“They all joined together
constantly in prayer...” Acts
1:14, NIV
A week
ago, having finished reading the Gospel of Luke, I naturally picked
up Acts to read as my devotional selection for the rest of 2013. The
two, of course, were always meant to be a companion set (indeed, I
think they were at the beginning until someone decided the gospels
would be better off standing alone and thus ensuring that Luke Part 2
[er, Acts] would be
seen by some folks as just so much church history and trivia). In any
case, a week later I remain in chapter 1. Now a lot of that has to do
with the way I do my personal Bible reading. I can't just read and
reflect. I like to be accompanied by others. So for my reading of
Acts I have invited Eugene H. Peterson (via The Message),
whoever is the voice behind my NIV Commentary software, and three
others: John Stott (The Bible Speaks Today: The Message of
Acts), I. Howard Marshall (Acts:
Tyndale New Testament Commentaries)
and Ajith Fernando (Acts: The NIV Application Commentary)
to join me. All have already contributed to some insights I have
gleaned from that first chapter (to the tune of some thirty-seven
pages of notes, comments and quotes). But there's another reason I'm
still in chapter 1: I'm trying to wait.
My companions on the journey:
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| Peterson: Got a postcard from him once |
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| Stott: A lot of people like to quote him |
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| Marshall: I wonder what the "I" stands for? |
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| Fernando: Smart but his stuff walks |
As I
think of those forty days following the Resurrection, I wonder if
they ever got used to his coming and going? I mean, it wasn't like he
hung around the club house all day and they just lounged around with
him. There was, I think, an intensity about the times they were
together whether just as the Eleven or as the greater cadre of
followers who had stuck with him. First, he had to convince them that
he was really alive. Nothing would come of their later efforts to
bear witness if they were not themselves already fully persuaded that
he was corporeally, flesh-and-blood really alive.
And the second thing he was doing was continuing to teach on his
favorite subject – the kingdom of God. It's clear from their
question about the kingdom of Israel being restored to her former
Davidic glory (v. 6) that their definition of the kingdom and his are
very different at this juncture. It would take awhile before his
broad, expansive paradigm would replace their very narrow, parochial
one.
And then one day he
leads the Eleven three-quarters of a mile outside Jerusalem, up the
slopes of the Mount of Olives. Do any of them suspect that this is
the last time they will be together? Do any of them have a
premonition that he was leaving them – or at least how we would
define the phrase – for good? According to Fernando, it was a
Thursday (counting forty days back to Passover.) Somewhere on the
side of that hill, some of them press him with the question of when
does Israel get restored to wit he responds:
“You don’t get to know the time.
Timing is the Father’s
business. What you’ll get is the Holy Spirit. And
when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my
witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends
of the world.” (vv. 7-8, Msg)
In
earlier conversations with him he had warned them to not even think
of leaving Jerusalem until “the gift my Father promised” arrives
(v. 4). What that is they cannot at this moment comprehend. It has
something to do with immersion, however, for baptizö
is the word that he employs to describe what will happen to them
shortly. And then without so much as a good-bye or farewell hugs, he
leaves them, taken up into a glory cloud. If any of those guys ever
see him again in physical form none of them recorded that moment for
posterity. It is, in some way for them, the end. With encouragement
from the two angels who appear to them suddenly (maybe the same two
who greet the women at the tomb?), they walk back down the hill, into
Jerusalem and to the place where they will begin their vigil.
And
this is where I'm parked. I'm curious to know what that looked like.
I mean, what did they do for those ten days? In reflecting upon the
post-resurrection encounter of the disciples on the road to Emmaus
when Jesus gave them an overview of the Old Testament scriptures that
all pointed to himself, Michael Card says,
Then Luke commits his most grievous
error, and I'm not sure I will ever be able to forgive him for it, at
least this side of heaven. Luke reports in verse 27 that Jesus
explained everything concerning himself in the Old Testament. What
was Luke possibly thinking? The greatest Bible lesson of
all time, and yet we have not a single word!
(Luke: The Gospel of Amazement by
Michael Card, p. 263)
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| How they do it in KC |
Well
now here's my beef with Luke: one of the greatest prayer meetings of
all time is happening and the only thing he can say about it is the
gloss: “They all joined together constantly in prayer...”
(v. 14). I want to know: what
did they do? What did that look like?
I mean, for we 21st
Century saints who just the very idea of reserving one hour for
prayer sounds like we're doing something incredibly noble, the act
of going ten days straight in prayer is, for this saint,
overwhelming.
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| But my mug is a lot more cooler |
When I
go to spend my “alone” time with the Father, I usually take my
mug of coffee flavored with Irish Creme, my journal, a book I'm
currently reading for devotional purposes, and – later when sitting
at my desk – my Bible. These days, when I actually turn to prayer I
usually walk around the sanctuary, praying in English and,
ultimately, in tongues. As it has since the beginning days of my
ministry in Chetek, the journal serves as something of a confessor
recording for anyone with the gift of interpretation my mood,
thoughts and state of mind on that day in particular. The devotional
book may “speak” to me – or not (Last year I read through
Richard Foster's Spiritual Classics and
for the most part found it dry as toast; currently I'm reading
Wheaton professor John H. Walton's The
Lost World of Genesis One
and am finding my spiritual taste buds for the re-reading of Genesis
1 strongly activated. I think I started this practice years ago when
I was still intent on reading through the Bible every year and wasn't
paying attention that I was glossing over more than musing upon the
Scriptures.) And then I “go to” pray, peripatetic pray-er that I
am, pacing around and around the sanctuary offering my requests and
petitions to the Father for my wife, my children, the folks of my
fellowship, the things that are before me or whatever other burden is
on my heart at the moment. Like I shared in an early post (see Burn),
I continue to make a practice of praying in tongues at least 15
minutes a day. And then I sit at my desk with my open Bible and read
the next passage in Acts. This whole exercise put together may
consume a few hours provided the phone doesn't ring or people don't
stop in for a visit. But those first disciples of Jesus sequestered
themselves in a room without soft worship music playing quietly in
the background, without coffee or lattes to get the heart pumping,
without a tablet or a laptop, without even access to a Bible.
So...what did they do
with all that time? How did they keep from dozing off to sleep? How
did they keep from engaging in chatter with the friends they more
than likely sat next to? Where did these people go when nature
called? What did they do for meals? Did they pray in shifts? Did they
pray in unison? They obviously didn't pray in tongues (when I run out
of things to pray for that's always good fill.) What did it sound
like? Lots of murmuring? Lots of quiet (well, at least as much as 120
people can be quiet without sneezing, coughing and making other
bodily noises)? What?
Luke,
who wasn't there, won't say other than “they prayed a lot.”
Thanks.
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| Every time I'm in KC this place is always hopping |
In
recent years we have had some of the folks from here relocate to
Kansas City to become a part of the International House of Prayer
(IHOP-KC), a vibrant faith community whose committed themselves to
night and day prayer until Jesus returns. Part of the requirement for
all students and staff is that they must log 24 hours a week in the
prayer room. One of the girls told me a little while after moving
there that her first four-hour shift in the prayer room was daunting:
“After praying for everything that was on my heart to pray for or
what I thought I should be praying for, only ten minutes had passed.
And now I had three hours and fifty minutes to go before my 'shift'
was over. I thought to myself, 'What do I do now?'” Exactly. Now,
having been to the prayer room before and knowing the lay-out of the
place, I know I could make it okay through a two-hour shift with my
Bible, journal and water bottle (coffee is not allowed in the prayer
room). I'd write-some, read-some, walk-some and pray-some (and,
probably use the facilities once or twice in that 2-hour shift-some
as well). But when Troy, one of our elders, tells me that whenever he
goes to KC he spends “hours” in the prayer room (as in lots and
lots of them) all I can feel is admiration because I do not have the
same spiritual stamina as he in this department. After two hours, I
usually have to step outside for fresh air or mosey next door to the
Higher Grounds coffee shop for a chocolate mocha everything. He
chalks it up to God's gifting and wiring him as an intercessor (and I
would concur). But I also know that when our former youth leader was
on staff there and we would stay at his home I would not always
go to the prayer room. One afternoon, while Justin was working, and
Tara and Linda went shopping, I actually went geocaching and had a
wonderful time of discovery and exploration (see Geocaching in Grandview, MO 64030). Which is to
say my spiritual appetite is not what it probably should be.
Luke
tells us 120 fit into that room – he doesn't tell us whether the
arrangement was comfortable or not. I'm thinking it wasn't – 120
men and women, with no AC in a second story room in Jerusalem in the
springtime? By comparison, our sanctuary can hold maybe 110 northern
Europeans but that's pressing your luck (one time we actually
squeezed 160 teens and their leaders into our sanctuary for an area
youth event in the spring and it was a little warm-ish and a lot
illegal fire code-wise.) So, I'm brought back to wondering aloud how
did they do that?
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| Replacement apostle |
At
the end of his gospel he also reports that those first disciples
“stayed continually at the temple praising God” (24:53). So,
perhaps some of the time was broken up by taking a short walk over to
the temple to engage in regularly scheduled times of corporate prayer
as was the Jewish custom. That certainly would break up a morning for
me. But eventually they returned to that little room, squeezed in and
prayed some more. Stott points out that the word “together” (as
in they joined
together
constantly in prayer)
“translates homothymadon,
a favorite of Luke's, which he uses ten times and which occurs only
once elsewhere in the New Testament. It could mean simply that the
disciples met in the same place, or were doing the same thing, namely
praying. But it later describes both united prayer (4:24) and a
united decision (15:25), so that the 'togetherness' implied seems to
go beyond mere assembly and activity to agreement about what they
were praying for (The Message of Acts,
p. 53). I have never before been much interested in the choosing of
Matthias as Judas' replacement apostle but Marshall reminds me that
of all the things that he could have recorded about those ten days
preceding Pentecost, he chose to write of this event alone
and so it may “be
regarded as of particular importance in his eyes.” (Acts:
Tyndale New Testament Commentary,
p. 67.) Point taken. So, at the very least they were engaging in
dialogue at different times because while the choosing of the 12th
guy is almost a non-event to us it was very important to them.
Putting
this altogether then, these men and women of Galilee, far from home
and the distractions that home would have brought them, have holed
themselves up in Jerusalem, to engage in long bouts of personal
prayer interspersed with corporate prayer and worship, fellowship and
dialogue. Maybe like David's cave of Adullam (see 1 Samuel 22), a new
community was in gestation – (yes, an upper womb)
– being knit secretly together before being birthed as “the
church” in dramatic fashion a few days later.
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| It's hard for me to wait |
I'm not sure if this is what David was thinking about when he composed Psalm 40 but I include it here as my prayer to start waiting afresh on the Father:
1 I waited and waited and waited for God.
At last he looked; finally he listened...
...
Blessed are you who give yourselves over to God,
turn your backs on the world’s “sure thing,”
ignore what the world worships;
The world’s a huge stockpile
of God-wonders and God-thoughts.
Nothing and no one
comes close to you!
I start talking about you, telling what I know,
and quickly run out of words.
Neither numbers nor words
account for you.
6 Doing something for you, bringing something to you—
that’s not what you’re after.
Being religious, acting pious—
that’s not what you’re asking for.
You’ve opened my ears
so I can listen.
that’s not what you’re after.
Being religious, acting pious—
that’s not what you’re asking for.
You’ve opened my ears
so I can listen.
7-8 So I answered, “I’m coming.
I read in your letter what you wrote about me,
And I’m coming to the party
you’re throwing for me.”
That’s when God’s Word entered my life,
became part of my very being.
I read in your letter what you wrote about me,
And I’m coming to the party
you’re throwing for me.”
That’s when God’s Word entered my life,
became part of my very being.
Psalm 40:1, 5-8, The Message
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