Persistent Prayer

Acts 12 walks us through the absolutely wild story of Peter’s supernatural rescue from prison.

He gets thrown in jail due to his faith and declaration of and in Jesus, and has a public execution scheduled for the very next day. Not an incredibly stellar Tuesday. While he’s in his cell, the church gets together at somebody’s house and begins a prayer meeting that goes all through the night, and in the early hours of dawn, something unexpected happens… Peter shows up!

While they were praying, God had His ear and heart turned to them and was working something miraculous. A locked cell, opened in the middle of the night, shackles turned into freedom so that Peter could make it back to the church that had been praying and asking on his behalf.

Those are the bold words at the top of the newspaper. It’s the radical story that everyone recalls from Acts 12, and for good reason. But for just a moment, let’s dive into the paragraphs and details beneath the headline:

It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also.

- Acts 12:1-3

Peter was miraculously freed by the power of God, but James was unjustly put to death. Why?

Why did God respond with a miracle to prayers for Peter, but seemingly silent to prayers for James?

These men were both in His most inner of circles, two of His three core disciples… it couldn’t have been that He preferred Peter over James, and we have to assume that the church definitely prayed for both of them. We know there was an all night prayer meeting on Peter’s behalf; it’s more than safe to believe they reacted and responded in an identical way on James’ behalf. The two of them were arrested and imprisoned due to the exact same unjust cause of the exact same unjust king, situations almost, if not completely, identical. So, it begs the question, why God? Why did James have to die if you had the power to deliver Peter to safety?

Honestly…I don’t know. That’s truly the only honest response you’ll get from me.

However, this is what I do know - God works slowly out of compassion, not out of apathy.

We all know and are at times painfully aware that God doesn’t always resolve every piece of corruption at the drop of a hat. His slow, yet incredibly loving way of bringing redemption asks us to exercise both patience and endurance, especially in our, and in the world’s, suffering. Every time I read Acts, I’m witnessing a beautifully resilient faith - a body of people who pray to God through both the miracles and the mystery.

At times, I can lose sight of the background of Acts, with all the action and miraculous moments. But when I take a moment to look deeper, I’m struck by a community that consistently gathered to pray, especially due to the fact that they kept coming back to that practice after they saw darkness win, at least from where they were sitting. They prayed ceaselessly, even in the face of unanswered prayers.

Where exactly does that come from? I believe it can only come from the belief that God sees our tears and saves them right next to my prayers.

That both our grief and questions, and our prayers, are necessary to true redemption. That He loves us too much to have any of these pieces go to waste.

How do we become a persistent, committed praying generation of people? How do we grab hold of and renew the astounding legacy of our ancient ancestors, that for a lot of us, has become lost from there to here? How do we express it through our lives?

An invitation of Jesus says this -

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

- Matthew 7:7

Any of us can take Him up on this, and pray this way, and I believe that if we do, our souls and states of self and mind will become filled with a beautiful, Christlike resilience.

So - how do we put this into practice?

1. Always say it like you mean it. You don’t have to begin your prayer with buckets and buckets of faith pouring out of your mouth. You can start with your disappointment, your pains, your needs. Bring all of these painful pieces forward in prayer, and know you don’t have to water it down; tell it like it is, be honest.
2. Stop and wait for the question. Ask God to point your eyes to the questions hiding behind your disappointments and pains. I’ve found you know you’re at the base when you get to a deep question. Right under the circumstances found in the wake of our disappointments, we can usually find a question about the character of our Father. Is He really listening to me? Does He really love me? Does He actually care about this specific aspect of my life? Is He powerful enough? Can He even bring me healing in this? Is He actually moving all things in this world towards redemption and resurrection? There’s usually a question, sometimes born from anxiety or fear or grief – listen until you find it.
3. You ask God to meet you right there, in the questions. Come before Him with this root ask or unknown, and ask Him to bring healing in the only way He can. Ask Him to enter into it, and then keep asking. Our Father is a powerful God who works miracles, with the power to open blind eyes. At the same time, He’s a Father and a Friend that walks alongside us in the pitch black unknown, holding our pain right there in His hands with us. We must keep inviting Him into the process. When I do this, I’ve found the faith to continue asking, again and again, for Him to fill me with peace and patience.

I know I’ll have to be patient and wait until eternity to fully grasp moments like James’; for now, I’ll continue to pray without ceasing for moments like Peter’s, where our Father comes and brings rescue in miraculous ways, and through every bit of in-between, know that He’s always good.

Ethan Rounds

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