In Acts 4, we encounter Peter’s Spirit-led boldness and the religious leaders’ inability to stop the gospel’s power at work. Despite the danger they faced, the church remained steadfast in their prayers and proclamations, being filled with the courage and conviction that would become their legacy.
What truths did the early church cling to amidst such great persecution and peril? How were their prayer lives shaped by this encounter with the Holy Spirit?
Standing before these members of the religious elite, Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and couldn’t stop declaring Jesus as Lord. Though he had spent the night in jail, he was resolved in his mission to make no name for himself apart from Christ. As he addressed these powerful men, he testified to Scripture’s truth, how Christ’s rejection had been prophesied in Psalm 118. In doing so, he offered an opportunity for his persecutors to place their faith in Jesus, too. In response to Peter’s boldness, they were at a loss for words. The disciples’ time with Jesus offered more insight into God’s truth than the Jewish leaders possessed from all their years in rabbi school, and the power of the Holy Spirit within them illuminated their minds to recall this truth.
When the church heard news of Peter and John’s time spent before the Sanhedrin, they responded the only way they knew how: altogether, voices raised to heaven, in prayer before God. They reminded one another—and God Himself—of His truths declared so long ago in Psalm 2. Their course of action became one of boldness through the filling of the Holy Spirit as these men and women continued to show and tell the world about the Savior in whom they placed their hope. In answer to their faithful prayers, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, being sent out to keep doing His will.
As you lead your kids this week, remind them—and yourself—that even in our stickiest situations and circumstances, God’s Word remains the rock where we find truth. We are invited to pray bold prayers and to ask for His Spirit to lead us in the places we don’t have strength to go; our faith is revealed through our boldness in action.
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