A Light in the Cell and a Hand on the Side

The urn is on. It has been on since twenty past six, because Sister Adeline puts it on at twenty past six, and if the Lord tarries she will put it on at twenty past six until He comes.

Chairs pushed back into a ring. Twelve of them, nine filled. The little heater ticking. Somebody's grandbaby asleep across two seats with a coat over her. And in the middle of the ring, standing because she has always stood, the woman with the list.

She has the list on a folded sheet of paper in her left hand and she does not need it. Rodney's kidneys. The Mitchell girl, court on the fourteenth. Pastor's mother. The young man on Bellamy Street whose name nobody will say out loud, and she says it out loud, every Wednesday, because somebody ought to.

And she prays. Lord, You are the God who sees. Lord, You know the doctors' report and You are not bound by it. And it is right, and it is accurate, and the room says amen because the room means amen.

But here is what she has known for a while and has not said. When she prays for Rodney's kidneys, something happens in her. When she prays for herself, which she does not often do, the words go out of her mouth into the room like coins into a jar, and she hears them land, and nothing at all happens in her chest.

She could not tell you when it started. There was no morning it started on. She has simply been at the front of this line for a long time now, saying true things about God with everything in her, and not one of them has landed on her in longer than she can account for.

And now she is frightened of the thought, because the thought seems to say something about her ministry, and her ministry is not a small thing to her.

Sister, put the list down for four minutes. Nobody is auditing you tonight. I want to walk you into a cell in Jerusalem, because of everything I could show you, this is the one.

The night heaven did every single part of it

Peter is in prison and it is the night before he is due to be brought out and killed. Sixteen soldiers. Two chains. A man sleeping between two guards.

Sleeping. Read that again, because the church of God is up all night praying for him in a house across town, and the man himself is asleep.

And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison: and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands.Acts 12:7

Count who does what in that sentence. The angel comes. The light shines. The hand goes on the side. The man is raised up. The chains fall off. There are five actions in that verse and Peter performs none of them. His entire contribution is to be asleep in the room where it happens.

Now look at the tone of it, because that is what I came for. A hand on the side. Not a shout down the corridor, not a report on how a man who walked on water ended up chained to two soldiers. A touch, and four words, and light in a room that had been dark for a while.

You are woken by the same courtesy that woke him, and it does not arrive with an assessment of your ministry. That is not my sentiment laid over a hard week; Acts 12:7 has heaven doing every action in the sentence and the man doing nothing at all, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a cell in Jerusalem and stands it up in a church hall with a tea urn going. You are not being appraised. You are being touched on the side.

And here is the second thing, and it is for the woman with the list specifically.

The church was praying for Peter that night. The house was full of them and they were at it hard. And when the answer walked up the street and knocked at the gate, the girl who went to see ran back and told them and they told her she was out of her mind. The people doing the praying were the last people in the story to believe it had worked.

That is not a criticism of them and I am not making one of you. It is a description of what happens to intercessors, and it happens because the whole habit of the work is aimed outward. You have spent so long carrying other people to God that the arrangement has calcified into a one way street with a woman standing on it.

You have been the one holding the door open for everybody else, and the light coming into this room is for you as well. Galatians 6:9 says we shall reap in due season and not faint, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a promise like that land on the person who has been quoting it to everyone else. Nobody has to leave the line for you to be prayed for. The light in the cell fell on the whole cell.

The chains that fell were the ones nobody could see him take off

One more thing about that verse, and then we will go to the hard part of the evening.

The chains fell off. Peter did not wrestle them, did not pick a lock, did not have a moment of great resolve on the floor of a cell. The text has them coming off him while he is still half in the dream, and then the angel has to tell him to put his shoes on, because he is that far under.

I want you to hear how little was required of the man, because I know what you have been quietly assuming about yourself. You have been assuming that whatever has gone flat in you is something you will have to fix before you are any use, and that the fixing is on you, and that you had better get on with it privately so as not to disturb the work.

You are not required to repair yourself before He comes near you, and the chains in that account came off a sleeping man. The written word says it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13), and it is His Spirit who does that working, not a tired woman at half past eight on a Wednesday. Put down the tools. You were never the mechanic on this.

And now the part where you open your mouth, because you have one and it turns out to matter.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough. Notice what He did not say. He did not say the fervency of a woman who has been at it for years, and He did not say the heat of what you feel while you say it. He said the seed and He said spoken. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current, and He sends it when He pleases.