Naylor Community
Christian Church
I. Introduction
-- turn in Bibles to Acts 12:1-19a
Acts
12:1 It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the
church, intending to persecute them. 2 He had James, the brother of John, put
to death with the sword. 3 When he saw that this met with approval among the
Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of
Unleavened Bread. 4 After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over
to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him
out for public trial after the Passover.
5
So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for
him.
6
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.
7 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.
8
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. 9 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. 10 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.
11
Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord
has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the
Jewish people were hoping would happen.”
12
When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John,
also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. 13 Peter
knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the
door. 14 When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back
without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
15
“You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was
so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
16
But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they
were astonished. 17 Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and
described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other
brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.
18
In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had
become of Peter. 19 After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not
find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed.
-- this is not what I thought we’d
be talking about this morning -- with all the momentous events going on in
Israel right now, I had planned on sharing with you a message about Ezekial’s
prophecy about Israel and the war that God would win on their behalf right
before the start of the events of the Book of Revelation
-- but every time I tried to work on
that message, I got led back to this passage -- this passage came up multiple
times this week -- in my devotions -- in newsletters I read -- in podcasts -- eventually,
even I was able to figure out that this is where God wanted us to be this
morning
-- and, to be honest with you, I don’t
know why -- it’s a very straight-forward story -- a very straight-forward
message -- but there is something that God wants us to see and to get from this
passage today
-- so, today, our focus will be on
the story of Peter’s miraculous deliverance from prison by God in response to
the prayers of the church
-- prayer is something that has
always been somewhat mysterious and misunderstood -- the Bible clearly tells us
to pray -- to make our requests known to God -- Jesus prayed constantly
throughout the gospels -- and His disciples longed to know how to pray as He
did
-- but then the Scriptures tell us
that God knows our needs before we even mention them -- that He knows every
word that we are going to say before they are formed on our tongue -- and He
knows what He will do -- so, why pray?
-- if God is just going to do what
He wants regardless of our intercessions and pleas, why bother?
-- well, we’re going to talk about
that a little today and even if we don’t come up with any definitive answers, hopefully,
we’ll leave here with at least a little more understanding of the nature of
prayer and its relationship in the life of a Christian
-- when it comes to prayer, I have
always thought the prayers of our children were the best -- they come from innocent
hearts, full of faith -- and their prayers carry truth and honest questions before
the throne that we sometimes fail to do as adults
-- I ran across some prayers offered
up by children that I wanted to share with you as we open this message
-- 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, 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
-- you see what I mean? -- I just love these
prayers! -- They’re so honest, aren’t they? -- so matter-of-fact -- you can see
the hearts of these kids and how they relate to God
-- I’ve been in a lot of prayer meetings
in my life -- I’ve sat around tables with others as everyone has taken turns
praying -- and, I can tell you, our prayers as adults are usually not as real
or as powerful as these prayers from the hearts of kids
-- and it’s common for us to hear about
the prayers of the early church -- to hear that God moved and did such
miraculous things as we read about hear in Acts in response to their great
prayers -- but is that really true?
-- it’s obvious that the early church
prayed -- we see that in Scripture -- they gathered to pray a lot -- you can
honestly say that the early church was founded and saturated in prayer -- but were
they that much better at praying than us? -- did God move only because of the
depth of their prayers? -- is that why we don’t see Him moving in similar ways
today?
-- or did God do miraculous things in
spite of their feeble attempts at prayer? -- in spite of their failures in
their prayer life?
-- let’s look at this passage from Acts 12
at a prayer meeting of the early church and see what we can learn about their
prayer life and about our own prayers in the process
II. Scripture Lesson (Acts 12:1-19a)
-- look with me again at verse 1
Acts
12:1 It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the
church, intending to persecute them. 2 He had James, the brother of John, put
to death with the sword. 3 When he saw that this met with approval among the
Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of
Unleavened Bread. 4 After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over
to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him
out for public trial after the Passover.
-- to give you the context and
background of this passage, Acts 12 opens somewhere around 43-44 AD, which we
know for a certainty based upon the historical date for the death of King
Herod, which was in 44 AD
-- and, just so you know, this Herod
is Herod Agrippa I -- he was the grandson of Herod the Great, who had all the
babies killed in Bethlehem during the time of Jesus -- and the nephew of Herod
Antipas, who had John the Baptist killed -- and, finally, he was the father of
Herod Agrippa II, who we read about later in the Book of Acts as the judge in a
court case against the Apostle Paul
-- so, the timeframe of this passage is
about AD 43-44, about 9 years after the persecution of Stephen by the Jews
-- after the death of Stephen, the
early church had undergone a period of intense persecution led by Saul,
Gamaliel’s disciple -- but after Saul’s experience with Christ on the Damascus Road
and his subsequent conversion and transformation from Saul to the Apostle Paul,
the church had lived in relative peace
-- yes, there was some opposition to
the gospel as it was shared in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria -- but for the
most part, the persecution was minimal -- and the disciples were able to go to
the temple to pray and preach and were not bothered to any great extent on a
regular basis
-- in this intervening time between
Stephen’s martyrdom and the start of Chapter 12, the church had become
comfortable -- complacent, even
-- some would even say it was on the verge
of turning into another sect of Judaism -- another branch of the Jewish
religion -- and, left alone, that is likely what would have happened
-- but that was not God’s plan and that
was not what Jesus commanded in the Great Commission from Matthew 28:18-20 -- Jesus
had told His disciples they were to make disciples and to carry the gospel from
Jerusalem and Judea and into the whole world -- but as of yet, they hadn’t done
so
-- as Chapter 12 opens, we see that the
gospel had been carried to Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, but only to the Jews
there -- the church is still operating as a Jewish sect -- it is only at the
very beginning of Chapter 12 that we start to see some people sharing the
gospel with the Greeks -- with the Gentiles -- but it is incidental -- not
intentional
-- the early church was still very Jewish
and was only spreading the gospel to the Jews, despite God’s commands
-- and when the church fails to act
as God commands, history shows that God will intervene -- in many cases, God allows
persecution to come against the church in accordance with His will to force a
change -- and history shows that when persecution comes, the church tends to grow
-- sometimes, the church grows larger as it spreads geographically and more
people come to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior -- and sometimes it grows
deeper, as persecution forces people to truly decide what they believe and the
extent their faith and belief is allowed to affect their personal lives
-- that is where we are at the start
of this chapter, as we see persecution once again coming against the church
from high places -- it appears that God has allowed this to happen so that the
church will begin to share the gospel with the Gentiles and carry it to the
whole world, as Jesus commanded
-- persecution becomes the catalyst
for the start of the missionary outreach to the Gentiles that we read about in
the rest of the Book of Acts, primarily through Paul’s missionary journeys --
so, Chapter 12 is pivotal in the Book of Acts and marks the start of the
missionary movement in the early church
-- moving on…
-- Luke tells us that Herod set out to
arrest members of the church, intending to persecute them -- KJV and other
translations phrase this as Herod “laid his hands on them” or “stretched forth
his hands” -- Herod stretching forth his hands now may indicate that he had
been bound in some way up to this point -- restrained by God from fully pouring
out his evil intent on the church -- but now God has allowed this to occur, in
accordance with His will
-- contrast this with what Scripture tells
us about the hands of Jesus -- when He stretched forth His hands or laid them
on others, it was to bring healing, restoration, and salvation
-- it reminds us that there are always
hands reaching out to us, even today -- some stretch out their hands to bring good
in our lives -- while others stretch out their hands like Herod, with designs
for evil
-- so, as Herod stretched out his hands
for evil to arrest the members of the church, one of those he managed to capture
just happened to be James, the third highest leader in the church at that time
-- this is James, the brother of
John -- one of the Sons of Thunder, as Jesus called them -- one of the special
group of disciples that Jesus continually singled out to be with Him on special
occasions -- it was always Peter, James, and John -- this is that James
-- Herod arrested him and persecuted
him -- tortured him, in other words -- eventually, killing him by beheading him
with the sword
-- and, since the Jews applauded his
action in killing James, Herod continued his campaign against the Christians --
capturing Peter, the leader of the church, and throwing him into prison with
the intent of having him put to death, too
-- the text says that Peter was
going to have a public trial, but the outcome was already determined -- Peter
was going to be executed -- Herod was not going to let him go
-- so, how did the church react to
the death of James and the subsequent capture of Peter?
-- verse 5
5
So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for
him.
-- the church earnestly prayed to
God for him -- certainly, they were praying for his safety -- his release --
for a miracle to happen -- but given what had happened to James, you have to
wonder how much hope they truly had for God to hear them and move in response
to their prayers
-- isn’t that true of all of us? -- like
I talked about a few minutes ago, in honesty, we don’t pray like we should -- we
don’t pray in complete faith that God will hear our prayers and respond
accordingly
-- we tend to resemble those that
James talked about in James 1:5-8, who go to God and ask Him for wisdom and
other blessings, but we ask with doubt and not in faith -- a condition that he
calls double-minded
-- and I would guess that the church
here in Acts 12 was in the same place -- certainly, they had prayed for James
with just as much intensity and earnestness as they are praying for Peter --
and then James had died
-- so, Luke tells us here that they
are earnestly praying for Peter, but are they really? -- or are they letting
their doubts affect their prayers, as we do so often?
-- very often, we read the Bible and
we get the impression that the early church had it all together -- they were
the pinnacle of Christianity -- they were united -- they were super faithful --
and their prayers were faith-filled and powerful
-- but as we’ll see here, the early
church really wasn’t that different from us -- they had divisions -- they
argued among themselves -- they had doubts and misgivings -- and their prayers
were not as faith-filled or powerful as we’ve been led to believe
-- and that’s not a knock on the
early church -- remember, our faith is not in them -- our faith is in Christ
-- and when we begin to realize that
the early church was just like us and when we see what God did through them, it
should encourage us in our own faltering walk with Christ
-- we begin to realize that the
church didn’t begin to grow and spread to the whole world because of the
strength and faith of its early members -- it grew despite them -- despite
their doubts and weaknesses -- and if God can do miraculous things through them
-- if God can move in miraculous ways in response to their faltering prayers --
then how much more can He do through ours, even if we think our prayers are
less powerful and less effectual than the early church’s?
-- verse 6
6
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.
7 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.
8
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. 9 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. 10 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.
11
Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord
has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the
Jewish people were hoping would happen.”
12
When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John,
also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. 13 Peter
knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the
door. 14 When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back
without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
15
“You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was
so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
-- the night before Peter’s trial,
as the church was earnestly praying for him, an angel of the Lord appeared in
Peter’s cell -- now, keep in mind that Peter is guarded by 16 soldiers, with
two of them chained to him, one on each side -- he’s in a cell behind locked
doors, and the gate to the prison itself is locked
-- the angel strikes Peter on his
side to wake him up, which says a lot about Peter’s faith -- I’m not sure how
deep I would sleeping on the night before a trial, knowing it is likely that I
would be executed the next day
-- but Peter is sleeping so soundly,
he doesn’t wake up at the appearance of the angel, so the angel has to strike him
on the side to wake him up and get his attention
-- Peter doesn’t have a clue what’s
going on -- he thinks it’s a dream -- but he does what the angel says -- he
puts on his clothes and follows the angel past the guards and through the
locked door and out the gate into the city
-- when the angel leaves him, Peter
finally realizes that this is real -- he is really outside the walls of the
prison -- so, he immediately heads to the house of Mary, the mother of John
Mark -- just as an aside, a lot of people believe that Mary’s home was where
Jesus held the last supper with His disciples -- so this was a place where the
early church gathered -- and this where Peter knew he would find the church
-- and we have to admit, despite any
doubts the church might have had -- any hesitation or unbelief they might have
carried with them -- they were there, praying together, in the middle of the
night -- as Peter slept, the church prayed -- at the very least, they were
persistent in their prayers -- probably more so than us
-- and so, Peter knocks on the door
and tells Rhoda to open up -- that he is there and has been released from
prison -- Rhoda is so excited she runs back to tell the others without even
opening the door first
-- she exclaims, “Peter is at the
door!” -- and here’s where we see evidence of the double-mindedness of the
church -- even though they had gathered in the middle of the night to pray
earnestly for Peter and for God to release him, when Rhoda tells them that Peter
is there, they don’t believe her -- they say, “You’re crazy -- you’re out of
your mind -- it can’t be Peter -- it must be his ghost” -- or his angel,
depending on your translation
-- verse 16
16
But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they
were astonished. 17 Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and
described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other
brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.
18
In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had
become of Peter. 19 After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not
find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed.
-- there’s Peter -- patiently
knocking on the door as Rhoda has run off and not opened it -- eventually, the church
followed Rhoda back to the door and, to their surprise, found Peter himself
standing there
-- he tells how God has rescued him
from Herod’s prison, and asks them to tell the others about it -- this James he
mentions here might be James the Lesser, who was one of the original Apostles,
or it might be James, the brother of Jesus, the author of the Book of James --
who is now a believer and leader in the church
-- so, after sharing the good news
of his release from prison, Peter goes away, probably to a secret location
known by the other leaders of the church, who undoubtedly were going to meet
him there
-- Herod discovered Peter had
escaped, and then executed the guards for their failure to keep the prisoner in
custody
III. Application
-- this story revolves around prayer -- as
we discussed, Luke tells us in verse 5 that the church was earnestly praying to
God for Peter -- we can surely assume that they did the same for James -- in
fact, it’s not a stretch to assume that their earlier prayers were more fervent
-- more earnest -- than those they lifted up for Peter
-- if you think about it, they didn’t fully
know Herod’s intent with James -- they probably prayed with full faith in God
moving on his behalf and assumed that God would somehow deliver James from
prison -- so I would guess their earlier prayers were more faith-filled
-- just like we were talking about with
kids -- those first prayers for James were more real and more honest because
they hadn’t had the experience of praying for something important and seeing
God say, “No” -- they hadn’t experienced the disappointment of God not doing
what they prayed for
-- and now, after James’ death, the church
still gathers to pray, but their faith in prayer has to have been rocked -- I’m
certain that their prayers now for Peter were more uncertain -- more
doubt-filled -- more hesitant
-- as we saw, they were faithfully praying
-- they were gathered together in the middle of the night praying for Peter --
but their response to Rhoda’s announcement that Peter was at the door showed
they prayed with less faith and more doubts than before
-- so, make sure you are tracking what
happened here -- the church prayed with complete and total faith for James’ release,
and he was executed by Herod -- then the church prayed half-heartedly --
double-mindedly -- for Peter’s release, and didn’t believe it when it happened
-- what can we glean from this? -- what is
the take-home message for us today in regards to prayers in our own lives and
in the life of this church?
-- I think the first thing we need to
really wrap our heads around and understand is that God is sovereign -- and sometimes
God chooses to respond to our prayers in ways that we do not understand and that
bring us earthly grief
-- James’ death, although carried out by
Herod, was appointed and authorized by God -- and what may seem to us a life
cut short was in reality the homecoming of a faithful servant and saint for God
-- we have to understand that for God,
death is not the horrific and heart-rending affair it is for us -- it is not
the bitter experience that the human mind thinks it is -- for if someone is a
Christian, then at the moment of their passing, they are in the presence of God
-- so, while James was not delivered back
into the hands of the church in a miraculous way as Peter was, his deliverance
was no less miraculous as he was released from the hands of Herod into the
awaiting arms of God
-- this is something the early church was
starting to learn -- and this is something we have to learn and we have to
remember when we earnestly pray for someone’s deliverance or for their healing
and God doesn’t do what we ask for or expect -- the death of a loved one is not
a failure of God or a failure on our part in praying for them -- but a gift of grace
that we need to learn to celebrate and accept -- as the Bible says in Psalm
116:15, “Precious in the sight of God is the death of His saints”
-- this is a hard lesson, but it’s one we
must learn and accept as we continue to lift our prayers up earnestly and
faithfully before the Father
-- as J.D. Walt shared in a devotional, there
are three things we want to avoid when our prayers aren't answered according to
our expectations:
-- First, we don't blame God -- God is
sovereign -- God is in charge, not us -- and whatever happens is what God allows
to occur -- we have to keep in mind that we live in a fallen world and that bad
things happen to good people in this world -- that’s not God’s fault -- it’s a consequence
of our sin
-- sometimes, God will act in miraculous
ways to bring healing or deliverance in the face of evil -- but if God chooses
not to act, what happens next is not His fault -- it is the direct consequence
of living in a fallen world
-- Second, we don't blame the
effectiveness of our prayers -- if someone dies, as James did in this passage,
it’s not because our prayers were not up to snuff -- it’s not because we didn’t
pray hard enough -- it’s not because we didn’t pray good enough -- it’s simply
because God chose a different answer to what we were praying, and we have to
accept that His decision is the best, even if we don’t understand it
-- think about what we’ve seen in this
passage concerning the prayer life of the early church -- they were persistent
in their prayers -- they gathered together to pray earnestly for James and for
Peter -- but they weren’t uber-prayers, like we often think -- they prayed with
the same doubts and hesitation that we pray with -- they probably struggled
with words -- not knowing what to say or how to say it -- I would wager that
their prayers weren’t the eloquently worded prayers that we see written down or
that we hear from scholars and esteemed theologians today
-- no, their prayers were like ours -- faltering
-- not eloquent or perfect -- just simple prayers lifted up in faith -- and the
point is that God still heard them and still did miraculous things, despite
their inability to pray like theologians
-- just as a mother hears the jumbled
words of a toddler and understands what they need and gets up to meet those
needs, so God hears our jumbled words of prayer and knows our needs and does
what needs to be done in response to our cries for help
-- it’s not about the prayer itself -- it’s
about the God we are praying to
-- and, finally, we don't blame the
efficacy of the faith of those for whom we are praying or the faith of those
who are praying
-- I once had a friend in the hospital who
had been seriously hurt in an industrial activity -- his mother-in-law was
there, and she tried to get me to agree with her that the reason he was hurt
and wasn’t healed was because he didn’t have faith -- that is absolutely not
true
-- James didn’t die because he didn’t have
faith in God or because the faith of those gathered to pray for him in Mary’s
home wasn’t strong enough -- Peter wasn’t released because he had more faith
than James or because the faith of those praying for him was greater than that
of those praying for James -- the result of prayer is up to God
-- I’ve had people ask me to pray for
their situation because they believe God hears my prayers above theirs --
because my faith was stronger than them -- and I’ve told them, it’s not the strength
of your faith that matters -- it’s not the eloquence of your prayer -- God
hears our prayers, both when our faith is strong and our doubts overwhelm us and
when the words just won’t come the way we want
-- I like the way J.D. put it:
“A lot of times when you are praying into
a desperate situation it is going to feel like no one is home and no one cares.
That is not true. Your feelings will deceive you. Your faith must lead you.
Desperation keeps asking. Determination keeps seeking. Dogged audacity keeps
knocking. God has created a realm for divine-human collaboration. It is called,
"Prayer and Faith." On the one hand, prayer is so simple a child can
grasp it. On the other hand, prayer is so complex and sophisticated a seasoned
saint can't fully comprehend it.”
-- so, why pray?
-- we pray because Jesus told us to pray
-- because pray aligns our hearts and our will with Him -- prayer grows our
relationship and teaches us to trust God in all things
-- we pray because prayer calls upon the
resources of the Lord God Almighty -- when faced with overwhelming odds -- when
faced with the reality of evil that comes from walking in this fallen world --
we can lose heart -- we can feel hopeless -- powerless -- but prayer changes
everything -- prayer is the call of our hearts for help from the only One who
is able to do something about our situations
-- and, finally, we pray because we love
-- to go before God on behalf of another person is to love them, as Jesus commanded
-- when we pray for someone’s healing -- for salvation -- for deliverance --
for help in their lives -- we are praying the love of Christ for them -- our prayers
are an act of love on behalf of another
-- to quote J.D. Walt again:
“Could God prevent every unfortunate,
hard, bad, and tragic thing from happening? Of course, God could do that. This
is not the world we inhabit; nor the time we live in. There are two names for
that world and time: Eden and Eschaton. In Eden, before the fall, human beings
lived in perfect peace with the living God. In the Eschaton (the end of all
things broken and the fulfillment of all things made new), we will live in the
new creation with no more tears, no more darkness, and no more evil. For the
moment, we live in a fallen and corrupted creation; in the time between Eden
and Eschaton. We live on a battlefield.
“It is simply unreasonable to expect God
to intervene in every single situation and resolve it to our expectations. What
we don't realize is the overwhelming number of times God does intervene. The
truth—the most significant intervention of God happened on the cross when he
crushed sin and defeated death. The other thing we have a scant idea of is how
the prayers of God's people figure into the extraordinary interventions of God.
Prayer is the offense, the secret weapon, and the movement of divine love on the
battlefield of the earth.”
-- as God’s church in this place, our call
is simply to pray and to trust -- to pray without ceasing -- to pray earnestly
-- so that our hearts might align with God’s -- our will might align with God’s
-- and our relationship with Him might grow
-- to pray is to believe -- to pray
is to trust -- to pray is to have faith in God, no matter His decision -- the
truth is some of our prayers will be answered according to our expectations and
others will not -- but the decision is God’s -- and as His people, we have to
trust that whatever happens is His will and is to our ultimate good
-- and so, we pray despite our
ability -- we pray even when we feel we don’t know how -- even when we don’t
have the words to lift up or our words are not as smooth or eloquent as we
would like
-- we pray even when our faith is
small and the mountain looms large and hope is fleeting because we know that it
isn’t about the words we say or the prayer we lift up -- it’s about the God we
are praying to -- the God we are crying out to for help in our situation
-- and we trust that God will hear
our hearts even if the words of faith don’t come and that He will do good for
us and for those we pray for -- even if the good He chooses to do isn’t what we
expected and even if we don’t understand or like His response
-- we pray because God tells us to
and because God wants us to call on Him -- to come to Him with our needs -- to
share our lives with Him -- to tell Him about our day and our needs and what’s
going on -- we pray because we are in a relationship with the Lord God Almighty
and He is our Father and He loves us and cares what happens to us
-- that is why we pray -- and that
is the message that we need to take home from this passage today
-- and with that, let us join
together in prayer as we close this message
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