Prayer Does not Stir Up a Passive God:

God uses Prayer to Stir Up Passive People

 

So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was

made to God by the church.   (Acts 12:5)

 

Does God really answer the earnest and extended prayers of His people?  Luke, the author of the book of Acts, wants us to know that the answer to this question is an unequivocal, “Yes.”

     

In Acts 12 King Herod Agrippa has gone on a rampage against the young Christian church.  James the brother of John was arrested and beheaded, becoming the first apostle to be martyred.  Seeing that James’ death greatly pleased the Jews, Herod then arrests Peter and places him in jail, delaying his execution until the end of the Passover feast.  However, God frustrates Herod’s plan by sending an angel who frees Peter on the eve of his execution.

 

Between Peter’s imprisonment and the recounting of how God set him free, Luke inserts this rather amazing verse:  “So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church” (Acts 12:5).  Luke clearly wants us to see the connection between the prayers of the church and God setting Peter free;  God freed Peter in response to the prayers of His people.

     

But notice several things about their prayer.  First, their prayer was earnest prayer.  This was no Now-I-Lay-Me-Down-To-Sleep type of praying.  It was real, pouring-out-the-heart, sincere, intense, fervent, wrestling-with-God prayer.  The word earnest in this verse is the same word that Luke used to describe Christ’s pleading before God in the Garden of Gethsemane.  People who know God—who know that God is present, powerful and compassionate and who know that God answers the prayers of His people—pray like this.  Most of us are far too little acquainted with this kind of prayer.

     

Second, notice that their prayer was extensive prayer.  After Peter was freed from prison, we are told that he went to the house of Mary the mother of John Mark “where many were gathered together and were praying” (Acts 12:10).  Here it is late at night and the church has gathered together.  They are not discussing current events;  they are not lamenting the terrible government they have under Herod.  No, deep into the night they are praying together.

     

Third, their earnest, extended prayer was effective prayer.  Even as they were praying Peter knocks at the door of the house.  God answers the earnest and extended prayers of his people.

     

We could end here, I suppose, and I could conclude by calling you to earnest and extended prayer that God might hear and answer us as we call upon Him.  But if I ended here we would miss out.  We would miss out on seeing something more of how glorious our God is.  We would miss out because some might conclude that somehow our fervent and prolonged prayers stir a passive God to action.  But this is most certainly not the case.  God is not passive, and He does not need us to tell Him what He must do.  Yet it is the case that God does answer the earnest and extended prayers of His people.

     

Here’s what I want us to see:  God answers the earnest and extended prayers of his people, not because they somehow stir a passive God to action, but because God himself is the one who stirs passive people to cry out to him in heartfelt, extended prayer.  The God who answers prayer is the same One who moves us to true, fervent prayer.

      Jonathan Edwards was one who understood this.  Listen as Edwards describes the earnest and prolonged way that David Brainerd prayed for revival in the church:

 

I confess that God giving so much of a spirit of prayer for this mercy to so eminent a servant of his, and exciting him in so extraordinary a manner, and with such vehement thirstings of soul, to agonize in prayer for it from time to time, through the course of his life, is one thing, among others, which gives me great hope, that God has a design of accomplishing something very glorious for the interest of his church before long.

     

 Edwards looked at the extraordinary prayer life of David Brainerd, and he knew that such a spirit of prayer could only come from God.  He also saw that when God sends such a spirit of prayer, He does so usually because He is preparing to answer that prayer:  “God has a design of accomplishing something very glorious for the interest of his church before long.”

     

Do you see?  God answers the earnest and extended prayers of His people, because He is the One who moves us to true, earnest prayer.  The prayer comes from Him just as much as the answer does.  “For from him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Romans 11:36).

     

Just as in Acts 12 when God raises up sincere, fervent, heartfelt, extensive prayer in the lives of His people, it is because He is getting ready to work in response to that prayer.

     

My hope is that as we read this and seek to understand how God works that we might be stirred to greater and more fervent and prolonged prayer for our families and church.  For where God raises up such prayer He is preparing to do a great work.  I realize that some may say, “Well I can’t pray in that way until God sends me the spirit of prayer.  So until them I’ll just keep praying how I’m praying.”  Please don’t make this mistake.  Remember Paul’s words to us, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).  God calls us to work.  He calls us to pray and to pray earnestly now (Col. 4:2).  But as we pray and seek to pray more earnestly and extensively, we know it is God who is working in us and giving us the will and desire for more effective prayer for His kingdom—that He might answer the prayer that He, himself, lays upon our hearts.

 

Crying out with You for a spirit of earnest prayer,

James