23When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24And 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, 25who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,“‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
26The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed’—27for truly in this city 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, 28to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. 29And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, 30while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” 31And 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.

‘Like draws to like; Judas went to his own place, and the Apostles to their own company.’ F.B. Meyer

How good to belong to the church family, and to be able to return to your own ‘home’ – to your spiritual kith and kin. What a prayer they prayed. They were aware of God being in total control. As Warren Wiersbe observes, they called on the Lord who made everything and is able to do anything.

They saw the fulfiment of Psalm 2 in recent happenings (25,26; see 1:16).

It is a remarkable feature of this prayer that they didn’t ask for protection, but specifically for ”boldness” (29), and they received precisely what they asked (31). In fact, there was a physical manifestation of the presence of God. The great evangelist, D.L. Moody, was asked, ‘Why do you pray so often to be filled with the Holy Spirit?’ His reply was, ‘Because I leak!’ F.B. Meyer wrote: ‘They had been filled before, but they were filled again. It is our privilege to claim repeated infillings to make good our leakage and evaporation.’ You may well know that in Paul’s exhortation in Ephesians 5:18: ”…be filled with the Spirit…” the idea is to keep on being filled.

PRAYER: ‘Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me…fill me anew