29 And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word. 30 Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
31 After this prayer, the meeting place shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Then they preached the word of God with boldness.
32 All the believers were united in heart and mind. And they felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everything they had.
My prayer as we launch our new location in Sheffield and that I would like you to take some time to pray for today, is for the same. I want us to be a community of people who stand together and pray for boldness to declare the message of Jesus to the people of Sheffield. Pray for people you know, who you could invite, and for boldness for you to share your own story of faith with them. I also want us to pray boldly for God to move miraculously amongst us in Sheffield. I don’t know exactly what this will look like, but I want to boldly ask God for people’s lives to be transformed; for people to be healed; for people to choose to follow Jesus; for people to find hope and a purpose; for broken relationships to be restored; for us to be able to influence the city for good; and for his favour to be on everything that we do so that our success can only be attributable to him. I don’t want our prayers to be too small and limit what God can do through us, so pray big prayers!
And finally, when the believers prayed these prayers the Holy Spirit filled them and shook the room they were in. I pray that as we take the time to pray for these things we too are filled with the Holy Spirit and can step into the everything God has for us in Sheffield with a God inspired boldness.
One thing about this post. They prayed for boldness (which God did give them) to carry on declaring the message of the gospel out in the open, publicly, not boldness to invite people back to their building. These things were said by the apostles in Acts 4 in response to them being arrested & summoned before the high priests to defend their actions of preaching Christ & were thus threatened by them to stop preaching Jesus. Sheffield needs hold preachers in its streets declaring the gospel of Jesus christ, not another mega church with laser lights, coffee, gimmicks & glossy invited.
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