The Power of Prayer
The story of Peter’s miraculous escape from prison is one that is often told within Bible studies and Sunday School classes. We often focus on Peter’s escape. Sometimes we’ll look at the part about the people praying that didn’t believe he’d escaped and laugh and joke about how naive they were; how they didn’t realize how powerful God really was. However, these people fully understood the power of their God. As we look more deeply at the story, we can see that we often find ourselves in the same place that these people were on this night.
We first see the people praying in Acts 12:12-15. They are gathered together praying and don’t realize that Peter has escaped from prison and is at their door. As much as the servant girl, Rhoda, emphatically tells them, they dismiss her claims saying, “No, you’re mistaken,” or “It must be his ghost.” However, if we back up the story to Acts 12:2, we begin to see the big picture and the reason behind their skepticism.
James the apostle, the son of Zebedee, was captured by King Herod and ultimately killed. When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he figured he’d give the people an encore with Peter. Due to the Passover feast, Peter’s execution was delayed. We see in Acts 12:5 that the church was praying for Peter during his time in prison. We can easily reason that the same people had done the same thing when James was put in prison. While we may not attest to seeing many miracles now, these early Christians were no strangers to miraculous signs. Already in Acts 5 we saw an angel deliver the apostles from prison. We’ve seen people healed and raised from the dead. These early Christians were well aware of the power of their God. As such, I’m sure they fully expected James to miraculously escape from prison. After his death squashed all hope of that, it’s likely that many of them expected him to be raised from the dead. However, that didn’t happen either.
When Peter is thrown into prison, these people set to praying; however, this is the second go-round. They’d been in the same situation before, and it didn’t end as they had hoped. I know that I’m not alone when I say that I’ve had these same feelings. When I set to pray for healing or for the salvation of a loved one but in the back of my mind I’m preparing for the worst. I’m preparing for the sickness to end in death at the same time as I pray for healing.
These people were earnestly praying, but deep down they likely didn’t believe that it would make a difference, so when their prayer was answered, they didn’t believe it at first. Now, I could try diving into some explanation about why God seems to answer some prayers and not others, but honestly, that’s not the focus of this scripture. Are we to say that God loved Peter more than James or that the people praying lacked faith when they prayed for James but had faith when they prayed for Peter? No. All we know is that they prayed. Maybe they weren’t completely convinced that God would answer their prayers the second time around, but they believed and trusted in God. We can see that they believed because if they had been completely without faith, they wouldn’t have even bothered praying.
In the end, that’s all that we can do, pray to God and place our faith and trust in Him. There is power in prayer. While each of us has examples of prayers that maybe God didn’t answer how we wanted, we also have examples of prayers that God has answered, some of them he’s even answered in glorious and spectacular ways. There is power in prayer. It’s not a wishing well or a magic genie. Just because we pray doesn’t mean that something will happen, but I can tell you with certainty, if we don’t pray, nothing will happen. Our job is not to understand the reasoning behind what God does. Our job is to trust him and rest in his mercy, bringing to him our heavy burdens.
This week I would ask that you join me in lifting our burdens to the Lord, for those sick and hurting in our community, for families that have recently lost loved ones, for the changes in our community that are just upon the horizon, and for our Christian brethren across the world that are facing the ultimate test of faith, between choosing Jesus and choosing life. Let us lift up our burdens to the Lord. He is big enough to take them all.