Devoted to Prayer

56:34Acts chapter one. Fourth week on Acts chapter one. I think we'll finish Acts chapter one tonight. I'm gonna go a little faster. Can I nerd out really quick? How many of you, if I said the name Justin Jefferson, how many of you actually know who that is? Raise your hand if you know who that is. Okay, I know I know at least Liz knows. Okay, if you know the name Justin Jefferson, raise your hand. Let me just see. Okay, I'm about to Okay. Oh, so you guys, the Dubs do know you know who that is. Okay, he's a football player, okay, for the Minnesota Vikings. He's probably top three wide receivers in the game. And this last week, I just need to nerd out really quick. This last week, I saw a real where he's explaining film. Okay, I maybe I need to go back even further. Film is what you watch after practice or a game to get better from how you did. Okay. And so he's watching film with a bunch of younger wide receivers and he's walking them through this guy's route. So this guy is like lined up. He I played football so I like totally know what I'm talking about. He's lined up here and he starts to run and he immediately stops the film. He's like, "Okay, you see it?" And he starts breaking it down like in nitty-gritty detail of everything that this guy is doing right and wrong in front of everybody. This has happened to me so many times. The day after a game, you'd sit down to watch film and you know there's like at least two plays that are utterly embarrassing and your coach is going to expose you. And my coach was mean. He would stop the play and like everybody watch Josh here because there's like 22 people on the field at the time and so he has to say wait watch Josh that's like me like falling on my face like I don't know something embarrassing but Justin Jefferson is doing this in front of crowds and it's not to shame him it's to get better they're learning and so he's walking them through everything about the route from stemming to creating space to cutting in and out all the things and he's walking through and the caption on the reel is like Justin Jefferson is a ne next level wide receiver he's genius when it comes to how to like run rats and all this stuff.

58:08And then I was listening to what he was saying and I'm like, "Okay, this person who posted this might not know anything about football or being a wide receiver, but everything Justin Jefferson is saying, you learn in like middle school or high school." Like I learned everything he was talking about. I knew exactly and it was like almost muscle memory. I felt like I could be up there like, you know, me and Justin were just like the same. But it was it was it was I learned that stuff when I was in high school. Now, you could say, "Well, you played high school football in Dallas in Texas, and that's a whole different thing." You're right. But still, I learned it in high school. And he's talking to them about the basics of running a route. And I'm not going to get to all the details because that will go way over your head. Most of you don't even know who Justin Jefferson is. But my point is, what separates the great wide receivers from the decent ones is a commitment to the basics. It's the fundamentals. You never move on from them. So, you think about all these kids nowadays who love Steph Curry. I'm going all the sports analogies. Steph Curry, who's like from like the best three-point shooter to ever play the game. And and from like third grade on, all kids want to do is shoot threes.

59:39And they're not learning any of the fundamentals outside of shooting three-pointers. And what makes the Steph Curry great is he has the fundamentals locked in. What makes someone great versus what makes someone good is their daily commitment to the basics of the sport, of the craft. And they're so good at it that they can talk about it in such a way that makes people who don't really know what's going on be like, "Whoa, he's a genius." When he's really just talking about stuff he learned when he was 13 years old. And I thought about that this week as I was prepping my sermon. I thought it's the same thing with Christians. We get in a real trouble when we move on from the basics of the faith and the fundamentals of what Jesus has called us to. We get in a lot of trouble. We start getting on all these weird tracks that people want to we see a real or something online and we think it sounds good and it's got good production so we go with it and it's not like really rooted in the fundamentals of the faith and one thing when you look at Acts chapter 1 the two things that they're committed to before the Holy Spirit even comes I believe even ushers in the coming of the Holy Spirit and it's they're woven throughout the entire book of Acts are the two most basic things you'll ever hear about being a Christian praying Pray and read your Bible. Pray and read your Bible. Those two things are so fundamental and so basic. Many of us, I've done this several times, think that, okay, I got that down.

1:01:12What's next, God? And I would argue those two things woven throughout the book of Acts are the engine that makes the thing work. Without prayer and the word of God and a commitment to obeying the word of God, I believe nothing would have happened. And if someone would have come to know Christ, they would not have been matured into Christ. In Acts chapter 1, as they're waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of power to be witnesses to the risen Lord, as they're waiting for that moment, that experience, the birthing of the church. As they're waiting for it, they commit to prayer and obeying the scriptures. And it's those two fundamental things, I believe, set us up and position us for another outpouring of the Holy Spirit personally and corporately. I've heard so many stories of people whose lives get lit up just because they finally make a daily commitment to pray or they finally make a daily commitment to be in the word and to seek the Lord and his face in scripture. There's something sacramental, something mysteriously beautiful and powerful in going to the Lord in prayer and in scripture. And I want to read about it and see how the early church did it before the coming of the Holy Spirit because I really do believe it postured them to receive what God was trying to do. And I can say this, I'm sorry, I don't this is not in the notes, but I just feel like one of the things God is doing here is that he's preparing and posturing us for a gift that he has for us.

1:02:46The Lord has the Lord spoke to us about seeing 120 people come to know Christ before or by December of 2027. Now, if you look around, there's like 20 of us in the room, you know? So, that's like a 400% increase or something like that. Like, it's dumb. It's ridiculous. But I believe that we're being postured and prepared for that. And if we commit corporately to being people of prayer and no matter what radical commitment to obeying what God tells us to do, those two things combined, I believe, posture us, prepare us for what God is trying to pour out on us. And I would really like to be in a place 12 months from now where we're seeing all this happen and realizing that we've been postured and prepared for what he's trying to pour out. And it's just the basics, guys. I do not have anything crazy to tell you tonight. Anything nuanced, any super supernatural special revelation. If you walk away from anything tonight, I hope you walk away saying, "I want to pray more. I want to read more of the Bible. I want to know what Exodus says or Leviticus." Everybody always tells me like, "That's a hard one to read and I stopped reading it halfway through." I'm gonna go and dig into Leviticus. Maybe you should do that. If there's anything you get from this, if you check out from here on out, I want you to walk away saying, "Man, I kind of want to pray a little bit more. I kind of want to read my Bible a little bit more." Acts 1:12. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day journey away.

1:04:19And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying. Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers. Can you imagine a prayer set when Jesus's mom is there? This must have been the I wish I was a fly on the wall. No, I wish I was there and praying with them. All these people who have experienced all the life with Jesus. They went through the grief of his death and the excitement and surprise of his resurrection and then Jesus's own mother is there. This was a crazy prayer meeting, I think. But here's what I here's what I want to point out. A lot of people will read this story and they'll have a picture in their mind of the disciples like huddling in the upper room with all the lights dim, the lock, the doors are locked, they're like afraid for the Jews. They're just kind of creeped out like, "Oh no, we could die any minute." And that's not actually what's happening. That's I think that's actually the picture in the Jesus storybook Bible where it shows them I referenced that a lot. You guys should get it. But when they're in the upper room, they're all scared and they're like, "Oh no." And then the Holy Spirit comes on them. Then they open the doors and they go and proclaim. Now, they don't proclaim yet, but they're not huddled for fear because at the end of Luke, it says once Jesus ascended, they returned to Jerusalem with great joy and went to the temple blessing God. So they weren't huddled in an upper room scared for their lives waiting for the Holy Spirit to come.

1:05:53They were filled with joy because Jesus is alive. They were blessing God. They were committing to worship and prayer. And then later in the book of Acts, you see in Acts chapter 3, they go up to the temple at the time of prayer like for so for 10 days from Jesus ascension to Pentecost where the spirit comes. There's 10 days there. And it's not 10 days in an upper room huddled out of fear. It's 10 days committed to prayer in the temple, in their homes, in the upper room with great joy and anticipation about what's to come. That's that's what it looks like. It's faith, expectation that Jesus has promised us something and we're about to receive it. But here's the question I always ask is like, what are they praying about? And honestly, why are they praying? What are they praying about? And why are they praying? Well, here's what I think is happening. You may not remember off the top of your head, Luke 11. But in Luke 11, the disciples come to Jesus because they've seen him do all this crazy stuff. Cast out demons, heal the sick, and they're like, "Man, there's a secret to this." And we've seen it. Like, he goes off to his own on his own. He prays a lot. That must be the secret to his power. That must be the secret to seeing all the fruit that he's seeing. It must be prayer. What he's doing with the father on the mountain all the all every morning, that must be it. And so, let's ask him about it. So they go to Jesus and they say, "Jesus, just like John taught his disciples, would you teach us how to pray?" He's like, "Great." And he gives them, "Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name, your kingdom come, your will be done." Gives them the Lord's prayer. And then he goes on this parable about being shameless in what you're asking.

1:07:26And at the end of that teaching on prayer, he focuses on the character of the father. Listen to this. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. In other words, like I'm I'm I'm what they would call an evil dad, right? If you then who are evil I would be considered an evil mean I'm full of I'm full of full of sin is basically what that doesn't mean like I have this I'm evil I'm going to hurt somebody. It means I'm just full of sin. So if I'm full of sin and I know better than when my son asks for a fish to give him something that looks like a fish but it's harmful to him like a serpent. Like I know better not to do that. He's saying, "If you know better not to do that, then h if you 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?" It's so interesting because in Matthew it has the same story in it and it doesn't say holy spirit. It says, "How much more will your heavenly father give good things to those who ask?" But in Luke, he changes it to the Holy Spirit. Good thing, Holy Spirit. Those are the same. But I think one of the things we learn from this is your father won't hold back even the most precious thing he has. His very own spirit. He won't hold it back when you ask because he's perfect and he gives perfect gifts. And there's no perfect gift but the Holy Spirit. He's the perfect gift from the father. But I also think this prayer is what's influencing the disciples those 10 days before Pentecost. They're probably saying, "Hey, do you remember what Jesus taught us?

1:08:57If we ask, he'll send the spirit." And he's already promised us that he was going to send the spirit. So guys, we should get busy praying. We're not just going to wait around for God to do what he promised to do. We're going to participate in the promise. We're going to actively ask for the thing already promised. Prayer is intimately connected to the Holy Spirit. It's interesting. He starts Luke 11 with how to pray the model of Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And he closes it with the gift of the Holy Spirit. There's a connection between your prayer life and your relationship with the Holy Spirit. Are you indwelt by the Holy Spirit the moment you become a Christian? Yes. Are you loved by God the moment you become a Christian? Yes. All this is true. Yet there is a dynamic at play in the kingdom of heaven in which the time you spend in prayer seeking God will turn out to be the amount of the Holy Spirit you experience and walk in. It's that's not legalism. That's not a formula. That's just how it is. Case in point, think of marriage. Abby and I have been married 11 years. Are we more married today than we were 11 years ago on the day we set our vows and got married in front of all these witnesses? No. We're the same married as we were 11 years ago, but we're a lot closer than we were. Our our friendship has grown. We've experienced more intimacy, and we will continue to in the course of our relationship. As we get closer and commit to sacrificing our own selves for the other, it grows intimacy over time.

1:10:29It's the same with the Lord. And prayer is the vehicle to do that. Prayer is how you get close to the Lord. And prayer is also where you learn to sacrifice for the Lord. My relationship with Abby can only grow as much as I'm willing to sacrifice for it to grow. It's the same with the Holy Spirit. When you come to him, are you coming willing to lay it all down so you can experience more of him? This is what Jesus is talking about when he's saying receive the Holy Spirit when you ask from the father. And I believe that the disciples are remembering this teaching and putting it to practice. This begs another question though. Why are they praying and asking for something that was already promised? Why would they go up to the upper room and for 10 days in the upper room and in temple blessing God and praying and asking for the coming of the Holy Spirit? Why are they asking for something the father already promised to give them? I believe prayer is not just about convincing God to give but posturing yourself to receive. Prayer isn't so much you convincing God to give. It is more about posturing you to receive. Does that make sense? What keeps me No, I'm I'm getting ahead of it. What do I mean by that? When I go to prayer, there's something that happens to you in prayer.

1:12:04Like when you really commit and you're like, "Hey, for this amount of time, for these days, whatever, I'm going to go and I'm going to pray and be with the Lord." One of the things that's going to happen is you're going to understand and realize that what you're actually holding on to, your hands are going to be full when you first enter prayer. What's in your hands? Well, I don't know your life, but you know your life. Let me guess. My kid is disobeying. That's in my hand. I feel like a bad dad because of that. You know, I'm probably not the best husband I can be, so I'm holding that. I got this identity, this v vision of church planting that what I think it should be. I'm holding that in my hands. Maybe it's you name it. Whatever's in your life. We always enter prayer holding these things. Well, what's happening when you're holding on to something is you can't receive anything else. It's really simple. If you're holding on to other things, you can't receive something from me. No matter how awesome the gift might be or no matter how generous I might be, you're simply unable to receive because your hands are full. In prayer, it's an emptying of your hands. And it takes time and it's hard and it hurts because these things we're talking about are not just, oh, I like my car. It's like the stuff that's the nearest and dearest to our hearts that are good things that become God things very quickly. And in prayer, they're exposed as those. And God in his mercy and grace is longing to strip those away from us so he can give us something better, which is himself.

1:13:36This is how prayer postures you to receive instead of convincing God to give. He's already promised to give the Holy Spirit. That's what's going to happen. And I believe the disciples here are like, "Man, he's going to do it. We better be ready to receive it." You see faith in that? It's faith. It's like, I know God's going to do this. I want to be ready for it when it happens. And how do they get ready? They go to pray. Prayer is getting ready for an outpouring in your life personally and us corporately. For me personally, I've shared some of this maybe before, but I have a kind of maybe a default to impress and I generally know what I need to do to impress any given person. Takes a little bit of studying and then I'm pretty good at doing it and it's it's not good. But when I go to prayer and I realize that I can't impress God, it positions me to receive his unconditional love. Because in me trying to impress God in prayer, I'm trying to say the right things. I'm trying to quote the right scripture. I'm trying to feel the right feels or be in the right spot or right posture physically. I'm trying to do all the right things because I think in some way that's finally going to trigger something in heaven where God's going to look at me and think, "All right, he's really figured it out. That guy's great. Yeah, let's go touch him. Let's go bless him." And that's the vision of heaven that I have. And that's just not true. And so in prayer, I get really frustrated because he doesn't react like that. And in his grace, he holds back from me, withholds to let me exhaust myself, and finally get to the point where I'm just like, Lord, would you just help me?

1:15:09He's like, now I got you. And then he fills those who need him. So me trying to impress the Lord in prayer is with is withholding me receiving his unconditional love. And so some of the most beautiful times in prayer I've had have been the times I haven't said one word. I'm just sitting on my couch, just a normal place, and I just wait. And I just I acknowledge any chance I've or any tendency I feel in that moment to impress. I just acknowledge it and I say, "Lord, there it is again. Thank you for your mercy. I submit that to you. Would you come?" And I wait. It's simple. It's really beautiful. And it postures you to receive. It doesn't convince God to give. God's not a father like us where we're like, "I don't know. He's a great gracious father who longs to give his holy spirit to those who ask. So these disciples I believe are posturing themselves to receive the outpouring of the spirit through prayer. Through prayer. So let me just give you like a minute. I'm just going to give you a minute to reflect on your relationship to prayer right now. I want you to ask the Holy Spirit where are you inviting me here? Not, oh no, I've been a bad prayerer. That's not what this is about. I believe there's an invitation here for all of us. And we all have different lives. I'm not going to sit up here and think that I have what it looks like, the formula, the logistics. Everyone's different. But let me just give you like 30 to 45 seconds of silence.

1:16:42Just ask the Holy Spirit, where are you inviting me here when it comes to prayer? So Lord, I just pray you even speak to us right now. Holy Spirit, where are you inviting us to be people of prayer? Help us pray. Lord, just like the disciples asked you, Jesus, would you teach us how to pray? We just we come to you without really knowing. Lord, we please forgive us for the times we feel like that we figured it out. Thank you for inviting us further and deeper so that we better be postured to receive what you have for us. Jesus name. Amen. So prayer is not the only thing they devoted themselves to. They devoted themselves to aligning with God's word to really obeying what God had spoken to them. And it's really supernatural and cool how it happens in this passage. So let's go ahead and read it starting in verse 15. Okay.

1:18:18I'll read it from here. In those days Peter stood up among the brothers. The company of persons was in all about 120 and said brothers the scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. Can you stop right there? Actually, just something that came to mind when it says 120. Do you know these guys were used to thousands and thousands and thousands of people being around them all the time because of Jesus? Think about it. How many did he multiply the bread for? It says 10 thou. It says 5,000 men, not counting women and children, which you didn't do in that day. If you add women and children, you're like 12 to 15,000 people. And that wasn't just one ministry event. That was all the time. And now after the resurrection, literally Jesus died and rose again. Imagine the excitement that they're having. And there's only 120 of them. For us, we think about 120. That's like a goal for year, you know, December 2027. But for these guys, they're like, where'd everybody go? What is happening? And they don't think, all right, what are we going to do to get those people back? Who's got some bread? Can we multiply some bread? Let's do that again. That was pretty sick when Jesus did that. He's alive. I bet we could do that now. They don't think of strategies so that they can grow the 120. They literally go to scripture and they're like, "We got to make sure we're in alignment with this thing." So, they prioritize obedience to the scripture over anything else. It's like the first they prayed and they're like, "Okay, we got to make sure we're in alignment here." And so, alignment to what?

1:19:51Let's let's read it again. Brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry. Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness. And falling headlong, he burst open in the middle of all of his all his bowels gushed out. Yikes. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that the field was called in their own language a kama that is field of blood. That's the first time I've read that out loud this week and I forgot it said vowels. That's very graphic. Judas as you know betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. And when he saw that Jesus was arrested and was condemned to be crucified, he threw the money back, didn't want anything to do with it, and ran and hung himself. And if you put these together, he must have hung himself and then fell out after he was dead and hit the ground and burst everywhere on the field that was used to that was bought with the 30 pieces of silver. Kind of a crazy story. But we don't I don't want to camp there. Let's keep going. For it is written in the book of Psalms. Now get this. Get this. This is crazy Bible study hermeneutics here. For it is written in the book of Psalms. May his camp become desolate and let there be no one to dwell in it. That's from Psalm 69. Okay. And he's Peter is able to point out that what David wrote in Psalm 69 was actually about Judas. I don't know how he makes that connection, but he does.

1:21:23And Psalm 109 says, "Let another take his office." Okay. So, so Peter is making a connection here between Psalm 69, Psalm 109, and saying that it's about Judas. How in the world, what's his Bible study hermeneutic? What's the way he's approaching the text? Because I read those and I'm not going Judas. That's about Judas. Okay. Remember a few things. This is so cool. So powerful. This is what will happen when you commit to spending time in the scriptures. And if you commit to reading this the way that Jesus told us to read it in Luke 24, we talked about this a lot. Jesus opened their mind to understand the scriptures. It says that word for word in Luke 24. And then he says, actually want to read it for you real quick. I don't have this on there on the screen. I mean in Luke 24 says Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures and then he said that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them, "Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead." According to Jesus in Luke 24, when we approach the scriptures, how are we to read it? What's the lens that we look through? It's the suffering of Christ. So the Psalms must be fulfilled.

1:22:55The Psalms are about ultimately the sufferings of Christ. So when David is suffering in the Psalms, who's that really about? Jesus. That's the right Sunday school answer. It's Saturday. You can still say it. It's Jesus. So when he's reading about ma these evildoers in Psalm 69 and may his camp become desolate, Peter's reading that with the lens Jesus gave him to read the Psalms through, which is the suffering of Christ and his resurrection. And then he sees in Psalm 109 also that it says, "Let another take his office." So, he's able to look for Jesus in the Old Testament, see his suffering and everything surrounding it, and realize that something's a little off. Remember, Psalm 109 says, "Let another take his office." And we haven't done that yet. And Jesus is about to pour out the Holy Spirit. We've committed to prayer, but we're out of alignment with the word. And we need to make sure that we align ourselves with what Jesus predicted would happen, that there'd be someone who betrays me, and that someone else needs to take his office. They don't wait for the outpouring of the spirit to obey the word. They don't need the outpouring of the spirit to obey the word. The spirit supernaturally through the lens of Jesus Christ suffering and death and resurrection highlighted to them how they're already out of alignment in that there's only 11 apostles. There needs to be 12. I think this is just really powerful. Like how many times do we wait to obey God until we feel God?

1:24:26Or we wait to obey what God said until he holds up his end of the bargain. And here they're like, "Hey, we know it's coming. We haven't had this outpouring yet, but we need to be ready for it." And part of being ready for it is having that 12th guy. Speaking of 12th, man, gosh, those Aggies need it. Sorry. Nobody knows what I'm talking about except for like you two. Okay. Yeah. We need some Never mind. Yeah, she is. She is. You're welcome, Nicole. Anyways, they needed that 12th man. They needed the 12th guy in leadership because of what was about to happen. But more importantly, this sets a tone for the rest of the movement in Acts that there's a commitment to obeying the word of God. And they have a sense of urgency about it. It's not, yeah, we'll get to that. No, the Holy Spirit highlighted this as we read the Bible the way Jesus taught us to read the Bible. The Holy Spirit used that to convict or to even just highlight something that was a little out of alignment. And now we it's on us to obey that now. Not later, but now. One thing we tell our kids sometimes is delayed disobedience or delayed obedience is disobedience. That sometimes we're wanting you to do the thing now. And I think the word of God is always urgent. When he says something, we go do it now. And that will posture you to receive what God's trying to give you.

1:25:58Analogy I thought about, there's a mini water park in the middle of Farmer's Branch. It's called the Frog Pond and it's awesome. It's It's like the coolest thing ever for families with young kids. What? Yeah, we should go there for my birthday. It's so cool. And one of the things that they have is a big old one of those big old buckets that fills up over like five, six, seven minutes and then just ding and the ding gets faster and then, you know, it pours and everyone just gets completely doused. I mean, you could probably get accidentally doused or a little bit splashed by walking near it because it's so much water. But if you're like me, you want to be like right underneath that puppy when it pours because you want to just feel the weight of that thing and just to get completely soaked and his laughs. And I think one time I was Ezra wanted to do it, but not by himself. So, I'm like holding him like this and we both get just destroyed by this heavy outpouring of water. But I like to think about obeying God's word as positioning yourself smack dab in the middle of that waterfall. That sometimes it might take somebody on outside of you to say, "Hey, move a little right. Move a little right, move a little left. And lo and behold, you don't know it, but God has this bucket over you, waiting to pour it out, and he's giving you instruction through his word to help get you to the point where you're positioned right underneath that waterfall. So, when God says, "Hey, you need to forgive that person that hurt you," it's not him saying, "I want to hurt you," or, "I want to I want you to experience pain again." He's trying to position you underneath his waterfall of mercy and love and grace.

1:27:28Or when he sets really clear boundaries where sex is to be enjoyed inside of marriage, man and a woman, like that's the boundaries. He's not trying to be a cosmic killjoy trying to steal pleasure from you. He's actually inviting you to step underneath the waterfall of true delight and true pleasure. He does this all the time. And sometimes we just don't really have the perspective of like, okay, you're asking me to do this right now. And it feels so random. It feels out of nowhere, but I guess I'm going to do it. And what we don't know oftentimes is on the other side of that obedience is a bucket of just his waterfall of mercy and grace that he's waiting to pour out on you. And we don't see it. We don't know it. But I think one thing that's happening in Acts chapter 1 is the Holy Spirit's highlighting to them something that they may feel random. It's like really were Judas like they were probably so done with that guy and like why are you rehashing Judas Peter? Jesus died and rose again. Judas killed himself. Yeah, we spent three years with the guy and nobody saw it coming that he was going to betray him. And so I'm sure there's grief. There's there's probably a little bit of relief that he's gone. Like fine, forget that guy. Like we don't we don't even want him around. Imagine all the emotions surrounding Judas. And then Peter's like, "Remember Judas?" They're like, "Oh, dude, we're having a 10-day long prayer set that's been amazing and you just ruined it by bringing up Judas." And but I believe the Holy Spirit was bringing that up to position them for what was to come.

1:28:59And sometimes God will reveal something to you through the scriptures. And he's trying to position you for something that's coming that you can't see yet. But we walk out by faith and say yes to whatever he's calling us to do because we know he's good. We know he's going to pour it out. And an outpouring a lot of the times is just on the other side of obedience. And that's what we see in Acts chapter one. They were positioning themselves through prayer. They were positioning themselves through obedience to the word. And one of the things, actually the main thing that was coming was that bucket was about to tip over. The father had promised it. They were asking for it in faith, knowing it was coming, and yet wanting to make sure that they were postured to receive it through prayer. A devotion to prayer, like a desperation in prayer, and then like radical obedience to the word, even if it seems random or maybe even hurtful when it's brought up. There have been many times in my life where God's done this exact thing to me, where I can I can go back and tell you that season of increase in my relationship with God, experiencing the Holy Spirit, was on the other side of hours in prayer, not feeling a thing. Or doing something I really didn't want to do because but God was prompting me to do it.

1:30:30Like going to somebody I had hurt and saying, "I'm sorry I hurt you. Will you forgive me?" When they didn't even ask, they probably forgot about it. And when you commit to doing those things when God prompts you, it adds up, builds history with God. He sees that he can trust you and then begins to pour out more on you. Jesus said, "The measure you use, the more will be given to you." God has given us things. Many of us maybe have commands from God himself already in the docket, in the queue that you've been delaying on, that you haven't obeyed. And you're wondering why God hasn't spoken to you again. You're wondering, "Where's God? Why hasn't he given me something to do?" And he's like, "I've already told you and you haven't done it." And maybe that's maybe that's you. Maybe you haven't heard him for a while just because you're in a season where you just feel dry. You feel used up and you feel like, man, I just feel like God's far from me. Maybe the invitation for you tonight is to carve out some time, whether before kids wake up or right in the your lunch break during work or maybe it's the 30 minutes before you start your bedtime routine to just sit there and say, "Come, Holy Spirit. I need you." And then just wait on him. He's good. He's gracious. He loves you. Just let him posture you to receive what he's going to give you because it's going to be beautiful and it's going to be far better than you can imagine. Which I believe is what happened in Acts chapter 2, which we'll talk about in the coming weeks when God pours out the Holy Spirit in greater measure because this 120 gets to 3,120 in one sermon which then starts this movement and then there's another couple thousand that get saved in Acts chapter 5 as Peter preaches after one miracle is done.

1:32:03You see, can I say can I say this? I'm saying this for me. Oh man, I need this. One sermon added 3,000 to their number. One miracle added another 2,000 to their number. It doesn't take much when it's God. And if I'm being honest, I feel like when I think about breakthrough, I'm like, "Okay, we got to do this and we got to do this and we got to do this and we got to do this and we got to do this and we got to do this event." I have these things going on in my head all the time. And one of the things God is just continually reminding me of is it doesn't take much. In the same way we as individuals are to commit to the basics of just be devoted to prayer and obeying the word. It's the same as a church. Like just meet together. Don't neglect that. Teach the scriptures. Worship me. Receive my body and my blood. Pray for those who need it. It doesn't take much because in Acts it took one sermon to get to 3,120 and it took one sermon to get to 5,120. Not many miracles, not many sermons, one and one. That encourages my heart because I don't just want this. I just I don't just want breakthrough to grow because we can say, "Look at that. That's nice. That makes me feel good. I want breakthrough to grow because God moves.

1:33:35And he doesn't need much to move. He just needs people who are devoted to prayer and radically committed to obeying his word no matter how confusing or hurtful it may seem at the time. Can we commit to that? Like collectively, can we commit to that? Those two things, devoting ourselves to prayer and radically obeying the word of God no matter what. I want to give us a time to just receive from the Holy Spirit. Maybe there's an invitation that he has. Well, I know that there's an invitation that he has. And maybe that invitation is what you're doing currently. Great job. And God's going to be like, "I'm proud of you." And maybe he's like, "Hey, I'm proud of you and I want to invite you here. I want to invite you into this." You see, the kingdom of God is a kingdom of invitation. It's not He doesn't like force you into something. He slowly opens your eyes to it and then says, "Come on, I'm here. You want to visit with me here?" And it's invitation. It's drawing. It's pulling. So if you feel like a draw, like an invitation, a pull to something, that's the Holy Spirit. If you're feeling like, "Oh, I got to do this or I better do that." That's not that's the enemy or that's your flesh. Don't listen to that. We can know the voice of God by the character and the tone in which the voice is speaking. And the voice of Jesus is the good shepherd who invites into abundant life, not forces you to do something that you're not ready or wanting to do. So let's just ask the Holy Spirit to speak. He's going to invite us into to something I believe individually. Maybe he'll say something to us corporately, but Holy Spirit, we just ask right now for you to speak really clearly. Jesus, you said, "My sheep know my voice." And so I just pray you'd invite us, shepherd of the flock.

1:35:07Would you invite us, Jesus, each person here, Lord? You invite them to something specific when it comes to prayer or commitment to your word. We need your help, Lord. Keep it simple. If you have a thousand ideas in your mind right now, that's probably not God. Just be one really clear thought you're like, man, is that me or is that God? If it's really clear, really simple, it's probably him. Just receive his easy yoke, his light burden. He's not going to invite you to something that you can't do. If you feel like you have no margin, you're like, gosh, when would I even spend time in prayer? The Lord knows that and he wants you. He wants to inhabit that life, not somebody else's life. He wants to inhabit your life in the ways that you operate with your rhythms. He's not asking you to escape your reality, but to fully embody and inhabit it, to remain in his love throughout your life, not somebody else's life.

1:36:38So, don't be thinking, "Oh, I gotta do what Josh did, or I got to do what Louise does, or no. Just have your relationship with God. Don't have mine." Simple invitation, Holy Spirit. Any shame or guilt, I break that off in the name of Jesus.