here now from the book of Acts chapter 12 verses 1 through 17. Now about that time Herod, the king laid hands on some who belonged to the church in order to mistreat them and he had James the brother of John to death with a sword. When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. Now it was during the days of unleavened bread. When he had seized him, he put him into prison, delivering him to four squads of soldiers guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out before the people. So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God. On the very night when Herod was about to bring him forward, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and guards in front of the door were watching over the prison, and behold an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a light shown in the cell, and he struck Peter's side and woke him up saying, get up quickly, and his chains fell off his hands, and the angel said to him, gird yourself and put on your sandals, and he did so. And he said to him, wrap your cloak around you and follow me. And he went out and continued to follow, and he did not know what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to an iron gate that leads into the city. Which opened for them by itself. And they went out and went along the street, and immediately the angel departed from him. When Peter came himself, he said, now I know for sure that the Lord has sent forth his angel, and rescued me from the hand of Herod, and from all that the Jewish people were expecting. And when he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, who was also called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. When he knocked at the door of the gate, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. When she recognized Peter as a voice, because of her joy, she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter was standing in front of the gate. They said to her, you're out of your mind, but it kept insisting that it was so. They kept saying, it's his angel. But Peter continued knocking, and when they had opened the door, they saw him and were amazed. But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had led him out of the prison, and he said, report these things to James and the brethren. Then he left and went to another place. The grass-weathers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.
Let's pray together. Father, we call upon you as the one who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, even according to the power that works within us by your Holy Spirit, given to us because of your son's mighty work on our behalf. We pray now that you would feed your people, including me, from this passage. We pray, Father, that even in this interlude of studying a passage from the Book of Acts on Prayer, that you would be pleased by the power of your Holy Spirit to call, to issue a call, a saving call for the honor of your son to the non-Christians who've come to be with us this morning. I plead with you, Father, that you would honor the power of your son's name and his work by issuing that call this morning so that they would hear the shepherd's voice and they would know that the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. That would thus so much joy, Father, to watch you do that work. And we pray for, though already united to Jesus Christ this morning, that you would strengthen faith and particularly that you would transform us into a people marked by fervent praying as a response to the power of Jesus Christ. We pray in His name. Well, there are a lot of things in Acts 12 to cover. This is our last message on Acts 12. And what I want to begin by mentioning this morning is where we began last week, thinking about poverty. The most devastating and tragic poverty in the universe is living, it's the poverty of living according to an inadequate measure of the power and greatness actually possessed by Jesus Christ. That is the most tragic form of poverty there is. It is the most devastating form of poverty there is and all of us, every one of us, whether we are a non-Christian or a Christian, are afflicted by that poverty. None of us, I don't care how long you've been a Christian, I don't care what kind of ministry God has been pleased to exercise through you. I don't care how much Bible you know. I don't care about any of that in the sense that it changes what I just said because none of us takes Jesus Christ as seriously as we should. That's the heart of the poverty that I'm talking about here. None of us takes Him as seriously as we should and that's devastating for all concern, for the non-Christian that failure to take Jesus Christ as seriously as we should. That poverty deprives you of peace with God. That's a loss. The poverty of not taking Jesus Christ as seriously as we should deprives the non-Christian of peace with God. And for the Christian that poverty, plunder's hope, it plunders joy, it takes away our courage and it leaves us a perpetually living in this low degree of faith and confidence and joy. We all underestimate His greatness. We underestimate His resources. We underestimate the glory of the goals that He is achieving in history. We underestimate the fortune of His kindness. We underestimate the beauty of His holiness. We all do that. And so we need help. We need help. That's a devastating poverty. It's also tragic because it's so unnecessary. It's an unnecessary poverty. God's generosity is so lavish. I can say with complete confidence that He desires earnestly this morning to lead every heart in this room out of that poverty. That's what He wants to do this morning. And He wants to use on this particular morning the story of Acts 12 in order to do it. Because what remedies that poverty that we have of living according to an inadequate measure of the power and greatness of Jesus Christ is a clear vision of Christ's power. We need to spend time looking at what He does, what He's capable of, what He likes to accomplish in Acts 12 is a wonderful example of that. The events in this chapter are very dramatic. What Gary just read is very dramatic. But those events tell a story that's much larger than themselves. Because what they're meant to do, why they're given to us in Delan, Florida, none of whom are in prison this morning. Why this chapter is given to us this morning is so that we would see through these events the silhouette, the dimensions traced out of Jesus Christ's power. The one who is wanting to seek you this morning, wanting to call out devotion from every heart in this room, wanting to call forth allegiance. We look at the silhouette of His power in this chapter. It's an awesome silhouette. And it's meant to draw devotion out of us. I love this chapter because it's really just a microcosm of what Jesus is doing in history itself. He is over all the kings. He is able to thwart every threat against His agenda in history. I have banked my life as most of you have on Jesus' ability to keep a promise. I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it. My life is lived out under that promise. And if he can't keep that promise, forget it. Acts 12 remind me that he has the power to meet that commitment. So last week what we looked at, I heard last week that there are two fruits that grow out of a true view of the power of Jesus Christ as we have it in this chapter. And if we look carefully at the power of Christ on display here, it's going to produce two fruits in us. The first one that we talked about last week was holy laughter. And what I meant by that was joy as deep as Christ's power is high so that even in the face of hardship, we celebrate because as Mike Berra kept telling us yesterday, write the story of the Bible is that he wins. Jesus Christ wins. Come what may? He wins. And that should make us a people who are joyful. But this morning, the second fruit I wanted to talk with you about is the fruit of fervent praying. Looking carefully at the power of Jesus Christ should produce something in his people should produce a so character of of praying and expectancy and boldness in prayer that we see worked out here. And I want to look at both Peter's release and James's martyrdom as the fruits of Jesus's power and their connection with prayer. So first, let's look at the easier one first, which is Peter's release. Now, Peter's in jail. He's in jail because Herod thinks this is going to get him the approval of the Jews. This is recreational for Herod. And he is just able to pluck two of the lead, three of the apostles. Peter, James and John, able to pluck two of them with no effort whatsoever and drop them into jail. What do you think the church's response could have been to that when it became clear that what Herod wanted to do was decapitate literally the church's leadership. What do you think the church's response could have been to that? They could have scattered, couldn't they? They could have hidden, strike the shepherd, sheep scatter, right? What do they do instead? When it looked exactly like Jesus Christ's power was on the lane. Is he not protecting his church? How come Herod is able to snatch two of the three lead apostles? Explain that one to me. It looks like Jesus Christ is out of control. What does the church do? The church acts in precisely the opposite direction, doesn't it? It acts, it assumes that Jesus Christ's power is not threatened by this. And it does that by gathering for prayer. Verse 5. So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church. The church responds in a way that shows it knows that the one who presides over all things is Jesus Christ, not Herod. And they get to work. They don't just sit around and talk with each other. Oh my goodness, this is awful. They don't get on the phone with each other for obvious reasons, but they don't just sit around and talk with one another. They get to work. They say things to God instead of ridiculous things to themselves like my neighbors said to me, not the ones who were here, but the ones on the other side, when I said to one of my gay neighbors, I said, Maria's dad died. That's when the look me in the eye and she said, well tell Maria that our thoughts are with her. Now I was tempted in that moment to say, do you hear how impotent your worldview is? I appreciate the sentiment, but what good does it do for my thoughts to be with somebody?
You hear what I hear that? I hear the echo of someone who knows there's a God, but who has cut themselves off from a God and yet who still has this desire to lift something up, but they push the ceiling of their worldview down so low it can only go up as high as the top of their head. That's powerlessness. But the Church of Jesus Christ in Acts does something. It prays. It prays together. Do you notice that? Corporately the church prays. The Bible models both kinds of prayer, right? Individual private prayer. Jesus tells us to do that, but Acts also stresses the corporate dimension of prayer, which again is one of these growing edges for a manual pressuritarian church. We have a lot to learn here from the Church in Acts 12. They pray together. They don't scatter. You know I was thinking, what is it? What is it that's so powerful about that? I thought, when we sit down to eat dinner, we don't go to different rooms, eat separately. How dorky would that be?
And what would be wrong with that? That ignores, we still all have to eat and that's important. I mean, I can't digest Maria's food for her. But there is something about the nature of our gathering as a family that must, by definition, be carried out together. The people in the Church are a family. We talk to our father together. If corporate prayer is not part of your life, I wonder, do you understand the Church? Or do you think more like an American than a New Testament believer? This church prays together. And they don't just pray together, but they make a very fervent and determined effort to pray. This is not any one of these kind of one-shot intercessions, the silver bullet intercessions that we tend to favor. This is not like prayer as punctuation at the beginning and the end. This is a determined, resolute, saturation praying. They were praying fervently. This is about perseverance, do you notice that? They're not done when everybody goes around once in the room. They're not done. You know how I know that? I'll tell you how I know it. What time is it in this text? What time is it in this text? Ah! Peter's asleep. Clue number one. Peter's guards are asleep. Clue number two. It's dark. Clue number three. What time is it? It's the middle of the night people. And yet what's going on at the home of Mark's mother? Verse 12. Many gather together and we're praying. You see what this church thinks? This problem is urgent and the means of grace that Jesus Christ has provided to the church to respond to the problem is urgent. So they are praying in middle of the night. That tells you something about their fervency. What would it take, my friends, to get you to go to a 2 a.m. prayer meeting? Honestly, what would it take? Now we laugh but really I wonder what would it take? I have no idea what it would take to get you to go to an a15 prayer meeting. I literally have my deal. So I can't even imagine what would the DNA of a church be like where in the middle of the night they would have been persevering prayer exactly the way that Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Ask and you shall receive seek and you shall find knock and it shall be open to you. Those are not three ways of saying the same thing. It takes a lot more to seek than it does to ask. It takes a lot more perseverance to knock than it does to seek or to ask. What Jesus is saying in Matthew 7 said is you persevere. You keep going. You be persistent. You endure. Why? Because it's ineffective or because it's effective because it's effective because it makes a difference because in the perseverance we reveal whether or not we really believe that prayer is effective. Anybody can ask. Right? Save me. Help me. But if you really believe, you'll knock. You'll seek. Now how does this fly to us? Beyond whatever he said. Well it makes me ask the question of myself. How am I using my freedom? How are we using our freedom? Why did the church pray in Acts 12? It's very interesting. Did the church pray in Acts 12 because it was under persecution because it was in crisis? Is that why the church prayed? I mean ultimately, is that the real reason why the church prayed so that the lesson we're supposed to draw on this is okay, when you're in a crisis, when you get the bad report from the doctor, when your finances collapse, when the relationship collapses, when you're just totally afraid, then you should pray fervently. Wrong. Bad conclusion. Why does the church pray when it's in crisis here in Acts 12 because it had learned to pray when it was not in crisis? Okay? The church is simply doing in Acts 12 what it has been doing all along. It has been praying when things were outwardly peaceful. It has been praying in chapter 1. It has been praying in chapter 2. It has been praying in chapter 4. It has been praying in chapter 5. This is who the church is. So when the crisis comes with James and Peter, the church of course just does what it has always been doing praying. Why? Because I think this church has a very clear vision of Christ's power. They pray from a response to the power of Jesus Christ. They have been trained through a long and sustained engagement with the truth about who Jesus Christ is to pray to him, to carry up all of life before his throne and to say this is the most natural response I have to a clear perception of Christ power which is to lift these requests up and to expect him to do things. So I ask myself, I ask you as members of this congregation, what story does our praying tell about the power of Jesus Christ? I have a thesis which is this that our praying is, let me say it's way. That the character of our praying reveals what we actually believe about the power of Jesus Christ. Now, what we say we believe but what we actually believe. And so I wonder what story I look at my own prayer life. I say what story, what would an outsider, if an outside observer could look at my prayer life or look at the prayer life of our church, what would an outside observer conclude about the power of Jesus Christ from those data. Now, I want you to think about your own life because your praying is the story of what you believe about Jesus Christ's power. You're narrating what you believe to be true about His power. So if you're prayerless and there are people in this room who are prayerless, I'm confident of it. You don't believe He has power. Now, it should frighten you to be in a church and to be prayerless because what are you doing here? I hope you're going to be here to meet Jesus Christ. But if you see Him and you know Him, there should be a response from that with your lips to God. J.C. Rouse says this, God has no dumb children and He's not talking about IQ.
No dumb children. How could you be silent in the face of a father like that? So what story does our prayer life as a church tell about Jesus Christ? Well, Acts 12, the church in Acts 12 tells a great story, doesn't it? It tells a story that is confident that Jesus Christ is more powerful than Herod. More powerful than the prison. It's a huge, huge thing to them. They're not throwing darts at the ceiling. So how do we move ourselves away from kind of lukewarm praying? Into fervent praying? Well, I think the answer is real simple. We need a clearer view of Christ's power. It's what I said earlier. We need a clearer view of Christ's power. And again, like last week, you have to bring in, and this is going to require a discipline, right? God has given each of us two tools in order to get that clearer view, two tools. And we all have them. Tool number one, brain. Tool number two, word of God. God's given us these gifts. And what He wants us to do is to bring the truth of who Jesus Christ is, as is revealed in His word, to bring that out, to bring this struggle power, whatever it is, to bring those two alongside one another so that we can measure the struggle and the need in light of who Jesus Christ is. Because which one of those, when you face a trial, you know what's happening? There is a battle going on. Which one is going to be Lord? Is your trial going to be Lord? Or are you going to bring it in subjection to the Word of God? Which one is going to be King? Who is going to find your life? Is it the promises of God? Or is it the anxiety that's generated by the trial? Who actually has power in that situation? So we have to bring them in direct contact with one another and make a conscious comparison between the trial and the Word of God. And we all have the tools to do that. If you want a clear view of Jesus's power, it's waiting for you. It's waiting for you. Now this raises some questions, mostly because I've avoided how the chapter began. James is martyred in the beginning of this chapter. You probably remembered that. And so you might be asking, you might say, well, my, wait a second. Yeah, you focused on the good part of the story, right? The part where the praying worked. What about James? Was James, in fact, Luke doesn't even give us a single direct clue, a direct clue, or circumstantial clues, but Luke doesn't even tell us that the church prayed when James was imprisoned. So was James martyred ultimately because the church failed to pray? That would be a bad conclusion, I think. There are three reasons I think that would be a bad conclusion. Reason number one, what is the church's practice already in the book of Acts? It's well established. This is a praying church, right? Number two, they respond so quickly when Peter is imprisoned with prayer that I just am confident they prayed when James was imprisoned. Luke has a different story he wants to tell. There's a third factor that I actually think is the most compelling. When Peter is out of jail, I think of all the choices he has for where he can go. Why does he go to Mary's house? It's not because the angel led him there. The text is very clear about that. Why does he go to Mary's house? I think, again this is just france speculation, so you can take it or leave it, but here's what I think is going on. I think Peter goes to Mary's house because when James had been imprisoned, there had been a prayer gathering at Mary's house already. So he knows, right, and he's released, where in the middle of the night he's going to find a lot of disciples. Ah, Mary's house, they'll be praying. So I think that that's strong evidence to me that this church was praying for James, but then why was James martyr? I mean, even if what I've said is only mostly true, then doesn't that raise a huge problem, calling into question every time I just argued? Prayer would be effective. It makes a difference. Well, what about Ephesians 3.20? The text I used when I prayed at the beginning of the sermon. Now to him who is able to do, exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or imagine? Well, did that fail? Why is James' head cut off? That's a big problem. And it's a problem that you and I always encounter, right, when we pray because we don't always get what we ask for, do we? Is there anybody in this room who has received everything that you've asked of God? And I'm not talking about trivial things. I'm talking about really serious things like healing. I'm talking about conversion of children. I'm talking about saving a marriage. I'm talking about financial relief. I'm talking about really serious things. And none of us has received everything we've asked. So in the back of our minds, we say, yeah, you know, Mike, I hear what you say. I see the scriptures teach and model for me a fervent kind of prayer that is a response to Christ hour, but he has let me down. So I'm kind of guarding my heart. I won't let my expectations get too high because I don't want to be taken too low. And we don't talk about that. That's a dirty secret in the church. But I think it's the truth. And so James's martyrdom gives us the opportunity to think through this issue of apparently unanswered prayer. We need to have a clear understanding of that. Let me begin by saying this. A text like Ephesians 320, which is an awesome promise that reveals the character of God. Now to him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask. It's a prayer text or think. That sets forth for us the magnitude of a father's kindness that, now listen to this, always, always out thinks our prayers, always out thinks our prayers, goes beyond our prayers, and always out answers our prayers. Always the God of Ephesians 320 always over delivers. Beyond our requests, beyond our desires. Let's remember friends, we underask. We underask. Our desires are often flawed, aren't they? Let's acknowledge it. We often ask for the wrong thing. We ask for the wrong thing. We're children. We're children going to our father. How many times have my kids come to me and ask for something that actually I know would be harmful to them? They think it's great. But I know I've got a bigger picture involved that I've got to keep track of because I'm their dad, right? So I have to be thinking not just of the next step but about what is the fruit that this, if I yield to this, is going to produce 27 steps down the line. And sometimes my kids ask for the wrong thing. And it is love for me as a dad to intervene and say, no. And not only do we ask for the wrong thing, but we underask. We often have a very inaccurate grasp, but it's important. We miss the main point, don't we? We can ask for something far short of what God actually wants to give us. So we have a desire problem, right? We very often need to acknowledge that we underask God. That's one tack on understanding why it is that some requests in our lives, like the request that I believe the church was making for James's release, go not only unanswered, apparently unanswered, but seem actually to be answered with exactly the opposite of what we were asking for. But there's a second and actually much more important one, is we're just really bad evaluators of what we receive, aren't we? How smart we really think we are. God didn't give me what I wanted. He's not good, my friend. That's a problem in your understanding of God. That's not a problem with God. It's a problem in your understanding of who the Bible reveals God to be. Far deeper than our confusion about the writings to ask for is our frequent confusion over the answers we receive. We have to remember that our ability to grasp, our ability to perceive answers and coherence and those kinds of things is extremely limited and often flawed. God, if we believe his word is always doing more for us than we imagine, even when it hurts more than we can imagine. Now, I've got four examples of four prisoners tried to think of illustrations that would line up as closely as possible to James's situation. These are situations from real life that I want to lay out before you so that you see maybe more clearly than you did before this morning that there is a lot of room for you as somebody who prays and wonders is God doing the right thing. There's a lot more room for you and I to submit to the goodness of God's will and to trust His goodness. How about pilgrim's progress? How many of you have read pilgrim's progress? You all know what pilgrim's progress is. Other than the Bible, this is probably the work in English that has most dramatically affected the church. Did you know that John Bunyan was the author was in prison for over 12 years. He was in prison for 12 years. He had a blind daughter. He was not allowed to see. John Owen, the great kind of Puritan scholar, wrote letters to the king for John Bunyan, prayed for John Bunyan's release. Thousands of Christians were praying for John Bunyan's release and God apparently didn't come through because he was in prison for 12 years and a day he walked out of the prison. What did he have in his hands? A manuscript of pilgrim's progress. Why did people pray for John Bunyan's release so that his ministry would continue? That's exactly what God ensured would happen by keeping him in prison. Are you humble enough before God to trust him with that kind of situation? How about the minors in West Virginia? Two weeks ago, not the two, but 12. The Friday of that accident, I was reading an article in the paper and it was on the front page of the paper and it showed the note that Martin Toler Jr. had left that he'd written on the back of the health insurance form and I thought, oh, that is so poignant. I've got to read this article and as I read the article, there was a section in the article on the cause of the accident which still has not been refuted and I thought this was very interesting. So let me read to you what this is just in the New York Times. One theory that I'm quoting for this is the New York Times on January 5th. One theory is that lightning from an early warning storm had been conducted into the sealed chamber and had ignited the methane gas inside. When I read that, I thought, oh my word, I said, father, that is incredible. And then it got more intense. A federal contractor measured two lightning strikes that each hit within 1.5 miles of the mine in less than a second. The strikes which occurred within two tenths of one second of each other apparently came not long before the explosion. The second of the two discharges of energy into the ground was four to five times more powerful than typically occurs. Now, when you're a Presbyterian pastor and you read a sentence like that from a paid newspaper, you begin to hear the voice of God's prophets and you say, father, why would you do such a thing? What a mystery. And then I read at the end of the article there was a quote from Martin Toller's brother and his brother said this of his brother. Martin Toller was the foreman on that crew. And Martin Toller's brother said this about Martin. He was a very religious man. I know he spent his last hours talking to the other people there about the gospel. Tom Toller said quote, he had several other Christians with him in his crew. Now I want you to think about something. Is it possible? Is it possible in your mind that God could have sent those lightning strikes to arrange an evangelistic encounter between saints whose eternal destiny was secured by Jesus Christ. And the unsaved man in that crew is that even possible for you to conceive. And is it beyond that possible for you to say, oh, that would be beautiful. God did that while thousands of people were praying that they would be rescued. My friends, if Tom Toller was right, those prayers were over-answered. And then there's James. When I was preparing for these messages in Acts 12, I came across something in one of my commentaries that I'd never read before. It's about Eusebia. Well, it's by Eusebius who was an early church historian. And when Eusebius gives his account of James' martyrdom, he tells this story that James' wall in captivity. Now I want you to grasp this, James' wall in captivity led his guard to Christ. Herod put him in jail. Herod is going to execute him. The morning before, excuse me, the night before the day on which James was executed, James has a gospel encounter with his guard, leads his guard to Christ, his guard is executed along with him. Now, is it possible, again, my friends, in your mind to conceive of a God so bid and generous to the guard that he would send an apostle who knew the Lord Jesus Christ, who was a true and faithful wist to that gospel to send him into the jail to get the guard for Christ before his execution? I believe God can be trusted with these details. The fourth prisoner is Jesus. And the problem of his apparently unanswered prayer and Gethsemane, right? I mean, he went to the father, this is Jesus, right? He goes to the father and he says, take this cup from me. That's a prayer which in effect is saying, I don't want the cross. What does the father do with that prayer? What does the father do with that prayer? Does he give him his first choice? What does he do? Refuses that request, right? It's my will, not to grant that request. Friends, if Jesus's first prayer and Gethsemane was given to him on its own turn, on its own terms, no cross, no cross, no resurrection, no resurrection, no crown, no power, no rule over every power and dominion and every name that is named not only in this age, but also in the one to come. The father's generosity exceeded even the scope of the son's request. So, friends, I look at this and I look at this struggle in my own life. And I thank God for a high priest who's the one who sympathizes with me knows firsthand what it is to be out answered by his father. And so that gives me great confidence and hope as I move toward God. See, what Jesus models for me in Gethsemane is that not only, not only am I going to be out answered by my father in heaven, but this, that the goodness of the father's will is unshakable. And so even for James, even for James, he could rest. He knew the night before. He remembered what Jesus had said to him. My cup, you shall drink. Remember when John and James's mother came up to Jesus and said, Jesus, I would like you to reserve for my two sons the highest places in your kingdom. And Jesus looked at her and them and said, you don't know what you're asking for. Can you drink the cup I am to drink? And of course they say, yes, we can drink your cup. And Jesus looks at them and says, my cup, you shall drink. James knew that. Remember that promise. I'm sure the night before he was executed. The goodness of the father's will. If he can be trusted with the cross and with the Garden of Gethsemane, he can be trusted anywhere, anytime, in any situation that you and I face. Friends, our praying tells a story about the power of Jesus Christ. What we do on our knees or not reveals what we actually believe to be true about the power of Jesus Christ. So I ask you and I leave you with this question. What story two questions through? What story are you telling about the power of Jesus Christ by your prayer life? And then secondly, what story do you want to be telling about the power of Jesus Christ with your prayer life and our churches prayer life? The answer is not in my power. You are the ones to answer that. So how will it go? Father God, now we come and we ask you to forgive us for the ways in which we have failed to trust the goodness of your providence. Just even hearing those four stories of your magnificent wisdom reminds me that there have been so many places in my life where I have grumbled against your providence and grumbled deep in my heart against what I felt to be a coldness on your part in failing to answer the prayers I had made earnestly through Christ to you. So I am humbled again by this vision of your sovereign goodness. I am humbled by the sovereign power of your Son who rules all things and who drives the church in Acts 12 to pray and to pray so well how I pray, Father, that you would make us such a people from the bottom up from the top down from the inside out that we would be a people who pray as a response to a clear vision of the power your Son actually possesses. Lead us out of our poverty, Father. I pray in Jesus name. Amen.