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Scripture Reading: Acts 12

If you need something supernatural to happen, do something supernatural:  pray.

Prayer is not just quiet meditation.  It’s not just thinking through your thoughts on your own.  Prayer is having a conversation with the God who created you, who knows you better than anyone else, and who can act in ways that are both natural and even “super” natural.

One of the most dramatic answers to prayer is recorded in Acts chapter 12.  I’d like to share it with you today to encourage you to pray earnestly for situations in your life for which there appear to be no earthly answers.

Here’s the background for this story:  After Saul stopped persecuting the early Christians, they finally enjoyed a time of peace and continued to grow in numbers.  But then King Herod took up the persecution again and began to arrest some of those believers putting a man named James to death with the sword.  When Herod saw that this pleased some of the Jews, he put Peter in prison, too, planning to put him on trial after the Passover.

Things looked bleak for Peter.  There was little hope for him after what had just happened to James, but those early believers weren’t hopeless.  They did what they could:  they prayed.

The Bible says, “but the church was earnestly praying to God for him” (Acts 12:5).

Look what happened when they did:

“The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. ‘Quick, get up!’ he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists. 

“Then the angel said to him, ‘Put on your clothes and sandals.’ And Peter did so. ‘Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,’ the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. 

“Then Peter came to himself and said, ‘Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating’” (Acts 12:6-11). 

Faith prays.  It may seem obvious that when people are filled with faith, they pray.  But interestingly, it may not have been their great faith that drove them to prayer, but perhaps that they had nowhere else to turn.  When Peter showed up later that night at the door of a house where many believers were gathered in prayer for him, the people didn’t even believe that it was really Peter at the door.  When a servant girl came to tell them Peter was there, they told her, “You’re out of your mind!” (Acts 12:15).  They didn’t believe her until Peter kept knocking and they finally opened the door for him.  Then they saw for themselves and were astonished.

I love stories like this where God acts in such a way that it even astonishes those who are praying.  We may think we’re full of faith, but when God answers remarkably like this, we realize just how little faith we had going into our prayers.  But nonetheless, they were praying “earnestly.”

That’s the kind of faith I want for you today.  A faith that will pray earnestly.  A faith that will pray trusting that God is ultimately in control, but that still prays with full hope and expectation for God to do a miracle.

There’s no shame in praying, just power.  Abraham Lincoln confessed, “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”

Faith prays.  If you need something supernatural to happen, do something supernatural.  Pray, and pray earnestly.

Prayer: Father, give me the faith to pray earnestly for Your will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus’ name, Amen.