Praise and Prison

"About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them." Acts 16:25

One of the commercials that I remember as a child is the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial where two people accidentally bump into each other. One has chocolate and one has peanut butter and surprise - they find two great tastes that go great together. I submit to you that they are right, I love Reese's and yes chocolate & peanut butter are excellent together. In the book of Act's we find two things that shouldn't go together - praise and prison. Now praise is an incredible thing but prison, not so good.

In Acts 16 we find Paul and Silas in prison (verse 24). They are locked up, not for some great crime, but for sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We find them not merely locked up but the are chained up within the prison as well. Now for most of us we would be absolutely miserable. We would be crying out for release, justice, freedom. Our minds would be spinning thinking about what we were going to do. There is a good chance we would stir up the other prisoners with our complaints and cries for justice. Yet this is the furthest things from Paul and Silas.

Paul and Silas are chained up, in prison, singing and praising God. What? Yes, they are singing and praising God, finding joy in their imprisonment for the Gospel. They find that these two things, prison and praise, indeed go together for the glory of God. Their counter-cultural act causes not only the other prisoners to hear the gospel, but in the end the jailer and his entire family are saved. Why? Because instead of complaining about their condition and situation, they praised the LORD.

Today what is the situation you are facing? Have you ever considered praising God through the storms of life? Paul and Silas could have thrown a fit. They were Roman citizens and they were wrongly treated, yet they chose to pray & praise the LORD in the storm. Because of this others came to know just how great the LORD Christ Jesus truly is. Today I pray that we indeed bring Him praise, not only on the mountain tops, but even in the valleys as well. Believe me, suffering and praise are two things that go great together for His glory for it points to Him and where our faith & hope are in the storm!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Act Like Men

Image
MAN UP Part 3 of 1 Corinthians 16:13-14 Why are there so few men left in the world?  As a culture the growth from boyhood to manhood has taken a detour through the maze of adolescence; adolescence (as a word or descriptive phrase) was not even heard of or used in the development of children until the twentieth century and at that time was used to describe a child between the ages of 13 and 19, presumably the age of one in high school.  Today, in stark contrast, some argue adolescence starts at the age of 10 and may not stop until the age of 24 or older.  Even more shocking is that today more women are in colleges then men and boys are staying longer and longer in an adolescent state and fewer men are emerging.  Perhaps today more than ever Christian young men need to be reminded to act like men, not boys, and certainly not adolescents, but men. Paul called out the men in church of Corinth and said ACT LIKE MEN.  The understanding of the word ...
Read more
SEEKING SOLITUDE T he world is a very busy place.  It is full of noise, distraction, and competes for every moment of our time every moment of the day.  We are a busy people with something going on every second of the day.  We are hurried, harried, tired, ever moving, and getting busier by the moment.  Today's technology keeps us tightly knit to the world around us, we know at every moment who is happy, who is mad, who wished they were not at work, who wants to make something new, who is getting married, who just broke up, etc...  We can get calls, e-mails, texts, anywhere we go.  Truly finding a place of rest takes intentional focus. T his morning my wife called and asked me if I had ever noticed in Matthew 14:13 that prior to feeding the five thousand Jesus had withdrawn to a desolate place, a place of solitude.  She then prodded me further asking "Do we need to do this?  Do you need to do this?"  As a pastor and a lover of people ...
Read more
Hospitals, mis-diagnoses, and the yo-yo effect On Tuesday April 22nd I found myself in the ER at Covenant Hospital in Lubbock Texas.  I was turning highlighter yellow and I felt less than chipper.  By midnight I was in my room on IV fluids only and already starting to do what I do best... worry!  Everybody has to be good at something and I do very well when it comes to overthinking things and worrying about what might be.  The GI doc on call came in to visit late that night and discussed the different tests they would perform the next day and what was going to occur.  I was still under the impression it was just my gall bladder...  Boy, what did I know.  I wasn't even worried about the right things. The next day a procedure known as an ERCP was performed to see what was going on with my gall bladder.  That was followed up with an MRI.  Let me pause here to say this.  I am slightly claustrophobic and I sinned when they took me to thi...
Read more