Today we continue our series on prayer according to Luke. This morning we’re going to leave the Gospel of Luke behind for one week and look at another text on prayer in the continuation of Luke’s gospel, the Book of Acts. As prayer was the lifeblood of Jesus, so Luke shows in the Book of Acts that prayer also was the lifeblood of the early church. It was prayer that led to the coming of the Holy Spirit, to the expansion of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, and as we will see this morning, to the deliverance of the saints. When we are confronted by powers too overwhelming for us, prayer is the power that confronts the powers and sets us free for the purposes and mission of God.

Prayer

Acts 12 is a transition chapter between the great stories of conversion and expansion in the early part of Acts to the first missionary journey. Before the church expanded into Asia Minor and finally to Rome itself, another barrier stood in the way. For a while, it appeared that nothing could stop the spread of the news about Jesus Christ. But periodically, Luke weaves into this narrative of growth and triumph some dark nights when it seemed that everything was on the line for the first Christians. Nights like the one described in the twelfth chapter. Every life, no matter how triumphant, has these dark nights. Every church has some moments when it seems that the future is uncertain and everything is on the line. Those are the nights that teach us the most about prayer.

The text today begins by telling us, “King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church.” (Acts 12:1). This Herod was the grandson of Herod the Great, who killed the children of Bethlehem. His uncle Antipas had tried Jesus, so Herod was quite familiar with The Christ and His followers. Anxious to keep the peace among the Jews, Herod sought to diffuse the growing power of the church in Jerusalem by persecuting its leaders. He began by arresting and then beheading James, the brother of John. He then turned to try and kill one of the great leaders of the early church, Peter. If Herod could eliminate James and Peter, the future of the Jerusalem church would be uncertain at best, and perhaps the church would even disseminate out of fear.

This was not the first time Peter had been imprisoned for his faith. Peter and John had been arrested for healing and teaching in chapter 4 of Acts, but they were released miraculously by the religious leaders. Immediately upon their release, they joined the believers in praise and prayer. They prayed, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth, the sea, and everything in them . . . look at their threats, and grant to Your servants to speak Your word with all boldness while You stretch out Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through The Name of Your holy servant Jesus.” (Acts 4:24-30). When they had prayed, the place began to shake and they were empowered by the Holy Spirit to speak the word of God boldly. Then in chapter 5, the apostles were again imprisoned by the religious leaders for their ministries. During the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and set them free to again teach The Name of Jesus.

So, imprisonment was not a new thing for Peter, or for the early church. They already had learned that prayer was the key that unlocked the prison doors and set them free. So, the church again, Luke says, “prayed fervently” for Peter. The word here in Greek is the same as the prayer of agony that Jesus prayed in the Garden the night before His arrest. It was long, agonizing and passionate prayer, pleading with God to deliver Peter once again. I wonder if the church prayed fervently for James too? Probably so, but James was killed anyway. So, what was the church expecting when they prayed for Peter? Were they praying, “O Lord, make Peter courageous during his hour of death to come. Comfort him in his chains and save his soul. Your will be done.”? Or did they have the guts still to pray, “Dear Sovereign Lord, You are our deliverer and shield, and we pray now that You will deliver Peter from Herod’s hands.”

How do you pray? How do you pray on those dark nights? A loved one becomes sick. Very sick. Do you pray for healing? God has sometimes denied your request. What if you pray and the person still dies? What does that say about your prayers? Or God’s power to heal? Are you tempted to lower your expectations in prayer so you can let God off the hook just in case He doesn't come through? Are you trying to help God in case He really isn't as powerful as you think He should be?

God doesn't need you to be His spin doctor. God knows our hearts and our passions, and there is no reason we should pretend to hide them from Him. Why lower our expectations and pray safe prayers? When it comes to prayer, there is no safe prayer. There is just you, the way things are, and your struggle to understand God. The most definitive words Jesus ever spoke on prayer were, “Ask. Seek. Knock.” He didn't tell us to pray for a sense of detachment or for the ability to just not care what happens. He taught us to pray specifically and boldly, and even with imperatives, like, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So, our faith is always on the line when we pray. For that reason, prayer is never safe and it’s always an adventure because we are putting our faith out there on the table and asking God to hear us and do what we ask of Him.

I am preaching from Acts today instead of Luke because I wanted us to confront this question right at the very beginning of our series: Does prayer work? Does it really change things? I believe the answer to the question is a resounding “Yes.” I also suppose that we should pray whether or not it “worked” because prayer is not so much about changing things as changing us. In prayer, we enter into The Presence of God. And to enter The Presence of God is to be changed. Dramatically. When we pray for others, we hold them before The Presence of God where they too may be confronted with the possibility of change. When we pray for the world, we bring the world before The Presence of God where it too can experience change in ways that we could never have imagined. You see, it isn't that prayer is powerful. It is God who is powerful, and to pray is to give ourselves over to that enormous power.

Does that mean that we will always receive what we pray for? As I was writing this sermon on Friday, I received a call from my dear friend Karen Edwards in Washington, D.C. Karen called to tell me that her husband, and my friend, Bill had died that morning. He fell ill while on a trip to Russia to adopt their new daughter, and he almost died before he could be brought home. For two weeks, people all over the world have been praying for Bill. Members of our congregation have been praying for him. Even non-believers told Karen they were praying for him. Friday morning he died. Karen told me that it was so hard to tell people, that took a chance on faith and prayed, that Bill had died. Did God not hear the prayers? Does prayer not work?

We will not always receive what we ask for in prayer. Our requests are never more than the invitation to enter into God’s Presence. There we discover that we receive not necessarily what we want, but God Himself. Sometimes, no matter how hard we pray, the loved one dies. Sometimes, even though you pray for your kids, they grow up and break your heart. Sometimes, good apostles like James were left in prison to be executed, in spite of the fervent prayers of the church. But to pray boldly for ourselves, or others, or even Herod, and to place all of those things into the hands of God is to say, “God, we know Your ways are not our ways. What we want is to understand Your will. Help us to see it!” We are told in 1 John, “If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” (1 John 5:14) The operative words there, of course, are “according to His will.” And how are you going to know what the will of God is unless you enter into prayer and stand in The Presence of God?

It is the dark nights that will help you to learn how to pray, and thus to struggle for the will of God. Peter had been through a couple of those dark nights already, and that had changed his perspective on how to survive this one. Surrounded by four squads of soldiers and prison chains, Peter laid down to sleep while the church prayed. When the angel appeared to Peter and a bright light shone around the room, the angel could not get Peter to wake up. He had to nudge Peter and say, “Get up!” Clearly, this was not a man worried about dying the next day. Perhaps this time he remembered how before he had escaped from prison to return and tell the powers that God is Sovereign and The Lord over all the powers, and that his life simply was a witness to the will of God. Maybe he had found the peace to surrender to the will of a loving God, whatever happened. Aren't we all looking for that kind of peace? It only comes by prayer.

We are told that Peter then followed the angel past the guards through the prison gates, not knowing if this was real or if he was seeing a vision. But when he got outside, “he came to himself” and realized he had been rescued. That is usually how God’s deliverance works. We cannot see it while it is happening. It is later that we look back and give thanks. Along the way, it seemed like just one more treatment of chemo, or one more difficult conversation with the spouse, or another financial burden. But God was at work in all of that. His Sovereign will was unfolding. In time, I believe we too will come to ourselves with the great “Aha!” We will give thanks for what we did not see, because we were not looking for angels that were there all the time delivering us into the unfolding purposes of God.

Prayer is the way God frees us from our bondage in order to do His will. But prayer also is the means by which we are reminded again where the true power lies. The true power lies not with governments or kings or soldiers – true power lies with The Sovereign Lord who made the land and the sea, and everything in them. That is the real truth of the universe. But our fear can cause us to get confused about power – and so we begin placing greater confidence, or fear, in the power of the throne than in the Power of the Universe. You can never sleep until you are clear where the power lies. At the beginning of this chapter, Herod was on the rampage, arresting and persecuting the church. The chapter opens with James dead, Peter in prison and Herod triumphing; it closes with Herod dead, Peter free, and The Word of God continuing to increase. It often takes a while to see where true power lies, but God’s power will triumph and His Kingdom always will increase.

So, we are convinced that prayer opens prison doors and leads us into the will of God. We know we should make it a priority. We intend to start our day with prayer. But all of those should's never overcome the greatest obstacle to prayer – our busyness. There is just so much to do. The day begins early, ends late, and it is jammed-packed in the middle. Who has time for silence and prayer? I face that struggle every day in my own life and walk with God. But in the words of Eugene Peterson, busyness is a lazy thing. It avoids the hardest work, which is to pray.

Prayer is hard work because it requires time spent with God – just like any relationship. Not all of the communication is exciting. Sometimes it may even be dull, or silent or boring. But that doesn't mean you are not doing it well. We do not pray to see angels light up our rooms. We pray to attend to The Presence of God in our lives, even in the ordinary times where we cannot see the hand of God so clearly.

As soon as Peter figured out what God was doing, the first thing he does is run over to the house where the church was praying. It’s as if he knew that’s what they would be doing. He gets to the front gate, starts knocking, and a servant girl named Rhoda answers the door. She came to quiet down this guy who was disturbing the prayer meeting. She opens the door, and there is Peter. Astonished, she leaves him at the door (Poor Peter), and runs inside to tell everyone, “Hey, Peter, the one you are praying for, is at the door!” They say to her, “You’re out of your mind.” Or in the more literal translation, “You've lost touch with reality.” Isn't that amazing? What they have been praying for happens, and they can’t believe it. All they can tell her is to be quiet so they could get back to praying for his release. They were so busy knocking on heaven’s door that they could not hear God knocking on their door.

There is no greater truth than The Presence and power of God in your life. He is there to deliver you from all the powers and evil that imprisons you. He is there longing to lead you out into the great adventure that awaits you in The Kingdom of God. He is knocking, knocking, knocking at the door. He wants to show you all the glorious things He is ready to do in your life. Wouldn't it be the most tragic of ironies if the thing that kept us from seeing God’s deliverance was that we did not believe our own prayers?

Prayer - “You have told us, O God, that we have not because we ask not. You have told us that You are more willing to give than we are to receive. You have told us that You long to hear the desires of our hearts. Give us the courage then to stand in Your Presence and listen to Your still small voice, that there we may learn to ask boldly, then to at least discover that it is You that we wanted all along. In The Name of Christ, amen.”


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