Earnest Prayer and Opened Prison Doors

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Some of you don't get answers to prayer because you've never learned to approach God like a kid. You've never learned to come to God with the shameless, bold persistence that a child has with their parent where you come in absolutely confident of their goodness. Absolutely confident that God will not withhold from you whatever it is that you need and you don't get those things because you ask with reluctance and you ask with doubts. Welcome to a new week of teaching here on Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovich. Today we're talking about prayer and how as Christians it's easy for us to tell someone that we'll be praying for them, that we'll be taking their particular need or desire to God. But first of all, do we then actually do it? And second, is that really what a healthy prayer life looks like? Pastor J.D. is teaching from the book of Acts chapter 12 to uncover God's views on prayer.

J.D. titled today's message Earnest Prayer and Open Prison Doors. I believe that God wants to do something in this church regarding prayer, something greater than what he has done up until this point. You see, every major season of awakening in Christianity, every single one, whether that's in a church, on a college campus, in a workplace, every single one has been characterized by intense, persistent, corporate prayer.

Every single one. The one concern of the devil, Samuel Chadwick says, is to keep the saints from prayer. Our enemy fears nothing from prayerless studies, no matter how smart the man or woman is in that study. He fears nothing from prayerless work or prayerless religion.

He laughs at our toil. He mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray. Prayer turns ordinary mortals into men and women of power. Prayer brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God. There is no power like that of prevailing prayer. We have experienced a lot, Summit, in the last decade, but I believe that God has a lot more for us. And I'm not just saying that like, you know, what the leader is supposed to say to kind of get you hyped up, like, oh, there's so much more and we just scratched the surface. I sincerely believe that God has a lot more for our community, for Riley Durham, that he's got a lot more for our family, for your families.

I believe he's got more for these nations that we're sending our people to. And I believe that the Lord has told me and a few others of us that we are only going to get there. We're not going to get there apart from prevailing prayer. A guy named Samuel Zwamer, who was one of the mission leaders of a previous century, said the history of missions is the history of answered prayer. Another one said, I am convinced that when we stand before God, we're going to discover that every soul ever brought to a knowledge of Christ was in some way related to intercessory prayer.

So let me ask you a question, just as we get into this. The church is basically made up of individuals, right? What's your personal prayer life like? Theologian and DA Carson said, if you want to embarrass the average Christian, just ask them to tell you about their prayer life.

Most subjects were pretty good on it. Tell me about your Bible knowledge. Oh, I'm pretty good at that. Tell me about, you know, like, do you serve at your church? Yes, I do that. You've been on a mission trip.

Yes, I have. Ask the average Christian to describe in particulars and with details their prayer life, and you'll see them start shuffling their feet and looking around and, yeah, this is an area I need to improve. He cites a study that was taken at a prominent evangelical seminary in which they surveyed just the people in the seminary that were headed to the mission field.

Now that's like your, you know, that's your creme de la creme, right? I mean, these are your varsity Christians, the ones that are going overseas. Of the, of just the missionaries, only 6%, 6% could testify to a daily consistent significant time where they prayed and talked to God in any, you know, significant manner.

6%. DA Carson said it would be painful and embarrassing to uncover the prayer lives of most evangelical pastors, much less, you know, what he would call ordinary people. What is your personal prayer life like? What if God, what if God had a lot more for us? What if he had more for our community, more for our schools, more for our families, but we never got it simply because we didn't know how to ask.

Now, some of you, if you're honest, and I hope that you will be honest because you're not going to get anywhere until you start being honest with yourself. If you're honest, you're kind of skeptical on the whole subject of prayer, right? Because sometimes you pray and things happen and sometimes you pray and they don't.

And sometimes you forget to pray and the thing you forgot to pray for happens anyway, right? And you're like, ah, just, I mean, do not look at me like that. I can read, I can read right through that. Do not look at me like that. You're like, you're like, I'm writing stuff down. No, you're like, this is me, right?

And I'm like this. I'm like, does this actually change anything? So all this to say, I think the Holy Spirit has a lot for us in Acts chapter 12, which is going to give you a snapshot into how prayer works and what the prayer life of the church was like, because they're going to be in this ridiculous situation. You're going to see what they did with it. But if you have your Bible, don't turn there yet, because I'm not going to start this teaching in Acts 12. I'm actually going to start this teaching back in the Gospel of Luke.

So if you have a Bible, take it out now and open it to Luke, chapter 11. The reason I want to start here is because I've explained this to you before, but Luke and Acts were originally one volume written by the same author and they're designed to go together like they're one volume. And so what Luke does is a lot of things that he has Jesus teach in the Gospel of Luke, he shows you how they apply in the book of Acts. Luke is like the doctrine, Acts is the application.

Or you got to think of it like a hand in a glove. Luke is about the, you know, the life of Jesus. So it's showing you the exact shape of the divine hand. And then that hand in the Holy Spirit goes into the glove of the church and you see what it looks like as this divine hand begins to move this glove. So that's what you're going to see with this idea of prayer.

Luke is going to give you the doctrine out of Jesus's mouth, and then you're going to see the church apply it in the book of Acts. So Luke chapter 11, verse 1, the disciples asked Jesus a question. They're like, Lord, teach us to pray. Evidently, they had noticed that prayer seemed to be the source of Jesus's power and his miracles and his preaching. The reason we know that is because they didn't say, Lord, teach us to do miracles, or Lord, teach us to preach, teach us to write killer sermons the way that you preach. That's what I would think that I would have asked, but they saw that the power behind both the preaching and the miracles, it was in the prayer. So they were like, Lord, teach us to pray, right? And by the way, the whole teaching is about prayer for the power of the Holy Spirit. You see that down in verse 13 of chapter 11, because he's like, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? So this is about the power of the Holy Spirit.

Well, in response to their request, the first thing Jesus does is he teaches them what we now call the Lord's prayer. And then Jesus tells, you'll see the next verses, verse five and down, this odd little story that Jesus tells that is so bizarre, if you think about it in relation to prayer, that most people rewrite over it and never really think about what it's saying. He tells a story about a guy who is in bed asleep at midnight when a friend of his comes and asks him at midnight to borrow three loaves of bread.

Cause he just had some unexpected visitors show up. Now, a few details that just to make sure this kind of settles in on you. In those days, middle of the night was really the middle of the night because people went to bed when the sun went down. So midnight was like two hours after REM started. And you've been in bed for three and a half, four hours. And it's not like, you know, today you college students, midnight is an hour and a half before you actually go to bed. This was literally the middle of the night.

So this guy has been, you know, an REM for a couple hours. In those days, the whole family slept in one big bed area, which is gross, but that's what they did. And so for this guy to get up, he's going to have to wake up all of his kids and everybody in the house. Furthermore, this neighbor is asking not for some emergency food relief. He's asking for three loaves of bread, which is enough to feed a family of six for a week. So in other words, this guy has asked, this brash neighbor has made a ridiculously excessive request at a most inopportune time. Yet, Jesus says, because of his, what's that next word? Everybody read it together?

Thing will go well. Yet because of his, I mean, if you use that word in casual conversation this week, impudence, right? One of the translations says shameless persistence. Yet because of his shameless persistence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. The neighbor hands over these three cases of pop tarts, not because this man is his friend.

Because to be honest, after this, he probably is not going to be his friend anymore, right? He gives it to him because of his boldness and his persistence and asking. And so Jesus reasons, won't your heavenly father who never sleeps and who loves you like precious children, won't he give you whatever you need to do his will? If even an annoying neighbor can get an excessive request at an inopportune time through persistent asking, don't you think that you, who are like precious children to God, not an annoying neighbor, don't you think you can obtain that one thing that you absolutely need to do God's will and that is the power of the Holy Spirit? Jesus goes on, so I tell you, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be open to you for everyone who asked receives.

And the one who seeks finds and the one who knocks, it will be open. Those three verbs, by the way, ask, seek and knock are all in what they call the imperfect verb tense, which means it implies continuous action, which just reinforces this idea of persistence. It's not that you ask once and then leave it to the sovereignty of God, you ask once and then you keep on asking or you especially see it in the metaphor of knocking, right? When you knock on somebody's door, you don't just walk up and go, right? If I hear that sound at my door at night, I don't think somebody's knocking at the door.

I think somebody, one of my kids fell out of the bunk bed and I need to go help him. When you knock, you just, you keep beating until somebody comes to the door. He says, that's what prayer for the power of the Holy Spirit is like. We ask repeatedly, we knock continuously and only then does God open heaven's door and pour it out. Now, some of you more theologically astute, you're like, well, well, why? If it's God's will to give the power of the Holy Spirit, then why not give it the first time that we ask?

You ready for this? I don't know. I don't know.

I have no idea. Maybe if I were God, I could tell you, but I'm not God, but I do know this. It's clearly what Jesus is teaching here, isn't it? It's clearly teaching that somehow God only gives certain things by persistent asking.

You got to keep on asking. Charles Spurgeon used to say it this way. He's like, some of heaven's best fruit is on branches in the tree that you don't get by shaking one time.

You got to shake that branch and keep shaking it until that best fruit begins to fall off. Now, honestly, this teaching is so counterintuitive. And Jesus knew that Calvinists were going to have such a hard time with it, that he actually put it in Luke twice, which Jesus never does. He never teaches the same thing twice.

He teaches once and he moves on. But he knew that some of these Calvinists are going to have such a hard time with this that he wrote it in there twice. But he teaches the exact same thing in Luke 18, only this time through a more extreme and even more bizarre parable. Luke 18, Jesus tells this parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He says, in a certain city, there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. This is a bad guy. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him saying, give me justice against my adversary.

That's what I think she sounded like. For a while, he refused. But eventually he said to himself, oh, though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice so she will not beat me down through her continual coming. Do you have anybody in your life like this?

Yeah, I have four of them. They're 11 and younger. Then Jesus says, quite unbelievably, if you ask me, this is what prayer to God is like. Who but Jesus could get away with telling a parable like that? I mean, seriously, like comparing God to a cranky, old, unjust judge?

I'm really glad Jesus told this parable, not me. You wear God down through persistent, incessant, even annoying asking, how is that not rude to God? The point, of course, is not to compare God to an unjust judge.

The point is to contrast him with one. If even an unrighteous, selfish judge will grant answers because of persistent asking Jesus reasons, won't God, who cares about his children like a tender father, won't he give to them what they need when we come to him persistently asking for the outpouring of his spirit? God is not like an unjust judge, and we're not like an annoying old widow to him.

He's not like a neighbor that we're pestering. He is a father who cares so much about us that he spilled his own blood to rescue us. This widow would have to approach the judge like a stranger, yet we come boldly into God's presence like little children come into the presence of their parents.

She has no right to claim in court, but Hebrews tell us that we come boldly before the throne of grace because of the blood of Jesus on our behalf. And basically what Jesus is saying to this is not help you, not give you what you need. I died for you. I poured out my blood for you. Why would I do that and not give you what you need in the hour that you need it to do what I want you to do? Look how Jesus ends this teaching back in Luke 11.

He kind of brings a rap to this. Luke 11, 11. What father is there among you? If your son asks for a fish, well, instead of a fish, give him a serpent. Any of you parents ever do that? Kid asks you for a chicken nugget. You're like, ain't got no chicken nuggets, but here's a cobra.

You can play with it. No, I know a parent does that. Or if he asks for an egg, he's going to give him a scorpion. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? You know, I've always thought it was odd here that Jesus chose this moment to use the word evil about us. Like, was this just a gratuitous insult? He hadn't taught us on our depravity in a while and he just want to throw that in there?

No, here's why I use that word there. Most of us feel like we're at our most selfless and most virtuous when we're dealing with our children. I mean, that's when I really act selflessly, is with my children. Jesus says, in your very best moment with your kids compared to how the heavenly father treats his kids, you're evil. And if not even you would do that to your kid, you really feel like the heavenly father who's the best father there's ever been would not give to his children what they need, everything they need in the hour they need to do it.

You see, we're like precious kids to God. And my kids are the one group of people that I would get up in the middle of the night every single time to help, right? They're the only people I would do that for. I mean, you people, I love you people.

I really do. Do not show up at my house at 3 a.m. asking me for something that's not urgent. Don't show up outside my window yelling up at me. You better have a bulletproof vest on if you're going to do that.

I hesitate even saying this. Don't think of me as a bad person. If even my wife asked me for something non-urgent at 3 a.m., I'm not giving it to her, right? I mean, if she's like, hey, I need a drink of water. My first question is, are your legs broken, right?

If you're sick or your legs are broken, I will gladly get up and get you some water, but otherwise get it yourself. My kids are the one group that they show up at my bedside at 3 a.m. They're like, there's a monster in the closet.

I'm like, let's go see, you know? And I get up and get them a drink of water, help them use a bathroom, any number of things. Why? Because my kids are different. And what Jesus is saying is, some of you don't get answers to prayer because you've never learned to approach God like a kid. You've never learned to come to God with the shameless, boldest persistence that a child has with their parent, where you come in absolutely confident of their goodness, absolutely confident that God will not withhold from you whatever it is that you need, and you don't get those things because you ask with reluctance and you ask with doubt, all right?

That's your doctrine. Now, let's look at it and then apply it in Acts 12. Acts 12, let me give you the context of Acts 12. A guy named Herod, who was the ruler of Israel, pretty bad guy, has taken captive James, who was essentially the leader of the church, and he had him beheaded.

And this made all the Jewish leaders really happy. And so, Herod's like, well, hey, if I could, you know, got some mileage out of that, why don't I get the vice president of the church, you know, Peter, and I'll execute him too. So he gets him, verse five, and he keeps him in prison, but, right, that's huge, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. I'll underline the word earnest if you underline things. Now, when Herod was about to bring him out, on the very night he was about to bring him out, the next morning and execute him, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and centuries before the door regarding the prison.

In other words, this is maximum security prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell, and he struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, get up quickly. By the way, scholars point out that that's the strongest word you can use in Greek for strike, which means that the angel walked up and was just like, pow, get up, Peter, right? So the chains fell off his hands, and the angel said to him, dress yourself and put on your sandals.

Why Peter is naked, I do not know, but he did so. And he said to him, wrap your cloak around you and follow me. And he went out and followed him. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but he thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city.

It opened for them of its own accord, like an automatic door at a grocery store or whatever. And they went out and went along the street, and immediately the angel left him. When Peter came to himself, he said, now I'm sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all the Jewish people were expecting. When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, not the mother of Jesus, but the mother of John, whose other name was Mark.

By the way, why is that detail in there? Trying to show you this house meeting was not led by church leaders. It was just led by ordinary people that we've never heard of in the book of Acts thus far, and we don't hear from again. The Jerusalem church was a large multi-site church, yes, it was, that had hundreds of house groups that met all over the city. And this is just one of those house groups that have gotten together out of concern for Peter, and they are praying all night long. He says, whose name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. There's your imperfect verb tense again. Your imperfect verb tense means they didn't pray last night and then leave it to the sovereignty of God.

They prayed and they kept praying all night long. And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer, recognizing Peter's voice and her joy. She didn't open the gate, but she ran back in and left Peter standing out there on the road.

He's like, I just escaped from prison, being out here on the road is not a great idea. And she reported that Peter was standing at the gate and they're all like, you're out of your mind. But she kept insisting that it was so, and they kept saying it is his ghost. See, they think he's already been executed. And they think his ghost is now like wandering the streets of Jerusalem. Verse 16, but Peter continued knocking and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed, but motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, now go tell these things to James and to the brothers.

Then he departed and went to another place. All right, there are three important things I want you to see about prayer in this story, all of which you should have learned from the gospel of Luke. Here is number one, whatever they were afraid of, they talked to God about. Number one, whatever they were afraid of, they talked to God about.

They were afraid for their future, so they talked to God about their future. Eugene Peterson in his book, he's got a book called Answering God, How to Pray the Psalms, points out that there are two kinds of prayers in the book of Psalms that I've never, I've studied the Psalms for years, I've never seen this, so this was new information for me. He said, the first kind of prayer you find in the book of Psalms is what we call evening prayer. Evening prayer is obviously prayers you pray at night. A good example is Psalm 4.

In Psalm 4, you find David in the evening telling God what he's worrying about, what he's mad about, who he's ticked off at, where he's sad, and then reminding himself of all the promises of God. That's evening prayer. Morning prayer, by contrast, Psalm chapter 5 is a good example of that, is active petitionary prayer, where you boldly pray against things in the world that are not right. I think you see both kinds of prayer, morning and evening prayer, here in Acts 12. This is in one sense evening prayer, where they are committing what they worry about to God, and then leaving it with him.

So here's my very simple question before we go on to the second one. What do you do when you are afraid? What do you do when you at night are worried about things? Could I encourage you to start the actual practice of evening prayer? I realize in some ways evening prayer might be a metaphor, but I mean literally, for you to take 10 to 15 minutes at night, and for you to take this practice of just going through what you worry about, what you're mad about, what you're disappointed with, where you're sad, and then leaving it at Jesus' feet, and then just resting in him. Whatever you're afraid of, talk to God about it. Will you take Pastor JD up on his challenge of evening prayer?

It just might change things. You're listening to Pastor JD Greer on Summit Life. If you joined us late, you can listen to this entire message when you visit us online at jdgreer.com. At our home church, The Summit in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, we've committed to planting 1,000 new churches within our generation. Talk about lofty prayer goals.

JD, can you explain why that is so important to us? Well, it's certainly not about extending the name of the Summit Church. In fact, these 1,000 churches are independent churches. We just believe that God has called us to multiply. For the last century in America, it's been the age of the mega church where churches get bigger and bigger and bigger. One of the most sobering statistics, Molly, is that as churches have gotten bigger in the United States than they've ever been in history in any country, at the same time the percentage of Americans going to church on a weekly basis has gone down, not up. What we see is that it's not a handful of congregations growing really big that's the answer.

It's multiplication. We have taken on our church the mission of planting 1,000 churches. Hey, I don't know if you know this, but Summit Life is a part of that mission because we're able to be into new areas, new cities, and be able to see what the response to the word is like. We've often sent church planters from our church who've gathered teams from the local city and from our congregation and moved there and started a new work. We would love to see you be a part of this.

If you want to find out more about just that strategy, then you can go to jdgrier.com. You can also reserve there your copy of Scent, which is volume 2 of our study through acts that takes you a little deeper into the stories and the promises that we're covering. Volume 2 is going to cover chapters 9 through 28. If you missed volume 1, which covered chapters 1 through 8, there's still time to get that as well. It would be our pleasure to help you understand your role in the Great Commission more clearly, but I do want to remind you when you donate to support this ministry, you're helping us reach people around the world with this gospel-centered Bible teaching.

You're actually taking part in the Great Commission in this way. When you give today to support this ministry, we'll express our gratitude as well as the gratitude of your fellow listeners by sending you the workbook that Pastor JD mentioned titled Scent, the book of Acts, volume 2. It's an interactive study guide created exclusively for you from the Summit Life team, and it's yours with your donation of $25 or more. Request your copy by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or give online at jdgrier.com.

You can still get volume 1 there as well. I'm Molly Vidovich, and that's all the time we have today. Be sure to come back tomorrow and hear Pastor JD explain how every battle plan should include plenty of prayer. That's Tuesday here on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.