Heavenly Father I praise You for the book of Acts which Luke wrote with Your inspiration. I praise You for the account and testimony of the early Church. I praise You for giving us an insight of what life was and is like with the Holy Spirit leading all the leaders and the people of the faith during a very difficult time in history. I praise You that this Church was built on the foundation of faith and salvation instead of the law.
Holy Spirit Your word says, “On being released, they went to their own people and reported what the chief priests and elders had said to them. When they heard this, they lifted their voices in unity to God and prayed, ‘Lord, You are God, who has made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, and who by the mouth of Your servant David said: Why did the nations rage, and the people devise vain things? The kings of the earth cam, and the rulers were assembled together again the Lord and against His Christ. Indeed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were assembled together against Your holy Son Jesus whom You have anointed, to do what Your hand and Your counsel had foreordained to be done. Now, Lord, look on their threats and grant that Your servants may speak Your word with great boldness, by stretching out Your hand to heal and that signs and wonders may be performed in the name of Your holy Son Jesus.” [Acts 4:23-30] Help me to pray and encourage others to pray with me that once again Your church would pray in unity and seek this same boldness and seek to once again demonstrate Your power to this world which is rampant with evil and attempting to discredit and nullify the Church.
Holy Spirit teach us to once again to spend time praying in unity with fasting and focus on seeking boldness and direction and wisdom of how to lead Your Church forward against the very gates of hell. Help us to pick up the mantle of the Apostles and the early Christians and not only be filled with Your Holy Spirit but really trust, listen and obey the Holy Spirit so that we can see people turn their hearts to You and be saved. Let us pray through until You give us a clear vision and have established in our hearts that You have heard us and will move in ways we have never witnessed before. Let us believe like the people of the early church that nothing is impossible for You and that we should allow the Holy Spirit to fully work through us for Your glory.
I pray for you, and ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. (Colossians 1:9-18) In Jesus’ precious and powerful name, amen.