So there are certainly a few jokes we could throw around with this one but I’ll leave that up to another time and place. The point of this post is to take an unfortunate experience and see what might the learning moment be in a bad time such as imprisonment.
The audio clip below is from a message on the imprisonment of Peter in the book of Acts. While it would be great if you’d read Acts 12 and listen to the below podcast, I have the highlights below. There are three main principles we’ll cover.
The promises of the past give us peace in the present.
This first principle is a reminder that not all things that are bad in the moment really are all that bad when we step back and reevaluate. Peter is in prison after watching a friend an colleague killed in public. Kind of awful I know! But he’s in prison and the same thing is threatened of him. Instead of freaking out though, he remembers a promise Jesus gave him. Jesus told him that he would die as an old man and since he wasn’t old this moment was not going to be his end. So instead of freaking out, he slept!
God will do God’s work, but you have to do yours.
The second principle is found when Peter is told to get dressed and tie his shoes. This seems pretty unimportant at first glance, but there’s something powerful here. The angel will free Peter from the chains and from the prison but he won’t tie his shoes. Jesus will do all the work to save us and deliver us from evil and shower us with grace but he won’t believe for us. He still wants us to serve our neighbors. He still has stuff for us to do now that he’s done his work.
Pray expecting God’s answer.
This one is a pet peeve of mine but so often I hear so many prayers said as if we aren’t expecting God to answer them. I love the thy will be done section of the Lord’s Prayer to be sure! It reminds us that not all things happen the way we want. But it seems we like to hide behind this part of the prayer. We start our prayers bold and knowing exactly what we want then get to this part of the prayer and the wheels fall off. We use this phrase to erase our prayers altogether. Peter gets out of prison, exactly what his friends were praying would happen. Then he finds his friends and they didn’t even believe it was possible for Peter to be released! So why were they praying if they didn’t think God would answer?!
The long and short is we can learn from every situation in life, even the most challenging like wrongfully put in prison or insignificant like simply tying our shoes. God has a plan and that plan will happen. We just need to move forward in the faith of His past promises and in hopes of his future presence.