Acts 12.11 NLT




Peter finally came to his senses. “It’s really true!” he said. “The Lord has sent his angel and saved me from Herod and from what the Jewish leaders had planned to do to me!”




At this time the early church was growing fast and this was making King Herod increasingly nervous. He was determined to tighten the screws and so he arranged for the killing of James, the brother of John. This went down very well with the Jews and so he decided to arrest Peter, the leader of the church, and kept him under the closest possible surveillance. He was guarded by four squads of four soldiers each, and that night he was chained as he slept between two of the guards. King Herod must have assumed that nothing could possibly go wrong but he hadn’t taken God into account! That night, an angel woke Peter up and led him out of the prison.




I love the next bit. Having been miraculously set free, Peter suddenly realised, as our text reveals, that it was all true. Not unreasonably, he had assumed that it was a wonderful and totally unrealistic dream. But now he has to reckon with the fact that the impossible has happened. He really has been set free! One of the biggest challenges of living the Christian life is that you have to get used to the fact
that God is in the business of doing miracles. He is doing them all the time. That means that as we go about our daily life we need to raise our level of expectation.




When we pray for someone to be healed, we shouldn’t be surprised if God actually does heal them. When we pray for our sins to be forgiven, we should take it in our stride when we become overwhelmed with a sense of God’s peace. When we pray for restoration in a broken relationship, we should be quick to praise God when it happens. Rather than assuming that everything is likely to stay more or less the same as it has always been, we need to have open arms to God’s daily miracles.
Peter should have known God better. For every reason he should have known that God, by his very nature, loved to do miracles. We need exactly the same attitude as we live for him today.




QUESTION: What miracle are you praying for today?
PRAYER: Lord God I worship you for your miraculous power and your endless love. Amen

Released on 20 Aug 2021