The 260 Journey

Day 101

Today’s Reading: Acts 12

Today we come to a challenging passage of Scripture. We are about to see two men in prison, yet those same men’s lives have a different outcome. And it seems there is something that happened that changed one of these men’s future. Let’s read the story:

About that time Herod the king laid hands on some who belonged to the church in order to mistreat them. And he had James the brother of John put to death with a sword. When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. Now it was during the days of Unleavened Bread. When he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out before the people. (Acts 12:1-5)

Herod arrested two key figures in the first church: James and Peter. Both were imprisoned. James was put to death by the sword, and Peter was about to face the same outcome . . . but Peter was miraculously delivered. Something seemed to change Peter’s meeting with the executioner: “Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God” (verse 5).

Read that verse again: “But prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God.”

Could it be that God was showing us the power of prayer? James got a sword; Peter got an angel:

On the very night when Herod was about to bring him forward, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and guards in front of the door were watching over the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared and a light shone in the cell; and he struck Peter’s side and woke him up, saying, “Get up quickly.” And his chains fell off his hands. (Acts 12:6-7)

I have to say this about the angelic visit in prison. Take a look this sentence: “He struck Peter’s side and woke him up.” Talk about the peace of God. If I knew I was going to die the next day, I would not be in such a deep sleep that an angel would need to strike me on the side and yell, “Get up."

Why did Peter have the peace of God? Because he knew the promise of God.

This is really important. Back in John 21, Jesus made Peter a promise about his death:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.” Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to him, “Follow Me!” (John 21:18-19)

He was telling Peter that he would not die young but as an old man who can’t even dress himself.

Peter knew a promise that Jesus made over him twelve years before. So Peter could go to sleep, because he believed God would get him out.

And God did. Puritan writer Thomas Watson said that “the angel fetched Peter out of prison, but it was prayer that fetched the angel.”

Could the difference be that God is showing us that prayer is intercession? That prayer gets people out of a death sentence. One gets killed, the other gets delivered. And the thing separating their fates was a praying church.

Peter was going to be killed, but prayer trumped Herod’s intentions. My prayer, our church’s prayer, can be a matter of life and death.

If Peter’s life depended on your prayer life or on your church’s prayer life . . . would he have had a chance? Or would he have faced the same fate as his companion?

A Christian lady lived next door to an atheist. Every day she prayed, and the atheist could hear her. Many times, he would harass her and say, “Why do you pray all the time? Don’t you know there is no God?”

But still she kept on praying.

One day she ran out of groceries. As usual, she was praying, and the atheist could hear her. As she prayed, she explained her situation to the Lord, thanking Him for what He was going to do.

The atheist was so annoyed with her praying, that he decided to get her. He went to the store, bought groceries, dropped them off on her front porch, rang the doorbell, and hid in the bushes. When she opened the door and saw the groceries, she began to praise the Lord!

The atheist jumped out of the bushes. “You old crazy lady. God didn’t buy you those groceries. I bought those groceries!”

His announcement started her shouting and praising God all the more. “I knew the Lord would provide me with some groceries, but I didn’t know he was going make the devil pay for them!”

Can your prayer life get someone out of jail?

Day 100

Today’s Reading: Acts 11

In today’s reading we see a word that we use all the time but it’s used for the first time in the entire Bible. In fact, the word is used only three times in the entire New Testament. It is the word Christian.

That sounds impossible, but it’s true. Pastor Sam Pascoe once said, “Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise.”

It’s time to see how the Bible uses the word Christian. The Bible is very careful with this word, and I think so we must be. Let’s build a description of a Christian with the three passages, starting with Acts 11: “He left for Tarsus to look for Saul; and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. And for an entire year they met with the church and taught considerable numbers; and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch” (verses 25-26).

The “he” in this verse is Barnabas, Paul’s mentor. The two men went to Antioch for an entire year. And it was in that city where Christian was first used.

Let’s build our description on this economy of words.

First, a Christian is a reminder. I love that the church did not make up this word about themselves and get T-shirts made. The word, which means, “little Christ,” was a derogatory, slang word made up by unbelievers. They were in essence saying that the believers reminded them of the man with the thorns on the cross whom was crucified a year before. A real Christian looks like Jesus, not like a church, a religion, a denomination, or a culture. Hopefully when an unbeliever sees us, they see Him.

The second time this word is used is in Acts 26:28. Paul was talking to a king who was not a Christian. Paul was not just dispensing knowledge and information but was trying to persuade and change: “Agrippa replied to Paul, ‘In a short time you will persuade me to become a Christian.’”

The second thing we need to understand about a Christian is that a Christian is a persuader. Christianity is not just right for me and you; it’s right for the planet. We are not inviting people to a place but to a person.

Finally, we leave the book of Acts to find the last use of the word. It’s in 1 Peter 4:16: “If anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name.”

A Christian is a reminder, a Christian is a persuader, and a Christian is a sufferer.

What does that mean? It’s suffering for doing the right thing. There will be times when a Christian will not get an award for doing the right thing, will not get cheers for doing the right thing, and will not get a plaque for doing the right thing. Instead that Christian will get laughed at, mocked, reprimanded, fired, and even sued for living like Jesus. There will be moments when your only audience will be an audience of one—God Himself. But that is enough motivation for doing what’s right.

Christians are considered by many to be crazy, and, as A. W. Tozer suggests, with good reason: “A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest. . . . He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible and knows that which passeth knowledge.”

May that be true of you and me always.

Day 99

Today’s Reading: Acts 10

I’m excited about today’s chapter. Acts 10 is one of my favorite chapters in the New Testament. It gives the thirty-thousand-foot view of why we pray. And it does this by telling a story of two separate guys, an Italian and a Jew, and how their worlds intersected through prayer.

It reminds me of something I’ve often heard said: “The more I pray, the more coincidences happen.” Coincidence is just another name for the providence of God and the activity of God in our daily lives, connecting and intersecting situations that had no way of being connected.

Peter and Cornelius were about to have that intersection. They are more than thirty miles apart, and God was set to bring their two worlds together. There is also a wider gap between their ethnicity, Gentile and Jew, and God brought that together also.

Let’s read first about the Italian:

There was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually. About the ninth hour of the day he clearly saw in a vision an angel of God who had just come in and said to him, “Cornelius!” And fixing his gaze on him and being much alarmed, he said, “What is it, Lord?” And he said to him, “Your prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now dispatch some men to Joppa and send for a man named Simon, who is also called Peter; he is staying with a tanner named Simon, whose house is by the sea.” (Acts 10:1-6)

If Cornelius didn’t pray, then how would he know about Simon, also called Peter, in a city called Joppa, staying with another Simon, who has a leather business near the sea? Oh my goodness, what incredible instructions from prayer.

This is why I pray. There are things you will never know if you don’t pray. I’ve heard it said, “When I work, I work. But when I pray, God works.”

God was working in Acts 10.

Listen closely: those who don’t pray are boring. You miss the exciting extras God adds to your life. Prayerlessness is a boring existence for a Christian.

George Mueller, the nineteenth-century pastor who housed and cared for orphans in Bristol, England, believed that four hours’ worth of work and one hour of prayer could accomplish much more than five hours of work. Prayer is the work, which opens up and intersects worlds that never would have come together. Just as it did here in Acts 10.

When I pray, three things happen:

• I go places I never would have gone.
• I meet people I never would have met.
• And I go through doors I never would have gotten through.

Prayer brought together an Italian and a Jew who had nothing in common in their own minds, but there was a bigger purpose in God’s mind.

Prayer widens the boundaries beyond your zip code, geography, and relationships.

Now here’s the intersection: while Cornelius prayed and sent his men to get Peter . . . “on the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray” (verse 9).

While Peter was praying, men were coming to see him. Peter received a vision, and the voice of God as a knock on the door from these men happened: “While Peter was reflecting on the vision, the Spirit said to him, ‘Behold, three men are looking for you. But get up, go downstairs and accompany them without misgivings, for I have sent them myself’” (verses 19-20).

Those were Cornelius’s guys.

Two men’s prayer lives brought an intersection that would never have happened. And God brought the Italian and the Jew together. That’s what prayer does, and that’s why we pray.

Peter went with the men to Cornelius’s house and preached to them. And “while Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message” (verse 44).

This is off the charts! It was the Gentiles’ Pentecost, in which men and women were filled with the Holy Spirit and baptized in water. And a few verses later (verse 47), Peter said that this was just like what happened to them in Acts 2.

All of this happened because two men prayed.

This is why we pray.

Who knows who we will meet today?

Who knows what door we will see opened?

Who knows where God will send us?

Louis Lallemant, a seventeenth-century monk couldn’t have said better the importance of why we pray: “A man of prayer will do more in one year than another will do in his whole life.”

Day 98

Today’s Reading: Acts 9

Today we read about the incredible conversion story of the greatest Christian who ever lived, the apostle Paul. We find his story in Acts 9. Before his conversion, Paul was murdering and persecuting young Christians. But he was about to be changed forever:

Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” And He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.” The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” And the Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying.” (Acts 9:1-11)

I am amazed at how in one day a man goes from breathing threats and murder against the baby church in Acts and in ten verses we find him praying. How does this happen?

It is nothing but the power of God’s voice and God’s Word. One word from God can change anyone. I am still amazed at the power of God’s Word. He does not speak much but enough. We are so wordy, and God is so precise.

This man was such a tough case that even the disciples took some time to believe that a change happened. As a side note: I love the dialogue between Ananias and the Lord in verses 10 through 17. God wanted him to lay hands upon the new convert Saul, but Ananias was apprehensive because he was aware of Saul’s reputation. He dialogues with the Lord and tells him about Saul (verses 13-14), as though the omniscient God had never heard of him before. God responded to him with a “Go” in verse 15.

God can change even the worst of sinners. As D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “A Christian is the result of the operation of God; nothing less, nothing else. No man can make himself a Christian. God alone makes Christians.”

Someone once said, “God has no grandchildren.” Do you know what that means? You cannot be a Christian because of your parents. You must experience God for yourself. And Saul did. And now the murderer was on the path to being the key writer of the New Testament.

The Damascus Road is the conversion site of the apostle Paul. It gives hope to people who want to see friends and family born again but they seem so far away. Paul’s conversion shows us that when people seem furthest from God, they may be closer than we think to being born again. Paul was hunting Christians in verse 2 and praying like the Christians he wanted to kill by verse 11.

I am so thankful there is nothing we do that God can’t forgive. Paul was killing Christians. I wonder if that’s why no New Testament writer wrote more on God’s grace than the apostle Paul. He was that horrific person, yet he experienced God’s grace. Paul learned what Christian writer Jerry Bridges wrote: “Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.”

It’s not just any old grace. It’s amazing grace—how sweet the sound.

Day 97

Today’s Reading: Acts 8

All of us, as children, heard the warning about playing with fire. The combination of youth and fire can be destructive. This is true both naturally and spiritually.

In today’s reading, we learn about a great revival that came to a city called Samaria. The city faced two kinds of fire, and thank God, the right one came:

When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they began laying their hands on them, and they were receiving the Holy Spirit. (Acts 8:14-17)

Philip went to Samaria and preached. When those in the Jerusalem church heard how well the Good News was received there, they sent reinforcements— Peter and John—to help him. After Samaria received the Word of God, Peter and John prayed that the fire of heaven would come upon them, as it did them at Pentecost. They laid hands on the Samaritans, who received that Pentecostal fire, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. There is something special about this moment, but to understand it, we have to go back to Luke 9 and read about two disciples who were playing with fire:

When the days were approaching for His ascension, He was determined to go to Jerusalem; and He sent messengers on ahead of Him, and they went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for Him. But they did not receive Him, because He was traveling toward Jerusalem. When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” (Luke 9:51-56)

The disciples were dealing with racist hearts. The Samaritans were halfbreeds to the Jews. They were part Assyrian and part Jewish—a result of the Jews’ Assyrian captivity. They were a mixed race whom the Jewish people considered impure.

Jesus rebuked them and their racist spirits. He told them that the Son of Man did not come to destroy lives but to save them.

Thank God for His rebukes and His corrections upon our lives. Can you imagine what would have happened if those disciples actually called fire down in Luke 9? We would not be reading Acts 8. There would be no Samaria. Wrong fire, boys! God was wanting to send another fire but not the one they wanted. This is very important—the two boys who wanted to call down judgment fire, or Elijah fire, as it says in the King James Version, were James and John. And when Jesus rebuked them, it set them back on course.

Sometimes it takes encouragement to get us on the right path, sometimes teaching, sometimes rebuke—but always combined with patience. The Bible says it like this: “We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone” (1 Thessalonians 5:14).

Jesus’ patience paid off.

Do you remember who was sent to the Samaria of Acts 8?

Peter and here it is . . . John. The man who was playing with judgment fire. Jesus was patient with him, and two years after Jesus’ rebuke, John returned to the same city. This time he did get to call down fire, the right kind of fire— Pentecostal, Holy-Spirit-baptism fire. And instead of a people being judged, they were filled with God.

Thank you, God, for your rebukes.

Thank you, John, that you listened.

And now the right fire came to Samaria.