The Business of Obedience in Prayer

In obedience to a heavenly vision, Paul lands in Europe, and finds himself at Philippi. There is no synagogue, and few if any Jews are there. A few religious women, however, have a meeting place for prayer, and Paul is drawn by spiritual attraction and spiritual appeal to the place “where prayer is accustomed to be made.” And this was Paul’s first planting of the Gospel in Europe at that little prayer meeting. He is at this prayer meeting the principal praying person and the leading talker. Lydia was the first convert at that prayer meeting. They extended the meeting. They called it a meeting for prayer.

It was while they were going to that protracted prayer meeting that Paul performed the miracle of casting the devil of foretelling out of a poor demon-possessed girl, who had been made a source of profit by some jealous men, the results of which, by the magistrate’s orders, Paul was whipped and imprisonment. The result of this, by God’s orders was the conversion of the jailer and his whole household. To the praying apostle no discouragements are allowed. A few praying women are enough for a mission field of labor.

In this incident we have a picture of Paul at midnight. He is in the inner prison, dark and deadly. He has been severely and painfully beaten, his clothing is covered with blood, while there are blood clots on his pained and torn body. His feet are in the stocks, every nerve is feverish and swollen, sensitive and painful. But we find him under these very unfavorable and suffering conditions in his favorite pursuit. Paul is praying with Silas, his companion, in a joyous, triumphant twist. “And at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was an earthquake, so that the foundation of the prison was shaken, and immediately all the doors were shaken; and every one’s ban was loosed. And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors opened, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled."

“But Paul cried out with a loud voice saying, Do thyself no harm; for we are all here.”

Never was prayer so beautiful, never more result-full. Paul was skilled at prayer, a lover of prayer, a wondrous devotee of prayer, who could pursue it with such joyous strains, under such conditions of misery and despair. What a mighty weapon of defense was prayer for Paul and how song-full! The angels, no doubt, silenced their highest and sweetest notes to listen to the music which bore those prayers to heaven. The earthquake crushes the path made by the mighty forces of Paul’s praying. He did not run out of the jail when his chains were shook loose, and the stocks fell off. His praying taught him that God had a nobler purposes that night than his own individual freedom His praying and the earthquake alarm was to bring salvation to that prison, freedom from the prison house of sin which was anticipated by him because of his body being released. God’s mighty providence had opened his prison door and had broken his prison bonds, not to give freedom, but to give freedom to the jailer. God’s providential openings are often to test our ability to stay rather than to go. It tested Paul’s ability to stay. How about yours?