After the disciples watched Jesus ascend up into a cloud taking him “out of their sight” (Acts 1:9), two men dressed in “white clothing”, said to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven” (vs. 10-11). And, that was that. Jesus was gone. The disciples gazed intently into the sky where they last saw Him. Two men challenged them with a question and a promise. That was that. The question at that point might have been, “What do we do now?”
The eleven disciples returned to Jerusalem and went up into an upper room where they were joined by a group of people described as, “the women…Mary the mother of Jesus, and…His brothers” (vs. 13-14). It was a small group of people who were probably still bewildered by all that they had experience over the past three years. We don’t know how it all came together, we just know that “these all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer” (vs. 14).
In his helpful book called, Quiet Talks On Prayer (First published in 1904), S. D. Gordon says, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” Maybe these first Christians of Acts chapter two, instinctively knew this. We can only speculate. What we do know is that in this bewildering time, they gathered together, united their hearts into one, came before God, and opened their hearts in prayer.
We know, too, that all throughout both the Old and New Testaments the people of God were praying people. Prayer was at the heart of their relationship with God and of their faith. So, these first Believers prayed. They listened, they quieted their hearts. They knew something was afoot, and as a people “with one mind” they prayed.
Years ago, I discovered the words of E. M. Bounds about prayer. I believed them when I first read them, and I believe them now. Bounds wrote,
What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but people whom the Holy Spirit can use -- people of prayer, people mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through people. He does not come on machinery, but on people. He does not anoint plans, but people – people of prayer. (Power Through Prayer, originally published in 1910).
Pentecost was fast approaching but first the disciples quieted their hearts before God and prayed, because it is people of prayer God uses to pour out His grace into the world. May we be some of those people.
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