"Passionate Corporate Prayer"

Scripture Passage

Acts 3-5:42

Scripture Focus

When they heard the report, all the believers lifted their voices together in prayer to God… (Acts 4:24 NLT)

Observation

As a result of the healing of the lame man and the ensuing gospel proclamation in Acts 3, Peter and John are called before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4 and “commanded…never again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:18 NLT). Their response is the right one—“Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19 NLT), but a commitment like that requires supernatural reinforcement. So “as soon as they were freed, Peter and John returned to the other believers and told them what the leading priests and elders had said” (Acts 4:23 NLT). Here’s where we get to the good stuff—Acts 4:24…

When they heard the report, all the believers lifted their voices together in prayer to God… (Acts 4:24 NLT)

Using Scripture (Psalm 2) as a starting point, the believers prayed till they’d “touched heaven” (that’s what the old-timers call it). And their time together produced a powerful result. “The meeting place shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Then they preached the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31 NLT).

This kind of prayer—passionate, vocal, corporate, Scripture-based—was commonplace in the church of my childhood. There were moments in every service when the whole congregation prayed aloud together, each person voicing his or her own prayer audibly to the Lord while everyone else did the same. The same concerns were shared in common by all (remember “prayer request” time?), but the prayers were individually articulated. And all I know to tell you (assuming you’ve never experienced it for yourself) is that there was significant spiritual power evident in those times of prayer. This kind of passionate, united praying is a “lost art” in today’s privatized, individualized faith-culture, but it “shook the heavens” in those days—and I’m convinced it retains the same potential today.

What’s that got to do with a “private” devotional time? Just this: Reading Acts 4:24 (and the verses that surround it) strengthens my commitment to pray with others in exactly the way I’ve described—and to encourage passionate corporate prayer in every way I possibly can. I'm convinced that, more than ever before, a privatized culture demands a unified church.

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