“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God,
and the other prisoners were listening to them.” (Acts 16:25)
Have you ever run out /of gas /as a Christian? We’re not just talking
about a lack of physical energy, because a person can remedy that
/through a healthy diet, rest and exercise.
It’s about running out of
patience, running out of joy.
It’s when people around are celebrating,
perhaps at holiday time, but you don’t have peace.
Maybe you’ve lost
your job and you’re thinking back to simpler times /when things were
going well in life,
and it depletes your energy and you become
depressed.
But this flies in the face of everything () we know about
Christianity.
When Paul and Silas were arrested in the city of Philippi and were
thrown in jail after having been beaten,
they were actually singing at
midnight! What about us? Most of us aren’t being thrown in jail or
beaten,
and we’re not singing at 3:00 pm—never mind midnight!
* fly in the face of sth: to completely oppose what seems sensible or normal:
You may
be thinking, “Nobody knows what I’ve been through,” but just imagine:
Paul and Silas went through much more, and they were hanging in. And
there have been martyrs /throughout church history,
and even to this day,
who have faced adversity with assurance and strength.
* go through sth: 1. to experience a difficult or unpleasant situation:
We are challenged /by the Word of God /to learn why it was that these
believers went through so much yet were victorious. On the other hand,
many of us are going through so much less, but we have this malaise and
this depression and this victim mentality, which seem to be a sign of
the times //in which we are living. The root of it is that God never
meant for us to live out of our own resources.
The Christian life is
one of a continual receiving. God never intended for us to keep
anything—ever!—or for anything to be resident in us in the sense of the
flow of God’s grace, which is God doing for us what we can’t do for
ourselves.
So whenever we’re running low on gas, we have to understand the daily
miracle //that Jesus wants to perform in the lives of us all.
The secret
is receiving from Jesus. As Christians, we already received him as our
Savior;
but we have to receive from him every single day, so we don’t
get to a point in life //where we run out of gas.
Life has its surprises,
and they’re not always pleasant; but we can remain steady and firm /in
our faith
/by receiving daily strength and peace and joy from the Lord.
We do this /by spending time in his presence and in his Word, asking him
to make himself real to us,
to speak to us, to guide us, to fill us, to
enable us to touch others with the same love and compassion
//with which
God has filled us.
Notice that in the case of Paul and Silas, the biblical account says
that the other prisoners were listening
to them singing in the midst of
their depressing surroundings. The Lord received glory and they
received deliverance from their situation /as they received God’s grace
and let it flow out /through them toward others.
The Lord wants to do the same in each of us today.
Read the account of Paul and Silas in Prison in Acts 16:16-34.