It Happens Now

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

IT HAPPENS NOW

Acts 12:6-11

6 The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. "Quick, get up!" he said, and the chains fell off Peter's wrists. 8 Then the angel said to him, "Put on your clothes and sandals." And Peter did so. "Wrap your cloak around you and follow me," the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. 11 Then Peter came to himself and said, "Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod's clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating."

NIV

It seems strange that we go from just one verse last time to a bunch of verses this time, but account of the supernatural rescue of Peter cannot be parsed. There is no doubt that God did a miracle by sending an angel to rescue Peter. Herod had the situation well under control with Peter being very heavily chained and guarded and naked to boot. There was not a chance he was going to get out of this trial and coming execution. Yet God is greater than any man, or human situation. Two truths, or life lesson we might take from this account. The first being just that God is greater than any human situation. When things look their gloomiest, when the situation seems beyond help, and it looks if we are doomed to have the worst experience of our life and we can do nothing about it at all, there is God, to the rescue. Now, of course Peter had people who were earnestly praying for him and his situation, so we are not sure if God would have acted without this earnest praying by so many, but nevertheless God did act. He will always act as a result of prayer, well at least in this case, earnest prayer. It is doubtful that God would act because of prayer that was not earnest. But we can learn which we should already know, that when God answers, he does so in the miraculous. Peter escape might have been done by some very stalwart men, overpowering the guards getting the keys and making a great escape of Peter possible. Then some would have said God was with them, but nothing of human sorts happened at all. God did not give some men superhuman strength or wisdom and cunning to break Peter out of jail. God sent an angel, to do a miracle. Sometimes we explain human wisdom or ability as from God, and most likely it is, but when God intervenes it is in the miraculous. We should be expecting the miraculous when we pray, at least when we are earnestly praying. The second truth is in the reaction of Peter. Everything happened so fast, he hardly had time for calm reflection that he was being broke out of jail by an actual angel in a miraculous way. Once it was all over then he realized what had just happened. We are reading the account without the benefit of knowing the real time sequence of the event. We do not know how long all that took, but it seems it happened so quickly that Peter might have thought he was having a vision, or dream, and then there he was alone on the street, clothed and out of jail. Now he could reflect on what just happened and he knew without a doubt God had sent this angel to rescue him. When God gets involved in our rescue, from whatever our situation is, we need to be sure to know it is an act of God, and not just us working through it successfully. The other point here is that when God does act, it happens and it happens now. God did not take several hours, days, weeks, or months to rescue Peter, he did it in the now, right away. That is not to say, God might take a year to do something in our lives, but when he intervenes and comes to our rescue in a situation, he does not take a year, it happens now.