Prayer Goals: "I want to pray for miracles"

Introduction

We have identified that prayer must be a focus in the life of every dedicated Christian. So far we have talked about two different goals.

“I want to pray for other people”

James tells us that our prayers are effective over people dealing with sickness and sin.

“I want to pray with 100% certainty”

Jesus told His disciples in that prayers in His name, according to His character, for the glory of God will result in prayers that are answered.

Do you ever try to humanize your prayers?

We live in a very carnal world right now. Everything is about what your are seeing right now. We are told that we can have anything we want right now as long as it is visible in front of you. We are encouraged not to wait.

The result of living this way is that many Christians limit their prayers to what makes sense to them.

People don’t pray for healing as much as they pray for medicine to work. We don’t expect marvelous things to happen anymore even the Holy Spirit is just as alive and active as He always has been.

If Christian will get their mind tuned correctly to God’s purpose for His church, we can expand our horizons on prayer. Miracles aren’t happening for the sake of awe and wonder. God has a purpose for every miracle we pray for.

How can we learn this truth today? Prayer Goal # 3: “I want to pray for miracles.”

Acts 16:22–30 NASB95

The crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off them and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods. When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely; and he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them; and suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer awoke and saw the prison doors opened, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here!” And he called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas, and after he brought them out, he said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Acts 16:

Context

I read you several verses for the sake of context but I want to put a magnifying glass on the action of the passage found in verses 24-26.

Paul, Silas, and Luke we in Philippi, the leading city of district of Macedonia, a Roman colony. They had been witnessing to women and led Lydia, a seller of purple fabrics, to Christ making her the 1st Christian convert in Europe. On their way to a place of prayer, they encountered a woman possessed by a demon who brought fortune to men in the city because she was able to tell fortunes.

The demon proclaimed their intent of sharing the gospel in a way that was causing disturbance in the city. Paul called the demon out of her saving her life. When the men of profit discovered that their money maker was gone, they has Paul and Silas put in prison for causing a Jewish disturbance in their Roman colony.

Paul was used to hardship and he would find more after this situation.

Prison numerous times

Stoned to “death”

Shipwrecked.

**All for the sake of following Jesus**

He went through many situations where others would claim God to be far away from His predicament.

1. Miracles don’t come without opposition.

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 16

24 and he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.

The jailer rec

Romans did not consider imprisonment itself a form of punishment - prisons were used to hold those awaiting trial or the death penalty and often served as places of execution. Prisons were filthy and crowded, and prisoners were treated as little better than dead. Rome didn’t believe in cruel and unusual punishment.

The authorities recieved a formal command to throw Paul and Silas into prison. This wasn’t just any type of prison punishment that you and I would ever imagine.

The Inner prison - A Roman prison consisted of two chambers, one above the other. (SHOW PIC)

The outward chamber was called the vestibule or outward prison. The prisoners confined in these cells had the benefit of air and light. In the center of the vault of the lower chamber was a circular opening, where prisoners would be let down into the dungeon. Under this passage, there was a drain that served as a sewer. The smell would have been unbearable. This area was called the interior, or inner prison. It had no outlet or window except the light from the circular opening that would be shut so the guards didn’t have to smell the sewer.

Utter darkness, heat, and stench led people to lose their minds, die from disease before they could get out, and live in constant misery.

Stocks - Made of wood and bound with iron. There were 5 holes, four for the wrists and one iron collar for the neck. The same word used for stocks is the same word used for cross.

Meant more for torture than confinement. The holes would often be stretched so far apart that the prisoner in them would have be in a constant state of feeling uncomfortable.

Keep in mind that they had just been beaten! It’s safe to say that things just couldn’t have been much worse for these men.

It’s bad enough to experience cruelty from a punishment that was one is responsible for but what about experiencing pain because you were doing exactly what Jesus was telling you to do?

Paul and Silas were in good company. Job experienced similar suffering for the sake of doing what was right.

“You put my feet in the stocks and watch all my paths; You set a limit for the soles of my feet.”

וְוְ

“You put my feet in stocks; He watches all my paths”

God allows earthly suffering for His people. We have to understand this without losing our trust in God. The enemy is a plotter and he wants suffering to happen so that you will lose strength.

Maybe you are experiencing suffering right now and you simply don’t understand why. It is easy to feel alone in times such as these.

This is not the time to throw in the towel. This is when we pray with everything that we have. Cry out to God!

When opposition arises, you can let it destroy you or you can direct your attention to God.

2. When opposition arises, prayer and praise can follow.

There was no sleep for the missionaries that night, thanks to their pain and their uncomfortable position. But in the midst of their suffering they displayed their trust in God and their joy by praying and singing praise to him.

Acts 16:25 NASB95

But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them;

Here we have a concrete example of the “joy amid suffering” explained in scripture. Instead of wallowing in despair, they decided to sing hymns in the middle of the night.

Literally, “praying, were singing praises”.

The word here for praising is the same word used to denote the Pascal hymn sung by our Lord and His disciples after the last Passover which we know consisted of . These weren’t random songs of praise. It is probal that it was portions of the Psalms. Every devout Jew would no doubt know them by heart.

Though their bodies were bleeding and tortured, their spirits of love toward God rose above suffering and made the prison walls resound with song.

The Roman justice against the church was set at nothing because of their response to their suffering.

Instead of appealing to his Roman citizenship like he did later on in Jerusalem, he was willing to suffer, perhaps sensing that a greater good would come from his imprisonment.

We learn a couple practical lessons from this passage.

You can pray anywhere when given the opportunity.

You can praise God anywhere when given the opportunity.

When one is happy, one can sing. The same is true for suffering.

This moment sheds light on Paul’s destiny - Jesus described him earlier in Acts as a “an instrument of choice for me, to take my name before Gentiles and kings and Israelites,” and adds, “because I will show him the kind of things he has to suffer fro the sake of my name” (-46)

The main ingredient of worship in Bible is sacrifice. (

Praying for Bo.

“What’s in a man comes out of man when life squeezes him”. - Jon Randles What is your response in suffering? Learning to trust God through your crises will teach you to pray when the time is calling for it.

3. Miracles don’t have boundaries and always have a purpose.

I can promise you that Paul and Silas did not have the following in mind whenever they began to praise God. My idea of a miracle would be the jailer coming to his senses letting him out, or one of their friends busting them out.

Luke 16:26 NASB95

‘And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.’

Acts 16:26 NASB95

and suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.

The first earthquake recorded in Palestine happened in the reign of the evil King Ahab. () The most memorable earthquake taking place in the New Testament times happened at the crucifixion of Jesus. Often times, earthquakes in scripture are explained as the presence of the Lord.

The Lord cause the earth to shake from the shifting at the earths crust in Paul and Silas’s greatest time of need. Palestine has only 2 or 3 major quakes per century and 2 to 6 shocks per year. Philippi was nowhere near the major quake centers. The weather was not forecasting an earthquake that day. It happened suddenly.

Earthquakes can shake the earth, but they don’t simultaneously open prison doors and unfasten the chains on every man at the same time.

This was no simply a weather related event.

The Lord heard the singing and the prayers of these sufferers and caused a miracle to happen that allowed them the ability to escape.

But this isn’t an escape from suffering story. The miracle served a different purpose.

The jailer, assuming the prisoners have escaped, prepares to take his own life, but miraculously, no one has left!

His concern went from his physical condition and echoes the words of the slave girl. “These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.” Paul and Silas were not there to escape, they were there for the jailer to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Their main purpose was to proclaim verse 31. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.”

YAROSLAVL, Russia—- The Soviet police arrested Pastor Dmitri* because his house church had grown too large to ignore. They hauled him away to a prison filled with hardened criminals. A thousand miles from home, Dmitri suffered regular beatings. His jailers demanded he renounce his faith in Jesus and confess to being a Western spy. They even deceived him into thinking they had arrested his wife. The jailers would also trick prisoners into believing that their wives had been murdered.

Yet for 17 years, Dmitri remained steadfast. Early each morning, he stood in his cell and faced east to sing his “heart song” to Christ. The other inmates tried to shut him up by shouting insults, even throwing human waste into his cell. When Dmitri made it clear he would neither deny Jesus nor sign a confession, guards dragged him from his cell for execution.

(Show video)

On the catwalk outside the cell, however, the guards stopped dead in their tracks. Amazingly, the very inmates who had poured their hatred on Dmitri for so many years, now stood at the doors of their cells and sang his heart song to Christ. Not only was the pastor not executed, he eventually was released to return home.

You may not know why you’re suffering, but I can assure you that there is a purpose. God has a plan. When we pray for miracles, pray within the context of God’s kingdom. Pray that your suffering will open peoples eyes to Jesus.

How can you pray for a miracle to happen in the life of someone today?