Acts 4:23-31
The Believers' Prayer
23On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. 24When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. "Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. 25You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
" 'Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
26The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers gather together
against the Lord
and against his Anointed One.[a]'[b] 27Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people[c] of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. 29Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. 30Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus."
31After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
Peter and John had an eventful time after Jesus ascended to heaven...The two, with the other disciples, had seen Jesus for forty days after His resurrection...They then saw Him taken up to heaven...Then the two disciples, with the other nine select a twelfth disciple, Mathias, to replace Judas...Then then Holy Spirit came at Pentecost...The disciples are filled with it (the Holy Spirit) at the Pentecost...Peter addresses the crowd on the Pentecost day, after the Twelve are filled with the Holy Spirit...Then (later) Peter heals a crippled beggar in the name of Jesus...Peter and John are arrested for teaching about Jesus and using His name, to heal the crippled beggar...Now the two are released by the Sanhedrin...
After all of this, right after their release, they give prayer to our LORD...They quote Psalms chapter two, verses one and two, about the Anointed One...The Anointed One that King David is writing about is the Christ or the Messiah in this Psalm...King David wrote the Psalm and Peter and the disciples pray about how men have plotted in vain and rulers have gathered together against the LORD and against His Anointed One...They pray that God give them the ability to spread the word and to speak boldly about the name and our Holy Servant Jesus Christ...
It seems as Peter was taking a lead role in the early church...God has a plan, and it is to get the word out to the world about His Son, Jesus Christ...Nothing could stop it back in the time of the life of Jesus and now after the death of Jesus...The early church and early Christians were spreading the word...These early acts of the disciples and apostles would be the foundation of the early church...The church would grow rapidly...One of St. Luke's themes in the Acts, is that things that God is for, cannot be stopped...Even if all men are against something and God be for it, the men will lose...God will win...
The disciples were still realists and prayed about and knew the threats and persecution issues that could and would happen...In an answer to their prayer their meeting place where they are at is shaken...Sometimes God answers prayers quickly...
God filled the disciples and the believer's that day with the Holy Spirit...We know that the Holy Spirit can come and can leave...It was with the Twelve at Pentecost and now had returned again, after their arrest and release by the Sanhedrin...The disciples were building a new Christian religion, a new church...Peter would be the rock on which Jesus' church would be built...Word about Jesus was just starting then...The word of Jesus is here today...They spread the word and spoke boldly of their Teacher...Things, ideas, and plans of God cannot be stopped by man...