Series: What About James? 
Message: What About James?
Preacher: Mic Thurber
Daily Walk: David Smith

Refresh: Open with prayer. Read or listen to Psalm 68:1-6.

Read: Acts 12:1-19 (Message). Note 1-3 insights/questions that arise from the paraphrase. 

Reflect: In Philip Yancey’s Book, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? he writes: 
    … I interviewed ordinary people about prayer. Typically, the results went like this: Is prayer important to you? Oh, yes. How often to you pray? Every day. Approximately how long? Five minutes—well, maybe seven. Do you sense the presence of God when you pray? Occasionally, not often. Many of those I talked to experienced prayer more as a burden than as a pleasure. They regarded it as important, even paramount, and felt guilty about their failure, blaming themselves. Does this sound familiar?
How often is it that we get serious about prayer? I think it’s easy for most of us to pay lip service to prayer. We can talk about the importance of it, we can talk about the effectiveness of it, we can even talk about the structure of it . . . but how much time do we actually take to engage in it? 
For all of the questions that the story in Acts may raise, one thing is clear, and that is that the church was deliberate in taking time to pray. Many versions say that the church was praying “earnestly” for Peter. The word that is being translated here is: ἐκτενῶς. It’s the same word used in Luke 22:44 to describe Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane as drops of sweat fell “like great drops of blood”. The Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament describes ἐκτενῶς as:
pertaining to an unceasing activity, normally involving a degree of intensity and/or         
perseverance—‘without ceasing, continuously, constantly.
This does not sound like the kind of prayer that one simply mutters through before devouring a meal. Neither does it sound like the rote prayer that gets repeated day after day. This sounds like direct communion, even pleading, with God.

Recalibrate: ​ 

1. What does your prayer life look like on a typical day? 
2. How can we be more deliberate and earnest in our prayers…even when not faced with an emergency or tragedy?

Respond: Pray for God to help deepen your prayer walk with Him.

Research: What are other verses that you find the word  ἐκτενῶς used in the Septuagint.