Making an Impact:
Praying with Faith
If you’ve been here the last several weeks, you’ll know that we’re in a series called, Making an Impact: Snapshots from the Book of Acts. We’ve been looking at the 6 key lifestyle traits of the early church, using the acrostic IMPACT.
I Instruction in God’s Word: Acts 17 challenges us to get the Word into our Heads, our Hearts, and our Hands.
M Mobilizing for Ministry: We learned last week from Acts 6 to: 1) Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing, 2) that no one can do everything, and that 3), everyone can do something.
P Praying with Faith: we’re going to tackle this one today.
A Adoring God in Worship
C Caring for Others
T Telling Others the Gospel
One of my favorite things to do is to pray with my daughters. I admire their honesty, their faith, and their persistence when they pray. Just recently I came across some actual letters that were written to God by some children. These letters are really prayer requests.
Dear God,
Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that, or was it an accident? Norma
Dear God,
I went to this wedding and they kissed right in church. Is that OK? Neil
Dear God,
Thank you for my baby brother, but what I wanted was a puppy. Joyce
Dear God,
It rained for our whole vacation and is my father mad! He said some things about you that people are not supposed to say, but I hope you won’t hurt him anyway. Your Friend (but I’m not going to tell you who I am).
Dear God,
Please send me a pony. I never asked for anything before. You can look it up. Bruce
Dear God,
I bet it is very hard for you to love all the people in the world. There are only four people in our family and I can never do it. Nan
Dear God,
I think about you sometimes, even when I’m not praying. Elliot
I love these prayers! They’re so honest, aren’t they? This morning as we focus on the lifestyle of prayer, it strikes me that the early church was born not out of a time of preaching, or fellowship, or even evangelism. God launched His church while His people were in a prayer meeting.
I had the privilege this week to have breakfast with Ray Tuley, who was one of the founders of Pontiac Bible Church. Did you know that before this church had its first worship service, it had a prayer meeting? Prayer has under girded everything at PBC since the very beginning.
This morning, we’re going to listen in on another Prayer Meeting that took place in the early years of the first church. Please turn in your Bible to Acts 12.
[ Read Acts 12:1-4 ]
Background
The story starts in verse 1 with a bad guy King Herod. This name appears quite often in the New Testament because there were actually a number of Herods all of them related. The first Herod was called, “Herod the Great”. He was king when Jesus was born. His son’s name was Herod Antipas, who had John the Baptist beheaded. And, he had a son named Herod Agrippa (I guess they couldn’t use Bob or Pete too much family pressure!).
Herod Agrippa was king during the launching and growth of the early church. We see in the first three verses that he arrested some Christians and was planning to persecute them. This word literally means, “to mistreat”, or to “deliberately do evil to someone.” Just as Herod the Great wanted to kill Jesus, and his son killed John the Baptist, Herod Agrippa decided to kill James the Herod Guys were probably members of the local “hate” group in town.
Notice verse 3. When Herod saw that this pleased the Jews, being a good politician, he went on to arrest Peter as well. He read the opinion polls and jumped out ahead with his position paper on persecuting the early church he’d fit in well with the upcoming presidential election, wouldn’t he?
This took place during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Herod didn’t want to execute Peter during a holy time like this so he put him in jail until the 8-day feast was over. But, because Peter had been sprung out of jail before, he was put in Maximum Security. Peter probably seemed like James Bond to Herod no matter what situation he was in, he always seemed to escape.
We know that Herod commissioned 16 soldiers to work in 6-hour shifts, so that there would always be four men assigned to Peter at one time. Two of these guards were handcuffed to Peter on the inside, while the other two were stationed outside.
Let’s consider Peter’s position for a moment. He’s the good guy in the story, and he’s not just in prison; he’s behind two locked gates, chained to two guards, and guarded by two others. His buddy James has been killed and Peter knows that he’s next in line.
So what does the church do while their leader is locked up?
Look at verse 5: “So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.”
Notice the word, “but”. While Herod was weaving his evil plan, the church was praying. The church did not give up when Peter was in prison. Herod had all the power of the state but the believers tied into all the power of heaven. The word translated earnestly is used only one other time in the New Testament when Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before he died. Luke 22:44 says that, “being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.”
The early church was praying with passion -- and with pain. Just as Jesus sweat drops of blood when He prayed, so too the early church summoned all their resources body, soul and spirit to cry out in earnest prayer on Peter’s behalf.
Let’s pick up the story in verses 6-11: (Read)
A Question of Faith
If we stopped here, we could make the point that prayer works and that the early church exhibited amazing faith in the face of incredible difficulty. But, there’s more to the story. You see, these believers prayed earnestly, and they prayed in unity. But, they also doubted. This actually encourages me because I often do the same thing.
Several years ago, a young man from our church in Rockford was taken to the emergency room after being poisoned by a natural gas leak. The situation was bleak. He was eventually transferred to I.C.U. where he only got worse. His kidneys shut down and they put him on a ventilator. The doctors told me to get the family prepared for his death. My prayers for Mike’s healing were replaced with prayers of comfort for his family. I had been praying strong for a miracle until I heard the bad news. Do you know what happened to Mike? Later that evening, after I had stopped praying for his healing, he opened his eyes, his kidneys started working, and they took him off the ventilator. Mike is fine today in fact, he called me about a month ago.
I had faith when I was praying, but I also had some doubt. Do you ever feel that same way? Dr. Ray Pritchard, who will be speaking next week at my Installation Service, has said that faith is “Belief + Unbelief + Acting on the belief part”. I like that definition because it shows that there will almost always be some doubt mixed in with our faith.
Notice verses 12-17: (Read)
Let’s try to picture the scene. Peter runs over to the house where he knows there’s a prayer meeting going on. The people praying may have been saying, “Oh, Lord, this is the last night before our beloved Peter is to be executed, as James was. Dear God, please deliver our…”
A knock sounds, but they keep praying. “Deliver our brother and somehow get him out safely…”
There’s that knock on the door again. Finally Rhoda gets up to answer it. She reappears moments later and interrupts the prayer warriors. She tells them that Peter is at the door. They think she’s lost it, that her elevator no longer goes to the top floor, that she doesn’t have both oars in the water, that she’s a couple bricks short of a load. [ that’s in the original Greek J ]
She keeps on insisting. In verse 15 they suggest that it must be Peter’s angel. They were willing to believe that Peter’s angel had appeared after his death, but they were not willing to believe that God’s angel had delivered him from death.
Notice the plural pronouns. “They” opened the door and “they” were astonished. It seems that for safety’s sake the believers decided to open the door together in order to face what was on the other side. They’re peering out through the door…and Peter says, “Hi guys. What’s up? Having a prayer meeting? Gotta run.”
I’m so glad this is in the Bible. Not just because it’s comical but also because it reminds each of us that the apostles and leaders of the early church were people just like us.
But, let’s not miss the spiritual point. Not only does God answer prayer, but His power is not dependent on our praying perfectly. This passage, along with many others, debunks the popular teaching among some that says our faith makes all the difference in prayer and that faith is some kind of active force that we have to harness and use. According to this theology, almost everything about prayer revolves around the quantity of our faith.
I used to think that God wanted me to have faith as big as a mountain in order for my prayers to be answered. Actually, Jesus encourages us to have faith that’s as big as a mustard seed with that little bit of faith, God will move mountains or open prison doors or open hearts or change lives. Listen to Matthew 17:20, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Friends, while faith does have a crucial place in prayer, don’t let yourself say, “I want to pray for this, but I don’t think I have enough faith.” Instead, we should pray anyway, saying, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” My part is to pray in obedience and with as much faith as I can muster. God’s part is to answer prayer.
Like we saw in the drama this morning, prayer is meant to be a dynamic spiritual act, not a mechanical procedure we go through every day. It’s so easy for us to approach prayer from a human perspective, isn’t it? Prayer is not what we want from God. It’s our recognition of Him and what He has already done for us. Prayer is our connection to God.
I’m well aware that as we go through this series, there is so much more that can be said about each of the 6 key lifestyle areas. I especially feel that with this morning’s topic. Having said that, let me see if I can wrap up this message with some principles that seem to jump out of this passage. I’m going to call them, Peter’s Prison Prayer Principles.
1 Pray as the First Resort -- not the last. When the believers learned that Peter was in prison, they met to pray. Unfortunately, this is not always our first inclination. We pray after we’ve exhausted everything else. We pray when it becomes clear that we’re completely helpless. We pray when we don’t have anything else to lose. But, what we should be asking is, “What have I lost by not praying?” James 4:2 says, “You do not have, because you do not ask God.” Some of us don’t have God’s provision, healing and blessing in our lives simply because we haven’t asked God for it.
That reminds me of the man who wanted to put this principle into practice. This is what he prayed: “I want to thank you, Lord, for being close to me so far this day. With your help, I haven’t been impatient, lost my temper, been grumpy, judgmental, or envious of anyone…but, I’ll be getting out of bed in a minute, and I think I’ll need your help then.”
2 Pray earnestly even when you don’t feel like it. Remember Acts 12:5, “…but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.” Our natural impulse is to be lazy in prayer. We might pray something like this, “Lord, would you do this? Thanks. Amen.” Or “Lord, save the world. Amen.” The right approach to prayer is specific, focused, and heartfelt. “Lord, I am bringing John before you today. Please save him from his sins. Bring him to a realization of his own need for you make him restless until he puts his faith in you. Send Christians across his path today…”
Sometimes we’re not specific enough when we pray and sometimes our problem is frankly that we don’t pray much at all. I was challenged this week with a quote I read from an article. This is what it said; “We are not New Testament Christians if we don’t have a prayer life.”
Let me give you a suggestion to help you pray earnestly. I mentioned two weeks ago that keeping a journal has transformed my Bible reading because it helps me to focus on what I’ve read and how I can apply it to my life. Journaling also helps me to stay focused as I pray. If you’re having a difficult time praying earnestly, may I encourage you to begin writing out your prayers and God’s answers in a journal?
Principle #1 is to Pray as the first resort not the last.
Principle #2 is to Pray earnestly even when you don’t feel like it.
Principle #3 is to Pray with persistence even when you feel like giving up. This principle is related to the last one it’s so easy to give up when we don’t see change immediately. God answers prayer on His timetable, not on ours. And, He’s told us that it’s OK to ask more than once. It was Jesus who said in Luke 18:1, “Man ought always to pray and never give up.”
Did you catch the fact that Peter was not released until the very night before his planned execution? The Lord delayed his answer but the church kept on praying. When the time was right, God answered.
Perhaps you’ve been praying for a loved one’s salvation for a long time. Keep praying. Don’t give up. Don’t stop. Persistent and passionate prayer is what pleases God and unleashes His power.
4 Pray with others not just by yourself. Constant prayer was offered to God for Peter by the church. There’s power in united prayer. The Elders, Deacons and Staff, along with their spouses, met for a time of earnest prayer last night. A team of people meets every Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m. for prayer and then again on Tuesday nights. People are praying through the prayer chain in the church. Meetings and ministry events are being opened with prayer and bathed in prayer. Some of you are meeting with a prayer partner on a regular basis or you’re involved in an accountability group where you are praying together.
Question. Are you praying with someone on a regular basis? If not, may I encourage you to join us on Sunday mornings before the service? Are you involved in a ministry and maybe slipping in your prayer for it? Remember that prayer itself is a ministry without it, our efforts are nothing more than hard work.
Jim Cymbala, in his very convicting book on prayer entitled, “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire,” says this: “We must face the fact that for our churches and ministries to be all God wants them to be, they must be saturated with prayer. If you and I are prayerless, if our churches have no appetite for God’s presence, we will never reach our full potential in Him.” What he’s saying is that we won’t make an impact unless we pray.
5 Pray with faith in God regardless of His answer. So often we confuse the prayer of faith with the prayer of confidence in a specific outcome. And, when God’s answer does not match ours, we wonder if we don’t have enough faith. We wonder if God ever heard our prayer. Friends, God wants us to put our faith in Him, not in what we think His answers should be.
Think back to Peter for a moment. He seemed to have this kind of faith. Verse 6 says that he was sleeping. That’s amazing in itself. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I knew I was going to be put to death tomorrow morning. Peter was probably the only Christian in Jerusalem asleep that night. Everyone else was praying for him.
Peter’s faith was in God, not in a specific answer to prayer. Remember that the church must have prayed for James as well as for Peter. And Peter’s faith would not have been misplaced even if he had been executed that night. His faith allowed him to trust God’s will even if he wasn’t rescued.
True faith in prayer hinges on our trust in God, in His goodness, and His rightness. It doesn’t hinge on how much confidence we can muster that God is going to answer a specific prayer in a certain way.
Miracles Knocking
Are you in a hopeless situation this morning? Pray. Pray as your first resort. Get your Christian friends to pray with you. Pray with fervor and energy. Pray according to God’s will. Pray continually. Don’t give up. You just don’t know what God is going to do.
God, in Jeremiah 33:3 pleads with His people to come to Him. This is what He is saying to you and to me this morning: “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”
Satan’s main strategy has always been to whisper, “Don’t call. Don’t ask, don’t depend on God to do great things. You’ll get along fine if you just rely on your own cleverness and energy.” The truth of the matter is that the devil is not terribly frightened of our human efforts and credentials. But he knows his kingdom will be damaged when we lift our hearts to God.
At the beginning of the story we see a seemingly all-powerful Herod wreaking havoc on the church. He had the power of the sword and the threat of prison on his side. What did the church have? They had prayer. And they used it.
The story ends with Herod giving a great speech that was met with adulation and people’s praise. In fact, in verse 22, the people shout out their belief that Herod is a god, not just a man. The Jewish historian Josephus adds that when Herod gave his speech, he was dressed in a tunic that was made completely of silver and shone so brightly that the people thought he was deity.
But, then God’s judgment comes. He’s struck down on the spot by God’s angel, worms start eating him, and then he dies.
Look at how things have changed. The chapter opened with James dead, Peter in prison, and Herod in triumph. It closes with Herod dead, Peter freed, and the Word of God in triumph. Look with me at verse 24: “But the word of God continued to increase and spread.”
Summary
Friends, let’s learn from this event in the life of the church by applying these 5 Peter Prison Prayer Principles:
1. Pray as the first resort not the last.
2. Pray earnestly even when you don’t feel like it.
3. Pray with persistence even when you feel like giving up.
4. Pray with others not just by yourself.
5. Pray with faith in God regardless of the answer.
Prayer Prison
It may be that some of you are in prison this morning. You feel trapped. You’re chained to a way of life that is robbing you of purpose and joy. You don’t have to stay there. Pray. Share your burdens with others. Put your trust completely in Christ who alone can set you free.
Antennae Illustration
Many of you know that Beth and I just returned from serving as missionaries in Mexico City. When we were praying about which church God would lead us to, we were concerned about how all our needs were going to be met. We didn’t know where we were going to live, how we could buy a house, where the girls would go to school, or what cars we would drive.
God answered our prayers in some significant and miraculous ways. One way He met our needs was by providing me with a car. Some of our friends, who supported us financially while we were in Mexico, called us about two months ago and offered to let us use their car for the summer. About a week later, they called back and said that after praying about it, they wanted to give us their car!
The car is literally an answer to prayer. It’s been very dependable. The only complaint that I’ve had is that I haven’t been able to get any radio stations on the radio well, I could get the Pontiac station, but that’s all I could get. I drove it like that ever since I got the car.
Then, one day this past week, I went to Wal-Mart with Emily and she asked me if the antenna was working. I assured her that the antenna was fine. But then I looked back and noticed that it was pushed down. No wonder I wasn’t able to get any stations! I tried to pull it up with my fingers but I couldn’t get it. Then I remember my friend telling me that the antenna’s motor was broken so it wouldn’t go up automatically.
When we got home I took a vice grip and pulled it up. Guess what? I can now listen to radio stations all across the dial.
As I thought about this, it made me think of our topic this morning. I wasn’t able to tie into the signals and power of the radio because my antenna wasn’t up. Likewise, some of us are having a communication block with God because we haven’t been looking up enough we’re not tuned into Him. And, like my broken antenna motor, you may need to do some work in order to get connected with God again. Are you ready to do the work of prayer?
For others of you, your prayer life is pretty automatic. Your prayer antenna is fully extended. If so, keep on praying, just make sure you don’t treat your requests like a wish list.
