Monday Reflections and the snow cometh and the snow goeth...

"When God moves and we don't know it yet, keep praying."

This was the statement that caught my attention at one of the early morning 21 days of prayer event in a nearby local town.  The older man started to give some examples of this from the Bible.

The first came from the Old Testament.  It was all the prayers of the Israelites who were praying to God to be delivered from the bondage of the Egyptians.  In the plains of Midian, God meets up with Moses through the burning bush experience.  God is moving and commanding Moses to take His words before Pharaoh.  The Israelites don't know this yet.  God is sending His man their way.  In ignorance, they keep on crying out to God for deliverance. 

Another example came from the New Testament.  Jesus told the parable of the Lost Son or the Prodigal Son.   The father is pictured waiting at the window, looking down the road, and praying for the return of his wayward son.  He is poised ready to run when he gets a glimpse of the familiar shape and gait of his son coming down the lane.  In the pig pen, God meets with the younger son and he comes to his senses.  He remembers the goodness of his father and devises a plan to return not as a son but as a worker.  In the form of this story told by Jesus, the father would not have known something has happened yet.  He is still by the window looking and praying.  

Do I believe that God is already moving and I need to just keep faithfully praying?

Let's look at Acts chapter 12 and verses 1 through 19 for another example of this.

v.1, 2 - About that time King Herod violently attacked some who belonged to the church, and he executed James, John's brother, with the sword.

Not only was James, the brother of John, and a disciple of Jesus executed but the church was being violently attacked by the establishment.  These Christians were living in a very hostile environment.

v.3, 4 - When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter too, during the Festival of Unleavened Bread.  After the arrest, he put him in prison and assigned four squads of four soldiers each to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover.

If I am reading this right, it is one year after Jesus had been crucified on the Passover festival previously.  The movement has been growing for a year but now its leaders are being thrown into prison.  Peter, the lead disciple of Jesus, is guarded by 16 soldiers for safe keeping to display Herod's power and prominence.

v.5 - So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was praying fervently to God for him.

This is probably one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible about the church.  What is the church doing?  Praying.  How are they praying?  Fervently.  Who are they praying to?  God.

v.6-10 - When Herod was about to bring him out for trial, that very night Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while the sentries in front of the door guarded the prison.  Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell.  Striking Peter on the side, he woke him up and said, "Quick, get up!"  And the chains fells off his wrists.  "Get dressed," the angel told him, "and put on your sandals."  And he did.  "Wrap your cloak around you," he told him, "and follow me."  So he went out and followed, and he did not know that what the angel did was really happening, but he thought he was seeing a vision.  After they passed the first and second guards, they came to the iron gate that leads into the city, which opened to them by itself.  They went outside and passed one street, and suddenly the angel left him.

God is moving.  Even Peter is in a daze about what is really going on.  Remember where the church is and what they are doing.  They don't know this has happened yet and so they are continuing their fervent prayers to God for the sake of Peter.  At this time, he is miraculously delivered and free of the guards and his chains.

v.11-14 - When Peter came to himself, he said, "Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel and rescued me from Herod's grasp and from all the Jewish people expected."  As soon as he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many had assembled and were praying.  He knocked at the door of the outer gate, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer.  She recognized Peter's voice, and because of her joy, she did not open the gate but ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the outer gate.

Now Peter knows that God has moved but the people in the house of Mary don't know this yet.  Rhoda, the servant girl, is the next to realize that God has moved at just the right time and is so excited that she leaves Peter standing outside to tell the others of this answer to their fervent prayers.  It is a funny scene and you wonder what look was on Peter's face as he is left standing outside the gate.  "Hey Rhoda, did you forget something?"

v.15, 16 - "You're out of your mind!" they told her.  But she kept insisting that it was true, and they said, "It's his angel."  Peter, however, kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were amazed.

We go from one of the most beautiful verses of the Bible on the church fervently praying to a reality verse of the church who doubt the message that God has moved.  God bless the servant girl Rhoda for her insistence to the story and God bless Peter for his persistent knocking at the gate.  Rhoda was saying, "That's my story and I'm sticking with it."  How many times have we balked at the report that God has moved in direct relationship to the prayers we were just praying?

v.17-19 - Motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison.  "Tell these things to James and the brothers," he said, and he left and went to another place.  At daylight, there was a great commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter.  After Herod had searched and did not find him, he interrogated the guards and ordered their execution.  Then Herod went down from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there.

Peter tells his story.  We need to tell each other our "God moving" stories.  These are important stories to tell.  These events are also to be spread to others.  I also noticed here the similarities to the body of Jesus being missing from the grave.  Peter's body is gone.  The soldiers didn't know what happened.  They are questioned this time not by the Chief Priest but by Herod.  A coverup story isn't devised to explain what happened but rather an execution is performed to eliminate those on the scene.  Maybe they thought this action would work better than the one used by priests assembled with the elders to silence the Christians reporting that "God had moved." 

The point of this blog post is that God moves and we need to be praying before He moves, while He moves, and after He moves even though we haven't seen it or heard of it yet.  May we be a church described by Acts 12:5.

Adam