Pray it up!

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Well, good morning. Hey, I have just really loved this series and just loved having you all here and being able to preach on these things. I guess that's what you call what I do, preaching. Hopefully not at you, but kind of with you. But today we're talking about prayer. We'll get into that, but I think then it's very appropriate to start with prayer. Let's pray. Lord God, I just thank you so much for the encouragement that I get from this church, from all the people who are gathered here, the new, and those who have been here since our beginning two years ago and even prior to that. Lord, thank you so much for this fellowship. But more than that, Lord, thank you for the riches that we have in your Son, Jesus Christ. Thank you, Lord, that you give us the privilege to pray, the opportunity to be in fellowship with you, communing with you all the time. When we're aware of it, when we're not aware of it, you are here with us. We don't get away from you, and thank you, Lord, we never will get away from you. I pray this day for your church, not just this fellowship, but the church, the one church throughout this community in many expressions. We thank you, Lord, for all those who are gathered. We're asking, Lord, that you would move us in such a way together that we would lift up one voice to you, and that you'd move us in such a way together, that you'd work in us in such a way that you would be glorified, and we would see explosive growth throughout this community of your people where hearts are turned to you, where healing takes place in relationships, where new friendships are formed, but mostly where our alienation, our rebellion, our brokenness, or whatever it is, Lord, that's between us and you, that that would be healed, that there would be reconciliation. So we pray for our neighbors, for our friends, for all those who are far off and those who are near, that you would do that work and bring it about, Lord, just a little of it at least through us here at Thrive. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, pray it up. One common factor, when you study different movements of God's spirit, different movements of Christianity and the explosive growth that's happened from the Book of Acts that we see already in the Book of Acts itself, but every other movement throughout the history of Christianity for the last 2,000 years, there's been one common factor that keeps coming up, and that is a time of intense personal and corporate prayer precedes that time and again. And so we see that in the Book of Acts. When we've been studying, we saw that even from the first week when we looked at Look Up, where the disciples gathered together and waited for the gift of the Holy Spirit. They were praying as they were waiting. And then in Acts 2, that verse that we're, well, kind of probably tired of hearing, 2.42-47, it says, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to prayer as another example of that. Beyond that then, as well, we see that when the church got together, through the hard times and the good times, it didn't really matter. They were about prayer. For instance, in Acts 4, just a couple of chapters later, after everything was going so great at the beginning, all of a sudden Peter and John had been preaching in the temple. They heal someone there. And then the Sanhedrin, that is the religious leaders of the Jewish people, are upset. They arrest them because they are preaching about Jesus and the resurrection. They beat them. They throw them in prison. They bring them before on trial for their lives. And Peter and John proclaim that there is no salvation found in heaven on earth except through the one name of Jesus. And they're going to keep doing it. And Gamaliel kind of walks in. I don't know. You can read this story. And he says, hey, if this is of God, it's going to grow, and there's nothing you can do about it. And if it's not, let it fade away. There's other things that have faded away. Well, Peter and John are released. And they come back after being beaten and persecuted and threatened with their lives, you know, don't ever talk about Jesus again. And they come to the church. And the church gets together, and they have a time of intense corporate prayer in Acts chapter 4, where it says this. At the end of the prayer, after they kind of lift all this up and say, this is what's been going on, God, and they put it in this big picture, they say this. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness...