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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 830 or 10:30 a.m. If you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, find [email protected] be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: There's a true story about a russian mission team that was over in Russia with the main objective of trying to figure out a new place to plant a church. And so if you're going to plant a church, of course the one thing you're going to be looking for is, well, where is there no church family? And so they began to survey and look at different areas all over the map, and they came to this one spot that was so intriguing. And the reason it was intriguing is because of what the stones that were left behind on that piece of property used to represent.
See, they decided to buy this piece of property and said, this is the place where we want to put a church. And what was interesting about this place is the stones that were left behind actually were the stones of an old russian gulag. And if you don't know what that is, around the Soviet Union's reign and time in Russia, from about, like, 1930 to 1950, they used to have these work camps and concentration camps and labor camps. And a lot of the people died within the stones of that building.
It became, for a lot of them, a prison.
What they decided to do is this. We're going to turn what used to be a prison into a church building.
They brought all of their supplies and different things. They were going to use the stones, but also add in their own materials. And so 1 st by 1 st, they were removing them to get ready to lay that foundation.
And as they were removing those stones, they came across a canister.
And so they took that canister, and they gave it to the guy that was leading their mission team. And he unscrewed the top, reached in, and in that canister was a note. He began to read the note, and as he was reading the note, he started crying, and then he started bawling.
This is what that letter said.
We are a community of believers who are being forced to take the stones of our church and turn them into our own prison where we will die.
But we are putting a prayer out there to the Lord that these stones will one day be a church again.
That letter that was found in that canister was written decades before this moment.
The reason I want to mention that to you this morning is that over the past few weeks, Brandon and I have been doing this series called a culture of prayer.
And when we talk about a culture of prayer, please understand this is not a theme. That when we talk about a culture of prayer, what we are doing as God's church is stepping into the power of what he's given us and getting to know the power that comes with that and the opportunity that comes with that. And it's so much more than just something that's happening right now that when we pray, a praying church is, in essence, sending canisters out into the future.
That when we pray in our assemblies, when we pray in our connect groups, when we pray up and down these halls, when we pray in our homes, when we pray during times of crisis, those are not prayers that are just being prayed for right now. That the prayers that we are praying in our homes, in our hallways, and praying in our connect groups, we are, in essence, sending canisters out into the future of God. Answering prayers, yes, now, but also prayers to come.
And what we're going to see today, that just like those christians then in acts chapter twelve, there is a church that is in the middle of a crisis.
When I think about crisis, I think about this guy, because he was someone that experienced a lot of them. And that's Henry Kissinger. He was the secretary of state and also the national security advisor during the Ford and the Nixon administrations. And if you know anything about those administrations in history from that time, there was scandal, there was challenge, there was obstacle, there was literally crisis after crisis during their administrations. And Kissinger is quoted as saying, as he was looking at the calendar, he said, all right, I look at next week, we have nothing on the calendar. Will someone please not schedule a crisis?
And at times we might think, you know, it would be easy and better if I could kind of just, like, pick and schedule my crisis. But the reality is, if we could do that, we would schedule no crisis. But here's the irony and the interesting part of it as we dig into acts twelve today, and when we even look at our own crisis, is the crisis oftentimes that Satan might use to try to destroy us.
We're going to look at a church that used the same crisis as an opportunity for God to develop them and to help them grow and to sleep and to obey and to step into what God wanted them to be. And so I want to ask you this question. When you have a crisis that's hit you, how do you respond?
I came across an article a few years ago that said the american's normal response to a cris is control.
And in that article, he mentions three things that are the most common responses that people have today. When cris does hit, those are pride, panic, and preemptive strike.
Panic is the decision sometimes you make that's almost impulsive, that you're in the middle of a crisis. So you might turn to a relationship that you ordinarily would never turn to. It's the decision you make to turn into maybe a substance that you ordinarily wouldn't turn to. You would buy something that you ordinarily wouldn't buy, that your instinct during a time of crisis is maybe to panic. For some, it's pride. And I would dare to say every single one of us can definitely relate to this one. Because during crisis, sometimes one of the things Satan wants more than anything is for you and I to isolate ourselves.
That we will say, well, I've got this. I can handle this. I don't need anybody. I don't need the church. I don't need my family. And then when we're isolated and we're disconnected, we see oftentimes that's when Satan capitalizes the quickest. Or sometimes it's this preemptive strike.
Preemptive strike is the idea of, like, when someone does something wrong to you, you're like, oh, you hit me. Oh, I'm going to hit you back even harder.
Oh, you trip me. I'm going to trip you ten times. It's the idea, you did this to me. I'm going to do it even more. So again, what is your response when crisis hits?
Well, what you're going to see in acts chapter twelve is that when the crisis hit, this church of Peter in prison and another one of their close friends and also an apostle James, has already died. They gathered in a home together and the church prayed.
Now, I want you to notice something about this text, that this text has two different scenes in it. And I'll go ahead and tell you. By the way, I changed the whole course of this lesson on Wednesday because originally my plan was just to focus on the people that were in the home praying, knowing tonight we're in this afternoon and even some right now, we're going to their connect group prayer nights and prayer times in each other's homes. And so I was just going to focus on that. But the more I got into the text, I noticed that most of the text is actually relegated to the one that's being prayed for more than even just the people that are praying for.
What I want to mention today is this, that when it comes to times of crisis and we are praying for people, or during a time of Cris and you're being the one prayed for, what I'm saying is there's a responsibility for both people.
Prayer is a two way street that when we are in crisis and we are being prayed for, we have a call. And Peter we're going to see has that and we're going to see what he does. But then on the flip side, the church has a call, too, and we're going to see what they did.
So I want to give you a little bit of context to acts twelve to help it maybe make a little bit more sense. So in acts twelve, the interesting part, that God's people were in the christians. They were experiencing a relatively short time of peace and prosperity after Paul's conversion. But then Herod as king, not because of spiritual reasons, but solely because of political reasons, he says, you know what? Maybe he's thinking his popularity is dying, that the interest of people thinking he's awesome is dying. So he thinks, you know what? I need to get some of the jewish leaders to find interest in me again. So I'm going to take somebody they love named James, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring him in, I'm going to put him in prison, and I'm going to have him beheaded.
And the people, as we're going to read in the text, they absolutely loved it.
He's like, all right, if he's doing that with James, and they're like, reacting like that, what if I get somebody that I know that they love even more and that's well known and get Peter and I bring him in, too?
See, here's the setting. You've got Peter that's in a prison cell, but then you have a church that's gathering in a living room together to pray.
So the first part I want to focus on is what in the world was Peter doing during the crisis?
And so here's what it says in acts twelve one. So about that time, Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church.
He had already killed James, the brother John, with the sword. When he saw that this was pleasing to the jews, he was like, all right, they like that. So I'm going to arrest Peter also. It says this was during the days of unleavened bread. And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivered him to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people. So here's the setting, and imagine you are in Peter's shoes for a second.
James becomes the very first apostle martyr.
And Peter picks up on the fact that it's the feast of unleavened bread. That means the town, most commentaries say, was packed with four times its normal population. That's why Herod's picking this moment. He's like, there's a big stage, there's a big crowd. It's an opportunity for me to bring Peter up in front of them and get more people to like what I'm doing.
And so here is Peter. He's in a prison cell.
And by the way, it says here that there were four squads of soldiers. They only sent four squads of soldiers around a prison if they were trying to protect that prison from someone from the outside coming in, trying to save them, to rescue them from their impending death. Do you think Peter gets the vibe of what's happening? Yes.
He knows that what happened to James is probably about to happen to me.
But the other thing that he's thinking about is this. If you notice in the text, it says this was the time of the feast of the unleavened bread.
The other thing I know Peter was thinking about was eleven years ago to this very moment.
Jesus had been arrested and was getting ready to go to the cross.
And Peter was one of the ones that said, oh, I don't know that man.
Do you see the weight of what Peter is thinking about at this very time?
That's his situation.
So what in the world is he doing knowing that his head might be on the chopping block? What in the world is he doing when he could be just plagued with guilt? This is what the text says Peter was doing.
And so while Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer was for him, made by the church. And then look what it says next. Now, when Herod was about to bring him out on that very night, Peter was sleeping.
Hold up, what?
He's sleeping.
And when you see that he was sleeping and you read that as an audience, you might think, did the sound booth guys up there, like, change the words? The guy's in prison. His friend just died. And he also surely is thinking about what he did to Jesus before.
Shouldn't it say he's pacing and he's plotting or even praising God? He is sleeping.
And it makes you wonder how in the world could he sleep in a moment like that? I told the early crowd I couldn't have enough melatonin or Tylenol PM to get me through to sleep in a moment like that. And keep in mind, not only is he sleeping knowing what he knows, but on top of that, notice what it says. He's sleeping between two soldiers.
Have you ever slept between people?
My experiences with our kids, we'll do something. If they've been good. We call it bed buddies. And the idea really is if they've been good, we'll let them get in bed with us and we'll watch a movie and fall asleep. And it is the single worst night of sleep you can ever have. You're getting elbows, you're getting knees. You wake up the next morning, all the children are in bed and Laurie and I'm dispersed to different beds. Okay. And if you've ever slept between someone, it's not the most rest, right?
But it says he's sleeping. But here's what I want you to notice about Peter. Peter has not always slept between storms. Peter's not always slept during difficult times. In fact, if you go back into the Bible in Matthew eight and in mark four, you'll remember a time where Jesus was on a boat sleeping while the apostles were frantically pacing back and forth. Now, as you think about that scene in Matthew eight and you think about the one in Mark four, here's what's really interesting. That precedes Jesus sleeping on that boat. If you remember in Matthew's account, in Matthew chapter eight, this man comes up to Jesus and he says, hey, all right. So one of the things that I want to tell you that I want to do is I want to follow you wherever you go. He's like, wow, that's awesome that you want to do that. But here's what I want you to know.
Foxes. Yeah, I know foxes. Yeah, well, they have holes to lay down in. And you know birds, right? Yeah, I know birds. Well, birds, they have nest.
But the son of man, I have nowhere to lay my head.
Do you see what he's saying? I never know where I'm going to sleep.
If you want to really count the cost of following me, you never know where you're going to sleep.
And I don't think it's accidental that that was mentioned right before Jesus gets on a boat. And in the middle of a storm, Mark's account says that he's not just sleeping, but he's sleeping on a what?
A pillow.
And that is so neat to me because I don't know, guys, if you've ever been on a trip with your wife, and she's like, I can't wait to go on this long trip so we can talk, but she brings a pillow, you're like, no, you don't want to talk. You want to sleep, right? You only bring a pillow on board if you plan to. What? Sleep.
And so in the middle of this storm, the apostles, they're frantic. They're pacing, they're panicking, moving back and forth, hoist the main sail, all of those kinds of things. Jesus is snoozing.
And of course, as the text says, he gets to the edge of that boat and he says, what? Peace. Be still.
Again, Peter didn't always sleep through storms, but here he is in a prison cell and he sleeps. The reason I want to mention that is that when we go back to how we handle crisis, and a lot of times our impulse being controlled, what's interesting is we have to remind ourselves that God can do way more while you and I are asleep than we are awake, straining and struggling and stressing.
In fact, you may know this if you know hebrew history, but the hebrew people absolutely love talking about rest. Because for them, it was a sign. It was a picture that when I rest, God is controlling things that I have no business controlling, and I can't control.
Peter sleeps. So what was Peter doing? I'll tell you what he was doing. He had the faith to sleep.
But the other thing that you notice about Peter in his posture as being the one prayed for, was what it says next. It says, so the angel that was standing next to him, there was this light that shone in the cell. And it says this, that he struck Peter on the side and woke him up and said, get up quickly. If you read the greek, the closest word we have in the English is smack, which is kind of funny. He's like, get up.
And the chains then fell off. The angel said, dress yourself. Put on your sandals. So he did it. He said to him, we'll wrap your cloak around you. Follow me. He went out and followed him. And he didn't even know what was being done by the angel. And if it was real, he thought he was seeing a vision. What's so interesting to me is not only did Peter have the faith to sleep, but he also had the faith to obey. He didn't know the details. He didn't know what was happening next. But you do notice the order, right?
That he stood up. And when he stood up, what happened? The chains fell off.
One of the most instagrammed parts of Christianity is this word, freedom. And it should be.
Jesus points to a life of freedom.
Paul in his epistles, points to the freedom we experience in Christ.
But I also want us to understand that what happens before freedom, and that is obedience.
Obedience always comes before freedom.
So as you're sitting there reading this narrative, and we're thinking, well, what does this have to do with me?
I'm not like Peter. I haven't been that kind of situation. Well, I want to tell you, you don't have to be in a prison, physically to be in a prison.
You don't have to be Peter to be in a real prison cell. Addiction is a prison.
Trauma is a prison.
Hiding and concealing sin is a prison.
So if you are in a prison, then what do you do?
A lot of times I know me, I resort ten things. No, if you notice in the text here, it's just the next right thing. Peter responded to the light that came into that prison.
Sometimes the most difficult step is also the most simple step, that the opportunity God provides, the invitation he offers, the prayer that's being offered, the opportunity to pray for, the opportunity to praise, is the next right thing. So notice what it goes on to say. It says, when they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to this iron gate that was leading into the city. It opened before them of its own accord. This was like before, know, you just walk up and it opens, right? It opened, and then it says this. And they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left. And when Peter came to himself, he's like, wow. Now I'm sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all the jewish people and what all the jewish people were expecting. Here's what's interesting about this whole situation and what it teaches us about prayer is that God, yes, will do for you and I what we cannot do for ourselves. But God won't always do for us what we can also do for us. And what I mean by that is this. Think back to Lazarus. Do you remember when Lazarus was in the tomb and Jesus said, lazarus, what? Arise. And Lazarus arose?
But it wasn't like he rose. He's like, what's up, guys? Like, he rose and he was still bound.
And so then he said, I want you guys, to unbind him. Do you think that the one that said, arise and can awaken him could also have been the one that could have unbound him?
Yeah, but I also think he's illustrating to us, listen, I'm going to do the thing that I can do, but I also need for you to do the thing that you can do. And by the way, doesn't that kind of teach us, too? It takes a community of people sometimes to help unbind that God's going to do his part. But when it comes also to the one being prayed for, we also have to do ours. Now, what was the church doing?
Well, look what it says in verse five. If you go back.
I love this, how it says, so Peter was kept in prison, and then there's that word. But that's kind of the Bible's way of saying, hey, something's coming. Yeah, Peter was in prison. But I got to tell you what was happening. There was earnest prayer for him being made by the church.
We fast forward, well, where were they? And look what happens. Peter has been released from prison by the power of God. And when Peter realized this, it says he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. Is it not interesting to you that his impulse reaction was to go where?
To a house.
That his impulse was to go to that house where he knew the people were.
And you'll continue to read in the text, he knocked at the door of that gateway, and this servant girl named Rhoda, she came and answered the door in recognizing Peter's voice in her joy. She was so excited, she didn't even open the gate, but ran back in while Peter was standing outside the gate.
And so they said to her, you are out of your mind. By the way, Peter's still outside.
But she kept insisting that it was so. And they kept saying, it's an angel. Do you know what they think? They think Peter's dead.
They really believe that his head was probably on the chopping block. They said, no, you can't be.
It's an angel.
And so I want to stop for just a second and point out that there was three different groups of people in that house.
The first group that you notice are the Marys. These are the people that open their homes.
These are the people that are hospitable.
But notice the next group of people that are in this prayer meeting in this home is the Rhodas.
These are the people that are oftentimes the overlooked people if you think about Rhoda, she had every strike against her. She was a girl in a society that gave no voice to girls.
She was a slave in a society that gave no voice to slaves. She was young in a society that gave no voice to the young.
And what's interesting to me about that, if you remember back to when Jesus flipped over the tables in the temple, a lot of times we'll just focus on the fact that he was mad that they were buying and selling. But if you actually look at what happens next when he flipped over the tables, it said he did this so the children could come in.
And the reason I mentioned that, not trying to get off course from this, but it's important to give voice to every person, no matter their background, no matter their demographic, that there's something we can learn from everybody. But even think about a child, for instance, what if a child says, hey, I think Peter's at the door, which, by the way, Peter's still outside the like, what if we actually took a second and listened to them and believed them?
What I'm saying is we have a lot we can still learn from Rhodas, but then here's the many.
This is the unnamed, the common people.
But when you look at this whole text in this powerful example, do you think this wonderful illustration that has been kept in that canister sent to us now that we are reading, like, would this have happened if the body of Christ had not gathered together in a home and prayed?
Now, we don't know the answer to that, but I have to think, no, but the other thing that encourages me in this text, by the way, Peter's still outside, is that they prayed that something would happen. But yet when the servant girl came and said, hey, he's there, what did they say? I can't be.
It's got to be an angel. Is that not encouraging to know that you don't have to have perfect faith to pray for me? I know my prayers are kind of like those. God's knocking at the door. I'm like, God, would you send like I did? You know that we don't always have that perfect faith.
And by the way, Peter's still outside.
Peter kept knocking. And when they opened the door and they saw him, they were amazed, but motioning to them with his hand to be silent. I don't know if it was one of those know. He described to them how the Lord brought him out of the prison, and we're going to come back to this part later. He said, tell these things to James and to his brothers.
And so then he departed the place and went to another.
So we talked about what Peter was doing. He was having the faith to sleep and the faith to obey. But what was the church doing? What I love about what the church was doing is whatever they were afraid about, they talked to God about. We said this at the very beginning of the series, that it may be a moment of invitation that you might think, man, the church doesn't need to know that, or that wouldn't be a big deal. Again, if it's big enough to worry about, it's big enough to pray about.
But you think about this situation and you think about that. That was their impulse. Not panic, not pride, not preemptive strike, but praying together.
There's a pattern in the book of psalms that I never knew that was purposely put there in certain ways.
There's a guy that wrote a book called praying through the psalms. It wasn't Randall. It was another man. And the book that he wrote, he pointed out something in that book that I've never heard before. And this is what it said, is that there's certain psalms that are called evening psalms. And then there's other psalms that sometimes are called morning psalms. And in some of your bibles, like, I have an esv, and it doesn't label them as such, but I know certain translations that under the heading of those psalms, it'll say evening psalm, and it'll say a morning psalm. And you're like, well, what does this have to do with what I'm afraid of? Well, let me ask you, when is the time? And maybe you're like me in this, that you worry the most.
I know for me, it's at night. It's at night. My mind runs. It's at night. My mind thinks of all the things I forgot to do. And like, oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. And then that keeps me. And my mind starts running. It's at night that I tend to worry. And so what's interesting is psalm four was actually written as an evening psalm, and the hebrew people used it as that. And if you notice, at the very end of psalm four, it says this.
After he shares all of his worry, he says, at the very end, and this is right before we shift to psalm five, in peace, I will both lie down, and I will sleep.
It wasn't melatonin. It wasn't Tylenol pm that helped Peter get through that moment. It was the peace of God that gave him rest.
And he says this, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell safely that's the evening psalm.
Psalm five is the morning psalm. And the idea of the morning psalm is the idea of when you wake up, you had just prayed what you prayed last night, and you wake up that morning, you say, all right, God, there's going to be challenges, there's going to be obstacles, there's going to be opposition.
So here's what he says. Give ear to my words, o Lord. Consider my groaning. Give attention to my cry, my king, my God. For to you do I pray. Then notice what this says, o Lord. In the morning you hear my voice, and in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you. And look what he says next. And then I just watch.
What do you do in the middle of a crisis?
Sometimes it's pride, sometimes it's panic. Sometimes it's preemptive strike. Do you see this pattern that was here?
The things that I'm going to worry about I'm going to give to you. But when I wake up this morning, there's going to be challenges, there's going to be obstacles. I'm going to give them to you and I'm just going to what?
Watch.
Because God can get way more done while you and I are sleeping than while we're awake, stressing and straining. Do we have the faith to sleep? But the other thing that I noticed about the church is this is the way that they treated prayer.
They didn't treat it like some domestic intercom. And what I mean by that is like, God, if you're out there, I know you are, but if you hear this, could you possibly. That's not how they prayed and that's not how they treated prayer.
And if you actually look at the spiritual warfare parts of the Bible, do you know what's oftentimes the most mentioned spiritual discipline?
Prayer.
Prayer.
The reason I give this as an example is I've had the privilege of being the cabin counselor at camp the past few years for the youngest boys, and it's a blast. And the fun part of it for us is we've maybe unfairly gotten the reputation of pranking people.
And thanks to Peter O'Donnell, we have stepped even more into that reputation. And so the boys almost feel like we have a reputation to know. And whenever they pack their stuff for camp, one of the things that's in almost every single one of their backpacks this past year were walkie talkies. There's walkie talkies and walkie talkie batteries everywhere on those floors. And so they would have those walkie talkies. They would be using them during the day to be planning and plotting what they're going to do next and who they're going to Flamingo and whose cabin they're going to roll, if that's what we were going to do. And those were the kind of things that were happening on that walkie talkie. We're communicating about what's going to happen next and what was interesting. They kept those things by them.
They were talking about what we're going to do next and how we're going to do it and how we're going to get there. And they were listening to every single thing that they heard on those walkie talkies. But what's interesting is in the morning, when you heard the man get over the speaker and say, good morning, campers. It's time to wake up, guess what? It was.
No one wanted to wake up.
How do we treat prayer?
Do we treat it like that domestic intercom, or do we really believe that it's a wartime walkie talkie? It's this constant conversation in every single moment, every single crisis. That that's our impulse.
What was neat is getting ready for this study was something that I wish I would have read at the very beginning of our series. But you might be familiar with Barna group. Barna Group has done a lot of studies on why young people have been falling away from the church. They did a lot with David Kinneman called Unchristian. And basically the book covers 18 to 30 year olds. Well, they did this next study, which I think is so neat, especially knowing what we're going to do today. And that was a study on people praying together in their homes. And what was neat is they mentioned four different things that stood out to them that happened as a result of praying together in homes. It says, this prayer in smaller groups lets us see God show up for other people. Do you all remember earlier in the text in acts twelve, when Peter, they finally answered the door after he had been knocking? They came there and opened the door and he said, hey, I'm alive, okay? Obviously, will you please let James and the other brothers know, you know what I'm saying? He's saying, like, what God did for me, he can do for you, that when we get together and we pray for each other, we also, even tonight and today we're going to talk about rejoicing with those who rejoice. And I don't know about you all, sometimes isn't not easier to weep with those who weep than to rejoice with those who rejoice. Because sometimes what you'rejoicing for is the very thing that you want.
But oftentimes when we get together in those times of prayer and we see God work in the lives of someone else, it gives you faith, it gives you hope, it gives you inspiration to keep pushing and to keep hanging in there. The second thing is this that he mentioned was it also helps us to avoid the I'll pray for you pitfall. And if you were with us in week two of this series, we didn't say, it's wrong to say I'm going to pray for you. But yet you looked through the Bible and you noticed that whenever someone needed prayers, what did they do? They prayed, and they took that time. And there's certain moments where we can't take that time and understand that. But I thought that was interesting. And here was the third one that we develop. Let's pray now. Leaders. In fact, one of the things that's talked about is that for some people, they might not have, they feel like the ability or the courage to teach a class, but you get them in that setting where they can pray with somebody.
In fact, we went to a workshop not long ago that talked about that one of the quickest ways that this church had grown their leadership through deacons and elders was by people taking leadership in their homes and praying.
But the fourth one that I thought was so neat, and I can't wait to show you these stats, is that we develop a house of prayer, not just for us, but also for our neighbors. See, what they did is they looked at, all right, of these families who regularly pray together in their homes, what's happening? Here's what they found. This was from the study done in 2022. 46% ended up praying with their neighbors, 51% ended up enjoying deep conversations with their neighbors, and 85% have friends that they count as family. Here's what their description was of why this is when we pray for our friends and neighbors, our hearts become burdened for them, and we naturally find ourselves more intentional in reaching out to them, talking with them, and finding opportunities to get together with them.
What happened in this narrative, you have Peter, the one that was being prayed for, that had the faith to sleep and the faith to obey, then you had a church that whatever they were worried about, whatever they were concerned about, they brought it before God in prayer, not as some domestic intercom, but as a wartime walkie talkie. Was it perfect faith? Absolutely not. But it was the faith enough to pray.
What Brandon talked about in week one of this series was the power of prayer. And I hope you see that that's what prayer does. Prayer turns ordinary men and women into people of power. I mean, think about what set up this entire scene in the first place.
It's highlighted, yes, that the angel fetched Peter out of prison. But was it not prayer that fetched the angel that fetched Peter out of the prison?
It comes back to that. And so you have a church that doesn't gather to plot, they don't gather to plan, but their first inclination is to gather together and to pray.
Maybe you're here this morning, and one of the things that you're struggling with is what we talked about earlier is I'm struggling with this. This is my crisis. I've tried panic, I've tried pride, I've tried preemptive strike, but I haven't reached out to anybody to pray.
And I want you just to consider for a second that maybe the prayer that you ask for this church family to offer up for you this morning, maybe you walk to one of our shepherds that's going to be at one of the exits, or maybe you come down here.
Could it possibly be that that prayer that you request today is actually a canister for you into the future?
Do you believe that?
That the prayers that are prayed today are prayers that are going to live long past you as a church family, as people who pray? That's what we want to do for you again. If it's big enough to worry about, it's big enough to pray about. If it's on your heart, I'm telling you, it's on God's heart, too. Maybe you're here today and you think about what we talked about last week, when romans eight talks about how, when we don't even know what to pray or say, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. When we have those groanings that are too deep for words. Like, man, I want that. Like, we talked about how Hannah, you read that almost like, at times when we read her narrative, like, man, that's awesome that happened to Hannah. I wish that could happen to me. And God's like it does.
If you have put on Christ and you have the Holy Spirit, you have what Hannah had even more. You have something even better. You don't have to go to there.
And so maybe you want to have that. You've never made that decision to put on Christ in baptism, to have him who can take your thoughts, your worries, your concerns, your heartache, whatever it is, and bring it up when you don't know what to say. Whatever you need if it's prayer, if it's to put on Christ in baptism, please understand we would love the opportunity to lift that up in prayer and to bring it before our father. Whether you come before one of the elders back there or come down here, let us pray for you and let us encourage you while we stand and we sing this song.
