This last weekend I had the opportunity to go to my parents house to help my mom host the baby shower for my cousin. This was very exciting. It also meant I would get the opportunity to go to my mom’s church. I do enjoy going to different church services, so I can get a new perspective and thoughts on the Gospel and the Word of God.
This sermon was over Acts 12:1-25. This was all about the church leaders and their struggles with King Herod. King Herod did not want the disciples to spread God’s Word. He did not want the Gospel to save more people. Herod had already imprisoned and killed James, and now he had Peter in prison. However, the Christians were determined to keep praying and to spread the church message as much as they could.
The Bible talks about this group of Christians persistently praying for Peter. However, when they are met with the answer to their prayer, they are not expecting it. Peter is released from prison. He is able to go to the house where the church leaders were heading. The servant at the house is named Rhoda, and she comes to the door after Peter is knocking. When she sees him, she is so excited and she runs to the disciples to tell them the news. However, they think she is crazy. They don’t believe her. They only start really rejoicing once the rest of them have physically seen Peter at the door knocking.
But the question is why wouldn’t they believe Peter was at the door? Why didn’t they truly believe Rhoda? They had been praying to the God of the Universe to answer and release him from prison. It is simply that even though they had been praying to God and had been calling him to answer, they didn’t fully believe in God 100% to hear them and answer in the way he did. There was a part of them believing Peter was going to suffer the same fate as James. I think there are many times we can also do this. We can be praying and coming to God when we do not really believe he will hear or answer our prayer. We are maybe hopeful, but we don’t really see him doing the good work. We just can’t believe in the miracle or the power of God as well as we should.
I will be completely transparent when I say I can behave this way. There are times I am very hopeful. I am hopefully praying for God to heal this person or to take away this certain stress or to help out a person with their mental health or depression. However, I don’t always pray with the complete belief God has the power and ability to complete this. Even though I am praying and my brain is telling me God has the power, my heart doesn’t always completely believe it.
Because of this, I am very grateful my own church has also become more dedicated to prayer. We are able to participate in 21 days of prayer with our households. Cole and I have really been enjoying spending time in prayer from night to night. It has been a good way to center ourselves at the end of the day before bed by talking to the Father. It has been stretching us though because we are praying over certain passages in the word, and that is something we hadn’t practiced much in the future.
The Lord clearly cares about prayer because it has been written in the Bible at least 650 times. One verse discussing prayer is Mark 11:24 which says, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” I love this verse because it is a reminder to pray to God for whatever is on your mind. I do believe it is not as simple as saying he is like Santa Clause. He isn’t going to be checking your wish list and making sure you are doing the right thing. However, we can talk to God about anything in our hearts and he will bring us closer to himself through this time in prayer. We will see God’s will more and more through prayer.
The first challenge is to be reflective on your relationship with prayer. How do you feel about prayer? Are you a person who struggles to pray on a regular basis or are you good about turning to God in your times of struggle or in your times of joy? Do you feel confident when in prayer? Is it something you get nervous about like you do not know how to best talk to the Father? What are some of the barriers you come across when it comes to prayer?
The second challenge for this week is to spend time in prayer. However, this isn’t just spending time in prayer to spend time in prayer but rather this is spending time in prayer with the complete faith and belief in God. This is having the complete faith that he can heal and work through whatever problem or situation you may be having. This also can be spending time in prayer asking for help in your prayer journey. I will be praying as well for you.
Colossians 3:23 Blog 