The Room Before the Fire

Read‍

Acts 1:12-14 "Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers."

Think

Hours before anybody is let in, a room is just a room.

The chairs are stacked. Somebody is taping down a cable. A guy is up on a ladder pointing a light at a spot on the floor and then climbing down to look at it and then climbing back up. The band is playing eight seconds of the same song for the fourth time while somebody in the back says, “Try it again.”

Nobody is there. It is not impressive. If you walked in you would not think anything is about to happen.

And then the doors open and the room fills and everybody experiences the night, and almost nobody thinks about the four hours before it.

Acts 2 is the night everybody knows. Wind and fire and three thousand people. It is the most famous outpouring of the Holy Spirit in history.

Acts 1 is the room before the doors opened.

And I want you to notice how ordinary Luke makes it sound. “They went upstairs to the room where they were staying.” Then he lists the names, and the list is not a list of legends. It is a group of people who had spent the last few years mostly confused. Thomas is in there. Peter is in there, and you know exactly what Peter did the last time things got hard.

Then verse 14. “They all joined together constantly in prayer.”

That is what happens between the ascension and Pentecost. Between the promise and the power. They pray, constantly, together, for about ten days, in a room, with nothing visibly happening.

Ten days of nothing.

That is the part we skip, and skipping it does real damage to how students think about God.

Because if you only ever read Acts 2, you start believing that God moves suddenly on people who happened to be standing there. Revival becomes something that either falls on your school or does not, like weather. And there is nothing to do about weather except hope.

Acts 1 tells you something different. Before Acts 2 had a crowd, Acts 1 had a prayer meeting.

Now think about everything that happens after this room.

God changes Peter from a man who denied Jesus at a courtyard fire into a man who tells a hostile council he cannot stop talking about him. God builds a church that is the same on the inside as it looks on the outside. Every bit of it traces back to a room where ordinary people prayed for ten days with nothing to show for it.

So here is the question.

You have prayed about revival at your school. Have you ever actually prayed for it, more than once, as a habit, with somebody else, when nothing seemed to be happening?

Because there is a version of prayer that is really just wishing with your eyes closed. And there is the kind in Acts 1, where a group of ordinary people keeps showing up to ask God for something they cannot make happen themselves.

Notice one more thing. Verse 14 says they all joined together. Not one super-spiritual person off in a corner. A group. Including some who had denied him and some who had doubted him and some who were only recently convinced, since his brothers are on this list and they had not believed in him for most of his life.

You do not have to be the most spiritual person you know to be in the room. You just have to be in the room.

This week we are going to build toward praying, together, for you and your friends and your school. Today it starts with one honest admission. Everybody wants Acts 2. This week we are going to do Acts 1.

Apply

Get in the room – Set a time each day this week to pray, even if it is five minutes, and hold it whether or not you feel anything. Put it in your phone right now with an alarm on it.

Pray

God, I have wanted the results without the room. This week I want to actually pray, not just wish. Meet me in the days where nothing seems to be happening. Do something in me before you do anything through me. In Jesus’ name. Amen.