Devotion #1: Gung-Ho
Have you ever met someone who was really gung-ho (eager, enthusiastic, zealous) about something? Maybe it was their New Year’s resolution, a new fitness routine, or a multi-level marketing campaign, and they would just not quit talking about it. It took over their entire life. They got the clothing with special logos, the matching hat, a decal for their car, and made their social media posts all about this new endeavor. The next thing you know, they are inviting you out to lunch to talk all about how to get you to participate, too. The dictionary defines devoted as “giving all or a large part of one’s time or resources to a person, activity, or cause.” These gung-ho individuals become completely devoted to their cause, and it is evident to everyone around them.
Right off the bat, in the book of Acts, we hear about the believers’ devotion. Acts 1:14 says, “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.” In fact, we read about the early Church’s devotion to prayer three different times in the first few chapters of Acts (Acts 1:14; 2:42; 6:4). Pastor David Platt comments, “Here are these disciples. Jesus has left them. He’s ascended to heaven. And he’s just given them this global commission. ‘Go and make disciples of the nations. Be witnesses to the ends of the earth.’ So they gather together. And the Bible doesn’t say they devote themselves to planning. They don’t devote themselves to whiteboarding out a strategy to get the gospel to the ends of the earth. They devote themselves to praying.”
We devote ourselves to a lot of things. Some of them are good things like our family, careers, friendships, and humanitarian efforts. However, as I began to really focus on this verse, I had to ask myself, “Am I truly devoted to prayer?” I invite you to ask yourself that same question. Of course, we pray, right? Some of us even have the t-shirt, hat, coffee mug, and bumper sticker to remind us to “Pray on it, pray over it, pray through it!” We might take time to start our day with prayer, pray before a meal, pray over our needs or our concerns for loved ones, and we might end our day with a prayer before bedtime, but is that what it means to be devoted to prayer? Now, I want to take the question I asked earlier and dig a little deeper: Am I eager to pray? Am I enthusiastic about prayer? Am I approaching the throne of my Heavenly Father with zeal? Am I choosing to make prayer a focus of my time and resources?
Here is the really incredible thing: this early church did not just individually devote themselves to prayer; they did it together “with one accord.” They were devoted to praying with a unified front. They were committing to pray with each other, for each other, for the advancement of the Gospel, and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we focus as a church on what it means to “Grow in the Word,” I hope that we will be challenged to truly devote ourselves to prayer together. In the words of the Apostle Paul, I pray that we would focus our hearts to be “rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer” (Romans 12:12, NASB).