It’s been said that the content of a prayer shapes the one who prays it, because we tend to pray what we love, and what we love makes us who we are. And this is not only true of individuals, but of churches too. Like when the early church once prayed,

Now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. (Acts 4:29–30)

Of all the things they might have prayed — and of all things churches should pray at various times — the fledging church in the early pages of Acts wanted God to give them boldness: “Grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.”

We as twenty-first-century pastors and churches can learn from this first-century prayer, but to do so, we need to first go back one chapter.

Words Filled with Jesus

The apostles Peter and John were walking to the temple one afternoon when they encountered a lame man. He had been lame from birth. The man was doing what he was always doing: asking for money from people passing by. But on this particular day, something unexpected happened. The man passing by responded, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:6).

In an instant, the man was healed. He leapt up and began to walk. He entered the temple “walking, leaping, and praising God” (Acts 3:8). The scene drew a crowd, so Peter did what Peter was always doing. He preached. His sermon was full of crystal-clear witness to the person and purpose of Jesus. He is the Holy and Righteous One (verse 14), the Author of Life and the one whom God has raised from the dead (verse 15). Jesus is the reason, the only reason, why the lame man was healed (verse 17).

Then Peter proceeds to show that the Hebrew Scriptures had long foretold Jesus, from Moses in Deuteronomy and God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis, to all the prophets “from Samuel and those who came after him” (Acts 3:24). It has always been about Jesus, and people’s response, now, must unequivocally be to repent (Acts 3:19, 26).

New World Breaking In

These Jewish leaders were “greatly annoyed because [Peter and John] were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:2).

The problem wasn’t only that Peter and John were witnessing to Jesus’s own resurrection, but that they were saying Jesus’s resurrection has led to the inbreaking of the resurrection age. As Alan Thompson writes, “In the context of Acts 3–4, Jesus’s resurrection anticipates the general resurrection at the end of the age and makes available now, for all those who place their faith in him, the blessings of the ‘last days’” (The Acts of the Risen Lord Jesus, 79). That, in fact, was what the healing of the lame man was declaring. The new creation had invaded the old.

“Jesus is the climax of all of God’s saving purposes, and we cannot ignore this without eternal consequences.”

In the resurrection of Jesus, everything has changed. He is the climax of all of God’s saving purposes, and we cannot ignore this without eternal consequences. This message ruffled the feathers of the Jewish leaders, and so they arrested Peter and John and put them on trial for all that happened that day.

“By what power or by what name did you do this?” they demanded (Acts 4:7). Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, and again with a crystal-clear witness, says the lame man was healed because of Jesus. Jesus is the Messiah who was crucified and raised, and who was foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures. Specifically, Peter says that Jesus is the stone mentioned in Psalm 118:22, the stone that would be rejected by the builders but then become the cornerstone. The stakes could not be higher. Only in Jesus could one be saved (Acts 4:12).

Outdone by Fishermen

The Jewish leaders were astonished. They could not reconcile Peter and John’s boldness with the fact that they were “uneducated, common men” (Acts 4:13). These were neither teachers nor even pupils, but fishermen. Fishermen. That agitated the Jewish leaders all the more. These unskilled regular Joes, as it were, had been teaching the people! And now they ventured to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures before these skilled Jewish interpreters, telling them who Jesus was, according to the Scriptures, and who they were, according to the Scriptures.

These Jewish leaders saw their “boldness” (Acts 4:13), but this wasn’t merely a reference to their emotional tone. Peter and John’s boldness wasn’t mainly about their zeal or behavior — it was about what they had to say. This kind of boldness is repeatedly connected to speech in Acts, so much so that another way to render “boldness” in many passages would be “to speak freely or openly.” That’s what Peter and John had done. They had spoken clearly, freely, openly, boldly about Jesus from the Hebrew Scriptures — and they had done so under intense intimidation.

As they watched this unfold, even the Jewish leaders began to connect some dots. “They recognized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). So how did these untrained fishermen learn to interpret the Scriptures like that? How could they speak so confidently about the meaning of Scripture when they had never been taught? Well, because they had been taught — by Jesus himself. They had been with Jesus, and so they were unusually bold. They spoke of Jesus clearly, both of his person and work, on the grounds of what the Scriptures say, even when it might have cost them their lives.

Voices Lifted Together

This is the boldness the church pleads for in Acts 4:29–30.

The Jewish leaders had warned and threatened Peter and John to stop talking about Jesus, but eventually they had to release the men from custody. Peter and John went straight to their friends to report what happened. These friends of Peter and John, the nascent church in Jerusalem, “lifted their voices together to God” (Acts 4:24). Their corporate prayer was as rich with the Old Testament’s witness to Jesus as Peter’s sermon was. They knew the person of Jesus. They knew why he had come. And they knew how unpopular this message would be.

And what did they pray?

They did not pray for articulate positions on the current cultural issues, nor for increased dialogue with those of other faiths, nor for the ability to refute this or that ism, nor for the development of a particularly Christian philosophy or culture (all things we might pray for at certain times in the church). None of these are part of the church’s prayer in Acts 4. Rather, they prayed for boldness to speak the word of God. They asked God to give them the kind of speech Peter and John had modeled — to testify clearly about who Jesus is from the word of God, no matter the cost, as the new creation continues to invade the old.

Do our churches ever pray like this today?

Do we lack a similar heart? A similar perspective? Or both?

And yet our cities need our boldness every bit as much as Jerusalem did in Peter and John’s day. They need the crystal-clear witness of who Jesus is and what he has come to do.

Praying for Revival

What if the church of Jesus Christ, in all her local manifestations, was marked by a singular passion to know Jesus and make him known? This is the true priority of the church in every age and culture.

“The best, most important thing we ever have to say is what we have to say about Jesus.”

We are all about Jesus, and the best, most important thing we ever have to say is what we have to say about him. Our failures to live up to this calling are reminders of our need for revival — of our need to plead with God for boldness. Like the early church, may our heart continually beat to testify to Jesus’s glory and to what he demands of the world. Church, this is who we are. Recover it, as needed, and live it out — even though it’s the last thing our society wants to hear from us.

Our society wants the church to be “helpful” on society’s terms — what J.I. Packer called the “new gospel,” a substitute for the biblical gospel, in his introduction to Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. Whereas the chief aim of the biblical gospel is to teach people to worship God, Packer explains, the concern of the substitute only wants to make people feel better. The subject of the biblical gospel is God and his ways; the subject of the substitute is man and the help God offers him. The market demands the substitute, and those who refuse to cater to it are at the risk of being considered irrelevant or worse. Against that mounting pressure, we should pray that we would speak clearly, freely, openly, boldly about Jesus from the Bible, no matter the cost.

Would this not be the sign of revival? Would God not answer our prayers like he did for that first church?

When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. (Acts 4:31)

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. Today we are going deep. Of course, at the center of our faith, we celebrate the cross of Jesus Christ — his horrific suffering and death by crucifixion. Christ “bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).

His death was designed. It was no accident. It was no fluke of history. It was no mere result of unchecked mob violence. His death was intentional. It was divinely intended — intended from the beginning of time. This is a somber and significant point to grasp from Acts 4:27–28.

This theological point matters when we look at the fallenness of his world. Specifically, in this clip you will hear a mention of a massive earthquake that hit Nepal in the spring of 2015. That earthquake hit the day before this sermon was preached. In that disaster, three and a half million people were left homeless. Nearly nine thousand died. Why? Why does such a world exist with such deep pain? Here’s Pastor John.

This world exists with its pain, with its horror, and with its death to make a place for Jesus Christ the Son of God to suffer and die. If a world like this didn’t exist, Jesus would have no place to suffer and die. If there were no suffering, Jesus couldn’t suffer. If there were no death, Jesus couldn’t die. Put another way, the reason there is terror is so that Christ could be terrorized. The reason there is trouble is so that Christ could be troubled. The reason there is pain is so that Christ could feel pain.

“Never feel that God is somehow distant, far away, toying with creation. He made the horrors to enter the horrors.”

This world became what it is so that the Son of God could enter it and feel all of it. Therefore, you should never feel that God is somehow “out there” — distant, far away, toying with this creation. He made the horrors to enter the horrors.

Romans 5:8 says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Do you believe this? He showed his love through the death of his Son. Do you believe that this love could be shown another way? It couldn’t be shown another way, and he meant for it to be shown.

Predestined to Die

Listen to these words from Acts 4:27–28, which the saints are praying after the death and resurrection of Jesus: “Truly in this city [Jerusalem] there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan predestined to take place.”

Did you hear the people they mention? “Herod” — who mocked him, put a purple robe on him, scorned him. “Pontius Pilate” — who expediently washed his hands and said, “I find no fault in him, but my job’s at stake, so kill him, crucify him, put him through the worst tortures imaginable.” “The Gentiles” — that’s the soldiers, who were driving the nails, pushing the sword in the side. “The peoples of Israel” — the Jewish people calling out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

“Christ did not die by accident. This had been planned since before the foundation of the world.”

To summarize the text again, “Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel were gathered together to do whatever your plan and your hand had predestined to take place.” And so we know Christ did not die by accident. “Oh, just a fluke of history, just a turning of Roman affairs, just mob violence.” No. This had been planned since before the foundation of the world.

This is the climax of — the reason for — existence: the Son of God bore all the suffering of the world in order to lift sin from all who would trust him, bringing them into everlasting reward and joy, exquisitely, in a new heavens and a new earth, glorifying God for his wisdom and grace and love. That’s the reason this world exists the way it exists.

Profound Pain

In my church — I still affectionately call it “my church” even though I have not been the pastor for two years. Well, in my church, there were about five thousand folks and a lot of young people. I was pastor there for 33 years, and we grew up together.

When you have a lot of young people together, they tend to fall in love, and they get married, and they have babies. And those babies die more than you would like. And some of them are born with profound disabilities, like Michael. Therefore, you have moms who have just lost their babies or whose whole lives have now changed because they will be caring for this disabled child till he or she dies.

I would welcome you young people to come to this church and interview any of these moms —like Patty, whom you can’t interview because she died of breast cancer. The first crisis was that Eric, her 1-year-old, died in her arms. I went to the hospital. She’s sitting there, holding Eric. He looks like he’s made out of ivory. He’s dead, sitting in his mother’s arms. She just looks at me. And then I buried her about fifteen years later. She has four young kids, and she dies.

It was a horrible death, in fact, but Patty was a rock. Patty believed every word of what I said. With her bald head and her cap, she made a video of about thirteen minutes — we showed it at a service — telling the people to trust God before she died.

He Came to Bear This Pain

So I’m inviting you, work through this. If it sounds problematic, work through it. God could shake this city — not just Nepal. Half of these buildings could go down at ten o’clock on Monday morning, and one hundred thousand people could be dead. Do you have a vision of God that would be able to handle that? That’s my question.

That might be easier to handle than if one of your children died or if you had a child with a profound disability. But I am inviting you to embrace Jesus Christ as the one for whom, through whom, and to whom all things exist. And he came to share this suffering. He came to bear this pain.

He came to taste every test and every temptation that we have known, take it to the cross, and die in our place so that by faith alone, we could have all our sins forgiven, have eternal life, and have a destiny in a new heavens and a new earth where that curse will finally be lifted.

One of the best fathers in the Bible is a man who had no children of his own. No biological children, that is.

The apostle Paul lived and died an “unmarried man,” always “anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:32). A frontier missionary; a restless church planter; a once-stoned, thrice-shipwrecked, five-times-lashed man — he had little room in his life for a stable home and a growing family. But he was, even still, a father. One of the best fathers the Scriptures offer.

“One of the best human fathers in the Bible is a man who had no children of his own.”

In fact, we find no other man so often associated with fatherhood in the New Testament. He called men like Timothy and Titus “my true child” (1 Timothy 1:2; Titus 1:4) and his churches “my beloved children” (1 Corinthians 4:14). He saw himself not simply as missionary or apostle or teacher, but also as “parent,” as “father” (2 Corinthians 12:14–15; 1 Thessalonians 2:11). Paul seemed to gather children wherever he went — even in prison (Philemon 10). He was a single man with many sons.

And in Christ, God calls any man, single or married, into the same kind of fatherhood.

Fathers Without Children

For long ages, the robust fatherhood we find in Paul was limited to, well, fathers — men with biological children. The Old Testament sometimes suggests a kind of spiritual fatherhood, as when Elisha refers to Elijah as “my father” (2 Kings 2:12). But for the most part, men who had no children of their own would have been tempted to say, “Behold, I am a dry tree” (Isaiah 56:3). The family line ends with me.

But then Jesus came: single, yes, and also the most fruitful and multiplying man who ever lived. Without marriage or children, without even a home where he might lay his head, he still surrounded himself with “his offspring” (Isaiah 53:10), “the children God has given me” (Hebrews 2:13). He was a dry tree in terms of biological lineage, yet his branches now cover the world.

In Jesus, then, we find a new kind of fatherhood alongside the old: a fatherhood not of the flesh, but of the spirit; not of the home, but of the church. Where once a father’s family tree required biological descent, now a single man like Paul can pass the gospel’s inheritance from one faithful son to the next (2 Timothy 2:2). Any man can be a father who will preach the gospel and disciple.

And more than that, Christian men are made for such fatherhood. We are made to be not only sons who follow behind, and not only brothers who walk alongside, but also fathers who chart the course ahead.

Four Paths to Spiritual Fatherhood

For a number of reasons, however, spiritual fatherhood may feel beyond reach. Some younger, struggling men may wonder how they could ever lead others. Others may wish they first had a spiritual father themselves, so that they had some example to follow. And then even older Christian men may look around, notice the lack of sons in their life, and feel unsure where to find them.

How then does a man in Christ become a father in Christ — young or old, single or married? Consider four paths to spiritual fatherhood from the life and letters of Paul.

1. Live worthy of imitation.

For Paul, two words lay near the heart of faithful fatherhood: “Imitate me.” He called his children not simply to listen or learn from him, but to follow him as he followed Christ. “I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel,” he tells the Corinthians. “I urge you, then, be imitators of me” (1 Corinthians 4:15–16). The first step to spiritual fatherhood, then, is leading a life worthy of imitation. Spiritual fathers are farther along on the journey of faith and Christian maturity.

Saying, “Imitate me” does not require perfection, of course. This side of heaven, any man worthy of imitation will wish he were more worthy of imitation. But saying “Imitate me” does require integrity. It requires an all-of-life pursuit of Christ. In other words, the house of a father’s life doesn’t need to be fully renovated, but there can’t be any secret rooms.

“The first step to spiritual fatherhood is leading a life worthy of imitation.”

By the transforming grace of Jesus, spiritual fathers are increasingly able to point to any area of life and say, “Follow me here as I follow Christ.” Follow my spending habits and my entertainment choices. Follow my spiritual disciplines and my work ethic. Follow, as Paul says elsewhere, “my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith” (2 Timothy 3:10). And when I fail in any of these areas, follow my repentance.

Regardless of whether anyone is following you closely right now, what if you lived expecting to be imitated? What if you awoke and worked and spoke and ate with the question in your head, “Could I call someone to follow me here?” Maybe, like a new biological father, you would begin to feel yourself freshly responsible for more than yourself, watched by more eyes than your own.

And when you discover some area where others should not follow you, don’t give up or despair. Most men, at most times, have some area that needs renewed attention and resolve. Focus on following Jesus there today, and then again tomorrow, and a life worthy of imitation will increasingly emerge.

2. Pursue specific sons.

Physical fatherhood is, at times, unintentional: a man can get a son without wanting one. Spiritual fatherhood, however, begins and continues only with careful intention. These fathers go and find their sons.

Of course, some men’s lives are so worthy of imitation that sons go and find them. But in each of Paul’s own father-son relationships, he initiated. Often, he had to initiate because the children in question were not yet in Christ. So, he became a father to churches like the Corinthians and to men like Onesimus by first winning them to Jesus (1 Corinthians 4:15; Philemon 10). Yet even when he didn’t have to initiate (when the son was already a Christian), we still find him doing so.

When Paul came to Derbe and Lystra and heard a good report there about a young man named Timothy, we read, “Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him” (Acts 16:3). Paul wanted Timothy. He wanted this young man to serve with him “as a son with a father” (Philippians 2:22). And so, he took him. Thus was born the deepest, most enduring father-son relationship in the apostle’s life.

When I compare my own intentionality to Paul’s, I realize that I often expect spiritual fatherhood to happen on accident. But if a man has a relationship with a spiritual son, in all likelihood that relationship has come because he saw a man, befriended him, and then invited him to come along — to read along, pray along, eat along, evangelize along, rest along.

As you think of the younger men around you — younger in either age or faith — whom might you take intentional steps toward? Whom might you fold into your life in meaningful ways? Whose gifts might you “fan into flame” (2 Timothy 1:6), even at the cost of much time and attention? If we wait for spiritual fatherhood to happen on its own, it probably won’t.

3. Develop discipleship patience.

Any man who pursues younger men will realize (and often quickly) his need for patience. Much patience. Disciples tend to grow slowly, just like children (and just like us). But through every advance and setback, rise and fall, breakthrough victory and miserable retreat, spiritual fathers remain faithful. Steady. Patient.

“Discipling a spiritual son in Christ takes time, creative thought, precious energy, and lots of heart.”

Paul’s patience may appear most clearly in his fatherly heart toward the Corinthians. Only a forbearing father would remain loyal to such a church. And loyal Paul remained. He not only planted the church, but taught there a year and a half (Acts 18:11). He not only taught there, but wrote letters after he left, often addressing deep immaturity. And he not only wrote letters, but laced his words “with love in a spirit of gentleness” — the patience of a father (1 Corinthians 4:21).

Where did such patience come from? It came, in part, from Paul’s ability to look at immature sons and see an image of their future glory. Like Jesus with the twelve, Paul could trace a line between what is and what could be — and in Christ, what will be. He could see the possibility of purity in those struggling with lust, the hope of contentment in bitter hearts, the grace of diligence in sluggish hands.

And so, despite his incredible patience, he refused to lower the high bar of holiness, and instead raised his sons up to the bar. “Like a father with his children,” he wrote to the Thessalonians, “we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:11–12). There could be no higher standard of conduct than walking “in a manner worthy of God.”

When you consider the younger, more immature men around you, do you see them with the dogged, deep-down hope that they, however weak or wandering, could walk increasingly worthy of God? As you see their weaknesses, do you see also their potential in Christ? And might your words — patient yet believing and bold — become one of the means God uses to call them higher?

4. Embrace the greater blessedness.

As we consider the intentional pursuit and patient investment of spiritual fatherhood, perhaps the cost looms large. Discipling a spiritual son in Christ takes time, creative thought, precious energy, and lots of heart. If we run the commitment through a relational calculator of profit and loss, we may well decide to remain childless. Jesus, however, would have us use a different calculator altogether: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

Paul models what it looks like to embrace this greater blessedness. As he writes to the Corinthians,

I seek not what is yours but you. For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. (2 Corinthians 12:14–15)

Hear the father’s heartbeat: “I seek not what is yours but you.” I do not seek your fast growth, your tit-for-tat repayment, your easy ego affirmations, or even your recognition of all that I do for you. Rather, I seek you. From the depths of my new heart in Christ, I seek the good of your heart in Christ. And therefore, every sacrifice and service, every hard word spoken and burden borne carries the unmistakable aroma of Christian gladness.

Or as another spiritual father put it, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4). Behold the secret of spiritual fatherhood: under the sun, there is no greater joy than to see spiritual children walking in the truth. And those who taste such joy will be on their way to becoming a father, single or married, with many sons.