These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women.
—Acts 1:14
The sixth mark of the early church is that they waited on the promise of the Father in united prayer. It is difficult to form a correct idea of the unspeakable importance of this first prayer meeting in the history of the kingdom—a prayer meeting that was the simple fulfillment of the command of Christ. It was to be for all time the indication of the one condition on which His presence and Spirit would be known in power. In it we have the secret key that opens the storehouse of heaven with all its blessings.
Christ had prayed that the disciples might be one, just as He and the Father were one. (See John 17:22.) He prayed “that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me” (verse 23). We see, in the strife that was among them at the Lord’s Table as to who would be chief, how far the disciples were from such a state when Christ prayed the prayer. It was only after the resurrection and after Christ had gone to heaven that they were brought, in the ten days of united supplication, to that holy unity of love and purpose that would make them the one body of Christ prepared to receive the Spirit in all His power.
What a prayer meeting! It was the fruit of Christ’s training during His three years of fellowship with them. Adam’s body was created before God breathed His Spirit into him; likewise, the body of Christ had to be formed before the Spirit could take possession.
This prayer meeting gave us the law of the kingdom for all time. Where Christ’s disciples are linked to each other in love and yield themselves wholly to Him in undivided consecration, the Spirit will be given from heaven as the seal of God’s approval, and Christ will show His mighty power. One of the great marks of the new dispensation is the united, unceasing prayer that “availeth much” (James 5:16) and is crowned with the power of the Holy Spirit. Do we not have here the reason why, if our prayers are confined in great measure to our own church or interests, the answer cannot come in such power as we expected?