that the apostles have given us in how to approach persecution and suffering in truly glorious ways. God, as we know through the book of Acts, several would be martyred, several would be stoned, one would be beheaded, and the persecution keeps escalating from this point on. Yet, the church only grew by leaps and bounds despite this persecution.

God, we may never live to see this persecution, we might, oh Lord, but God we pray that you would allow us to yield to a time of preparation, whatever that looks like. Whether that’s memorizing the songs that we sing, memorizing the words of your holy word, engaging in prayer, or just sitting at the feet of those who exposit your word. God, we pray that you would truly make disciples of us, that you would prepare our hearts and minds for what’s to come. God, that we would seek miracles and deliverance and healing, but we would not make that the pinnacle of the Christian walk, but that it would be simply a way that your gospel would be proclaimed in this world, to our co-workers and in our schools.

Lord, use us in ways that we can’t even imagine. Oh Lord, let there be missionaries, young and old, who are raised up in this church in various ways, and in churches in this community, oh Lord, that truly want to be a beacon of your gospel to the nations. Lord, we pray that conferences like Sing and Urbana, and other places that we attend in the future, and other various ministries that we engage with in the future, would truly be carriers, channels of this life-giving gospel to the nations.

Lord, we pray that there will be more than lip service but that there would truly be a move of the Holy Spirit in this place. God, use us in ways that we can’t even imagine. Lord, open our hearts for what we can even imagine. Oh Lord, but first, it starts with us yielding before the spirit.

Lord, blow through this place in ways that we haven’t seen before. Blow through the rooms of our houses, oh Lord. Let nature itself be contorted, oh Lord, for the filling of the spirit of God, just as it was in the first century. Let us become truly a church of the first century, experiencing those same things in our midst, oh Lord. Let us not put limits, let us not put any caps on what can truly happen in this place, oh God.

Lord, we thank you that you are a good God and you only want what’s good for us. But even if that means going through suffering, Lord, help us to embrace that goodness. Help us embrace those paths of difficulties, Lord, as ways of molding us and shaping us into the people you want us to be, as a church that you want us to be, oh Lord.

God, use us in ways that we cannot even imagine, even if that good is waves of suffering and difficulty and darkness in the future. Lord God, be with us, use us, mold us, Lord, and be with us, oh God, as we continue to sing and worship your holy name.

Amen.