PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Acts 12:10–15 (NIV)
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.
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.”
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. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
CONSIDER THIS
The disorientation in this scene is palpable. Apparently, no one seemed prepared for the prayers for Peter’s deliverance to be answered. It makes sense, though, doesn’t it? Days before they were praying their guts out for James and the others being held by King Herod—to no avail. Still, they desperately pleaded for the deliverance of Peter. And what do you know! Peter shows up at the door of the house where they were praying. Look at their response upon hearing Peter was at the door:
“You’re out of your mind,” they told her.
We will save this matter for another day. Let’s tackle the bigger question today: So why does God spare Peter and not James? It’s impossible to know. It’s really pointless to ask. The best approach is to take the long view and trust God. God works out his purposes. But is this promoting a type of fatalism?
So why pray? If God will do what God will do does prayer matter? There are at least three reasons to pray.
1. Jesus taught us to always pray and never give up. See Luke 18.
2. To pray for another person is to love them. Remember: “Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” See 1 Corinthians 13. The prayer may not be answered as hoped, but love never fails.
3. Don’t forget—we are in a war. We are in a pitched battle with the rogue powers of sin, death, Satan, and evil. Add to that the basic laws of motion, gravity, and physics. A battlefield is a place of extreme chaos. Add to it the presence of many human beings acting with free will, who have many conflicting agendas for good and bad. Said human beings, like it or not, often act negligently, recklessly, and even maliciously which both directly and indirectly affects other human beings with all kinds of impacts and outcomes. Unfortunate, hard, bad, and tragic things are going to happen.
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.
To be continued . . .
THE PRAYER OF TRANSFORMATION
Lord Jesus, I am your witness.
I receive your righteousness and release my sinfulness.
I receive your wholeness and release my brokenness.
I receive your fullness and release my emptiness.
I receive your peace and release my anxiety.
I receive your joy and release my despair.
I receive your healing and release my sickness.
I receive your love and release my selfishness.
Come, Holy Spirit, transform my heart, mind, soul, and strength so that my consecration becomes your demonstration; that our lives become your sanctuary. For the glory of God our Father, amen.
THE QUESTION
How do you account for the way God intervenes to save Peter in this situation and not James? Does the battlefield framework help you at all?
THE HYMN
Today we will sing, “We’ll Understand It Better By and By.” It is hymn 370 in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise.
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
Sower-in-Chief
seedbed.com
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3 Responses
True prayer, seeking first the kingdom of God, is to humble ourselves. It is to deeply and viscerally hunger and thirst for His righteousness as we wholeheartedly and continually purse God’s will and surrender our own will to Him.
Never settle for anything less than having Jesus as the King and Absolute Ruler (Lord) of every part of your life! Make listening to and obeying Him your first priority.
God doesn’t rewind the past. He is not a God that prevents choice, but a God that redeems them.
We are astonished when prayers are answered and surprised when God’s miracles manifest into reality.
Should we be?
We call these events supernatural.
God says it’s natural.
Psalm 77:14
You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples.
Staying 💪’n Christ
Ephesians 6:10
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
JD, like you’ve stated, we can only speculate as to why God seems to answer some prayers and not others. My guess is formed through knowledge of Jesus’s prayer in the Mount of Olives, where He prayed for the cup to be removed if the Father was willing, but ultimately it was the Father’s will be done. I personally believe that prayer’s primary purpose is to bring our will into alignment with God’s will. This is why we are told to pray for our enemies. It’s hard to hate someone that you’re truly praying for. That battlefield analogy is spot on.