Unified Gospel Prayer
Eternal results of unified, fervent prayer
O, dear God, You are bigger than me.
Beyond me.
Outside and above me.
Also dwelling within me.
You are all-knowing.
All-seeing.
All-things-upholding by the Word of Your power. By You all things consist.
You are cleaner than me.
Your motives are elevated to ultra-high purity. Me, no.
You are the Strongest.
You can.
We are so fragile.
We are so self-centered.
We are children, selfish.
You are just better than us.
Bigger. Higher. Stronger. Wiser.
We know not what we should ask for, as we ought to know, by now. We cannot figure out how to properly compose the request, properly. :)
Your communication skills far surpass our feeble mumblings.
Alone, we accomplish so little.
With Your assistance however, we can do much more.
We approach with humble admission of our condition.
We are short on words.
Our energy, frail.
We come to You, God.
You asked us to ask You.
So we obediently pour-out our petition with repetition.
Making the non-answer not our fault. Believing you WANT to answer.
Of course You don’t need to answer anyone. Because every one of our requests are tainted … except this is not our request. You’re the One who wants the gospel reaching the world. We’re simply asking You to do what You said You wanted done.
James 4:3 “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” But this is not OUR selfish desire, dear God. God‘s desire is that everyone hear the gospel of God. We are not asking amiss on this occasion. We are asking on target 🎯 on time ⌚️. 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, … but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that ALL [pause and repeat: all] should come to repentance.” Meaning, a clear recognition of their condition before God, see their need of a Saviour, then choose Christ alone.
We want to soon walk into Your presence God, and speak face-to-face with confidence, knowing we exhausted all options to get Your attention to fulfill this good request. Our request was Your request.
Dear God,
Oh 😥 Dear God … gospel going.
Oh loving Heavenly Father … gospel distribution.
Oh dear Supplier and Sustainer of life, all life … gospel gaining momentum of motion!
This our humble, earnest plea:
Magnify Your Gospel.
Multiply Your Gospel.
Get the news to the nations.
Get the news on every screen.
Use any available means to accomplish Your purpose. You sent Your Son. Please help us get the job done ✅. Jesus finished His course with joy! However, currently most of the world lies in spiritual Darkness. The Great Commission is greatly undone. So we come to You.
Dear God if You only hear 100% pure people, all of us are disqualified.
Dear Father if You only hear 100% passionate, fervent people who have Your same heart-fire … who’s voice would enter Your ears?
Dear God, You’re the one who came up with the idea for us “dust vapor creatures” to ask You to send forth laborers into Your field. The brilliant result of course will be the askers themselves volunteering to go. Send somebody. Here am I, going.
Going where?
What percent of Japan claims Christ or any flavor of Christianity? Less than half of 1%. That is one out of 200, or five people in a crowd of 1,000. How am I supposed to solve an equation that large? Mathematically improbable and impossible by anyone’s calculation to fix, humanly.
My tiny, cognitive mental skills cannot tabulate how prayer … resolves the lack … of global gospel distribution. The spiritual hunger is unfathomable. It seems entire nations are headed for Hell. The numbers are numbing.
183,000 real human souls enter eternity each day in 2022.
The Joshua project tracks “unreached” people groups:
The vast majority of the world yet lies in Darkness.
Meanwhile:
“The Church has roughly 3,000 times the financial resources and 9,000 times the manpower needed to finish the Great Commission. If every “evangelical” gave 10% of their income to missions, we could easily support 2 million new missionaries.”
~ Traveling Team Statistics
”In the unreached world of 3.14 billion people, that’s 1 missionary for every 216,300 people who have never heard the name of Jesus. However, if you look at evangelical Christians in the world today, there are 78,000 evangelical Christians for every 1 unreached people group.”†
†Source: https://bethanygu.edu/blog/funding/why-missions-money-goes-to-wrong-place/
We can do this! God helping each of us participate somehow.
Perhaps our resources are improperly devoted … as a reflection of our time and prayers being focused on self and local happenings. Our energy is distracted by many lesser things.
Imagine being yourself “unreached.” What does that look like? “Unreached” means living in a culture, a community where less than 0.1% are evangelistic Christians in your own people group. It’s difficult to fathom, but climb inside that box 📦 for just one minute. Your chances of hearing Jesus is the Way to Heaven are minuscule: one tenth of one percent chance of hearing the Good News.
Action.
Either there is a God and that God made abundantly clear His mission of reaching the entire population of the whole world with His message of salvation … or the whole thing is a brilliant joke. Our first reaction of course, upon hearing this, is shifting the blame away from our self. Let’s blame God. Make evangelism 100% His responsibility. Feels better on our conscience.
But if we shoulder this load together … accepting even a small percent of personal responsibility and involvement … shall we be overwhelmed and depressed? Or shall we press on! Should we hang it up … or hang in there?
Prayer must be the ticket.
There is no viable option outside the direct power of prayer persuading God to flow afresh through His willing workers to increase the mobility of His messengers carrying His message of salvation absolutely everywhere!
The gospel only goes forward with Holy Ghost fire fuel. And that Holy Ghost fire must be obtained by waiting in the upper room with passionate, unified prayer with teammates. :) Evidently that was the pattern established in Acts 1:4 “And, [Jesus] being assembled together with them [His disciples], commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the Promise [which is Holy Ghost fire power for gospel-going] of the Father, which, saith He, ye have heard of Me.”
The immensity of the mission is impossible. Absolutely. Apart from God, there is no hope. Except the Lord build this house, they obviously labor in vain. Except God send the Holy Spirit to fill with genuine, divine fluid from on high His humble, willing workers … nothing will be accomplished.
1 person reaching 216,300 unreached people [literal statistic]? In how many lifetimes?
My first-grade brain cannot understand why so much of the world yet lies in spiritual Darkness. God full-knowing that humans have limited industrious capacity. No matter how much energy we exert from within to generate empathy or compassion or even strategy … the task is overwhelmingly beyond our obvious capacity. Perhaps on purpose.
Time is a huge limiting factor. We already work eight to ten hours a day. We have to feed our face and family somehow. We can’t just abandon our job to go “on mission”.
None of us wants someone else’s eternal destiny to even be 1% our personal responsibility. But that seems to be the reality. We are commissioned with the responsibility to carry this gospel knowledge and make the presentation clear.
God‘s wisdom selected to still partner with humble mail carriers.
While facing the horrors of pending nuclear war … we must respond with greater gospel effort. Double-down on upper-room prayer time. Unite with a team. Focus on moving God‘s heart to do what God wants done.
This post will get 1 share, from maybe 100 views in the near term. Where is our heart-passion and our mental focus on God‘s desire to make His gospel message well known? Believers don’t blog enough. 90+% are not going to share a gospel message in a meaningful way this week, verbally, visually, digitally, or in a printed tract. That should convict us! We need to pray about that lack of fire for sharing with boldness!
Prayer is the ticket!
Maybe, and quite possibly so … my heartbeat is not in rhythm with the heartbeat of God. My brain waves are not in sync with His blueprint for reaching all nations. “Well, I don’t know how to do it.” That’s a copout. No excuses. So instead, we pray united.
We mash together words and express them towards Heaven with a measure of belief that God is reciprocating in this conversation. Does one hour of prayer on the topic of gospel missions tenderize my heart? Does one hour of focused, verbalizing make an impact … trying to get my own attention and God’s attention fixated on the solution that would make #salvation somehow go trending? At least 100,000 hours of content was consumed today globally on the topic of politics.
Why pray? Why ask God to do something God said He wants to do. It just seems circular. But not my position to question.
Time is so short. “We all do fade as a leaf.” It’s fall season. We are all done and dropping. We had our Spring and Summer in the sun. We each must get serious about reaching our part of this whole world.
What does prayer accomplish?
Prayer essentially is a sandbox where we kids try every possible configuration to solve our own problems, and then let God step in.
The Psalms are emotional expressions of confused people trying to get a hold of God … by pouring out their complaints and frustrations … hoping, groping for solutions. Just wanting to be heard. The essence and savor of our prayer today should not be accusatory toward God … however the natural mindset wants to frame the question toward God (with a measure of curiosity and humility): “God, why won’t You get more involved in the gospel?”
Here’s Your pattern in Your book of Acts (which is actually the acts of the Holy Spirit through available workers):
Chapter 1: Jesus goes up to Heaven.
Chapter 2: the Holy Ghost comes down & the gospel goes forth.
Chap 3: gospel given to a crowd.
Chap 4: gospel sparks pushback / persecution resulting in prayer, bringing a refreshing surge of power with unity.
Culminating in verse 31, “And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they [that’s a team spirit] spake the word of God with boldness. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul”
When’s the last time you were on any team with such strong unity? Where absolutely 100% of the all the teammates had the same white-hot heart and the same soul, which means the decision-making was frictionless. Imagine that happening today?!
Here’s the sequence in that verse:
Prayed
Together
Filled
Boldness
Oneness
That’s a team!
That’s an experience.
That’s obviously supernatural.
The only explanation for the oneness, is the unity of filling of the same Spirit.
Who else on this Earthen plateau do you know is in 100% oneness-of-heart-and-soul with God, and with you, in courageously expressing the clear gospel message?
Are we a team though? Why the disharmony among like-minded Christians?
Let’s granulate that verse 31 to inspect the ingredients. And possibly re-create the deliciousness.
It starts, “And when they had prayed, …
Who prayed? All of them. Why did they pray together? Strong persecution. (When you get persecuted, who will pray together in harmony with you?)
Motive for this unified prayer-energy is seen earlier in the story, verse 29 “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto Thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak Thy word.” Again we see the unification under persecution in verse 24 “And when they [they = their own company/brethren] heard that [Heard what? The report which included: v 17 “But that it spread no further among the people, let us [Chief Priests and Elders of Judaism] straitly threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man in this Name. And they [Chief Priests and Elders of Judaism] called them [Peter & John], and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.] …” What was the response?
” … they [speaking of the unified brothers and sisters in Christ] lifted up their voice to God with one accord [everyone singing the same note on tune], and said, Lord, Thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is: …” Essentially they were saying, “Dear God, YOU hold higher authority than these local bullies.”
“And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, …”
Somebody showed up. His presence was signified by an expression of power that shook that place. The place … was shaken.
What happened?
The believers assembled together.
The believers prayed together.
The believers were all filled with the Holy Ghost simultaneously.
For His stated purpose.
“… and they [team spirit] spake the word of God with boldness. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul”
Unification of spirit through the Spirit.
Boldness… Multitudes… Oneness…
The whole episode is intense! If we were to choreograph the sequence on a movie set … imagine the clarity and cohesiveness established right at the opening scene. “Ready on the set? Take one!” Peter and John are about to enter the temple … they meet the lame man. The conversation goes like this: “And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look 👀 on us.”
Look on up in heawh! Fasten your eyeballs on the speaker. What you’re about to hear transcends the natural realm. There’s about to be a transfer of something better than nickels and dimes. We have the direct connection with God.
From there the storyline only shift into higher gears: “… [The previously 40-years lame man] entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God. … [and the people] were filled with wonder and amazement … all the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's, greatly wondering. … [Now the gospel is clarified to the masses; then envy and violence show up. You gotta have a bad guy.] And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, being grieved [not super happy] that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them, and put them in hold … [Before the gospel repressors could shut it all down … something happened first] … many of them which heard the word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand.”
Woopsie! That’s a win for the Kingdom of Heaven and a great loss for the Kingdom of Darkness. About 5,000. Can you imagine?!
v 21 “So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding nothing how they might punish them, because of the people: for all men glorified God for that which was done.” (referencing the lame man)
God showed up. Everybody knew it. Everyone glorified God for the clear action of deliverance of the lame man.
“And being let go, they [Peter & John] went to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them.” Then the spontaneous, unified prayer commenced. The result of that prayer meeting was massive motion of great gospel distribution.
People started giving to help the gospel get out. One couple chose to act in disharmony with the Spirit of God moving. They lied & died. “And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things. … and they were all with one accord in Solomon's porch. … (notice the unity again) And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.”
Multitudes.
Strong addition.
All with one accord.
Harmony & momentum.
Let’s summarize: intense unified prayer of all believers in town was the direct result of the established, religious-yet-unrighteous leaders pushing back against the gospel message, including threats and arrest.
It’s been suggested that we pray for persecution rather than play around.
Apart from persecution … there does not appear to be a pathway to unity.
Here’s what happened:
Boldness of Peter and John resulted in a broadcast message of life through Christ. Which alerted the “authorities”, who attempted to suppress the messengers. Which, when reported to the believing brothers and sisters, resulted in a unified-voice uplifted to the Ultimate Authority, “And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, Thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is: … and grant unto Thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak Thy word.”
From the top:
Witness of 2 + God
Healed the lame man, which
Drew a crowd; to which
The Gospel was broadcast; which
Resulted in their arrest; which
Was reported to the church; which
Unified the voice of prayer; which
Brought down the Spirit power; which
Brought 5,000 more people into the family;
Two people lied and died; which
Wove tighter unity among new believers; and
+ multitudes more were added.
We need to fit somewhere in that chain of events.
Maybe you and I need to be Peter and John. May God channel through us His power to transform a single life today, which celebration 🎉 of that life-transformation may attract a crowd … to spark a similar chain reaction even today. :)