Extraordinary Prayer

“As soon as they were freed, Peter and John returned to the other believers and told them what the leading priests and elders had said. 24 When they heard the report, all the believers lifted their voices together in prayer to God: “O Sovereign Lord, Creator of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them” – Acts 4:23-24.

When you study movements of God around the world, there is one consistent thread: Prayer. Whether it is people from Lynn Haven, Los Angeles, or Lithuanians rising early in the morning to pray. They want to see God touch their nation. They want to see all of their family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors follow Christ. They want to see God do something miraculous. And they believe the key to all that is prayer. 

That shouldn’t surprise anybody. Prayer is a common subject in Scripture. We see this call to pray throughout the Scriptures. Here are just a few examples from the first few chapters of the Book of Acts: Acts 1:14 says, “They all met together and were constantly united in prayer, along with Mary the mother of Jesus, several other women, and the brothers of Jesus.” Acts 2:42 says, “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.” Acts 3:1 says, “Peter and John went to the Temple one afternoon to take part in the three o’clock prayer service.”

The early church in the Book of Acts set in motion a great movement of God that swept the Roman Empire, leading to millions coming to Christ in a relatively short period of time. If we want to see the results they saw in the Book of Acts, we have to do what they did in the Book of Acts. Pray extraordinary prayers.  Extraordinary prayer is experienced when you pray beyond your normal practice of prayer. If you ordinarily pray five minutes a day or an hour a day, anything beyond your ordinary becomes extraordinary. It’s all about multiplying extraordinary prayer.

Because the more we pray, the more we sense our need to pray. And the more we sense our need to pray the more we will pray. It is a matter of taking “ordinary prayer to “extraordinary” levels. 

Extraordinary prayer will lead you to believe God will do something extraordinary through our life, our church, and even through us, together, as we take the Gospel to our community, state, and nation. Trusting God in these challenging days for a movement of God takes an extraordinary commitment from us to pray like it really matters, believing God is able to do what no one else can.

A great movement of God begins with the extraordinary prayer of God’s people.

Discussion Questions:

1. What obstacles and distractions does a persons prayer life face? Which ones seem to affect you the most? 
2. Why should we pray extraordinarily? 
3. Where can we practice extraordinary prayer at home/church?