Too often today our prayers are more based on our own desires and sentimentalism than they are aligned with Scripture and burning with the passionate fire of the Holy Spirit. Because we aren’t continually opening our heart to Scripture and surrendering to the moment-by-moment promptings of the Holy Spirit, we are easily led into false concepts of who God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) really is — the eternal and uncreated Creator of all that exists.

The first Christ-followers prayed to the God who (and identified God as the One who) “made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” They poured out their heart to the God who is the Creator of all that is. They wouldn’t settle for a lesser god, a god that was just one of multitudes of gods. The definition of who God is (and who Jesus is) mattered greatly to them. They stayed boldly consistent with and aligned with the teachings of the Scriptures and with the presence and reality of the Holy Spirit’s conviction and leadership.

God didn’t respond to their prayers with sentimentalism and religious entertainment. Instead, He poured out earthshaking, life-transforming power that is documented throughout the book of Acts and in the rest of the of the New Testament.

Heart-flows from God’s Spirit are much more powerful than mental rows of religious information. Grow with the flow of God’s Spirit. It’s not wise for Christians to make idols out of Christian leaders (or political leaders).