Acts 12 records one of the greatest prison escapes of all time. There were no tunnels, posters hiding holes in the wall, or tattoos hiding important details. An angel busted Peter out of the big house. Across town was a small huddle of Christians praying for God to help Peter as the angel escorted Peter to their house. Their reaction to Pete’s great escape is sad and perhaps familiar.
Imagine your head is bowed, your eyes are closed, and you have been praying for hours with your friends that God would deliver Peter from the danger that awaits him in prison. Next their is a knock at the door and your friend, Rhoda, goes to see who is at the door. Upon peering through the peephole, she discovers it’s Peter! Rhoda is so surprised, she does not open the door and instead goes back to the group to tell them Peter is outside banging on the door. It’s hard for me grasp why Rhoda didn’t open the door. The most believable theory is because she was surprised.
And want to do her friends do? Do they say, “Rhoda, go open the door!” Do they stop praying and start praising because they believe God has answered their prayers? No! They tell her she is insane. What kind of prayer group refuses to believe the God has answered their prayer even when they are confronted with physical evidence? This tells us that even while this group was praying, they still did not expect God to answer their prayers.
Here is where I take encouragement from the story. God can use my faith, no matter how small.
And here is my challenge from the story. When we pray, we should look and expect God to answer. It should strange if He doesn’t answer. We should call it crazy if we don’t answer the door. Let us not pray in faith but live in disbelief.