Pray the word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.

Acts chapter 4 verse 24 and when they heard it

they lifted their voices together to God and said,

Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea

and everything in them.

Oh, that's a great way to start up. and everything in them.

Oh, that's a great way to start a prayer. Especially when, so I think about the setting here

and ask for the believers are experiencing persecution, really for the first time that we see recorded in the New Testament and they're released in verse 23.

They gather together with their friends or talking about what has just happened.

The chief priest and the elders had said to them the threat. together with their friends or talking about what has just happened, the chief

priest and the elders had said to them the threats that had been made against them.

And so the Bible says when they heard it they lifted her voices together to God and

what were the first words out of their mouth.

So their first words were sovereign Lord.

I mean they could have used any number of titles for God at that point and just our father in heaven and that's how

Jesus taught us to pray, just more a generic term for God, any number of titles but they use sovereign Lord.

Despotis is the word they are so desperate.

When we think of a despot, an authoritative ruler who has sovereign authority. And so a So they've got threats coming out of them in their lives, their families, and the first thing they do is they look up together to heaven and they confess you're in control.

Like things seem to be spinning out of control around us, chief priests want to do this,

elders want to do this to us, but you're in control. And then the rest of the prayer goes on to talk about

how the picture of Jesus was persecuted and Jesus was persecuted according

ultimately to whatever God's hand and plan had predestined to take place. So when Jesus was being persecuted,

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