Singing in the Slammer

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.” – Acts 16:25

Back in the Apostle Paul’s day, Jewish men prayed a specific prayer of thanks every morning. In that prayer, a Jewish man would thank God for not making him a Gentile, a woman or a slave. But in Acts 16, we can read about members of all three despised groups redeemed and united in faith in Christ.

After parting ways with Barnabas, Paul set off with his new missionary teammate Silas to strengthen the churches he’d planted in Syria and Cilicia. Then, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Paul and Silas found their way to Philippi, where they helped lead these three unlikely converts to Jesus Christ.

The first was a wealthy businesswoman named Lydia. Paul headed to the river and found a group of Jewish women who were meeting for prayer, worship and a discussion of the Scriptures. Paul joined in the discussion, and he led Lydia to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. As soon as she became a Christian, she offered her home as a place to stay for Paul and his group of missionaries.

The second Christian convert was a demon-possessed slave girl. We’re not specifically told that she got saved, but it’s implied. According to verse 16, this girl “had a spirit by which she predicted the future. And she earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling.” Paul didn’t want demons or any slave masters pulling this girl’s marionette strings, so he commanded the demon in the name of Jesus Christ to leave her. The demon DID leave her. And when the girl’s owners saw that she was set free from her demon, they were furious—because her freedom hit them right in the wallet.

So, the slave girl’s owners brought Paul and Silas to the local magistrates and drummed up some bogus charges against them. Because a small mob was forming, the magistrates had a kneejerk reaction. To appease the unruly crowd, they flogged Paul and Silas severely and threw them into prison for the night. They ordered the jailer to guard them carefully, so he placed them in an inner cell with their feet in stocks.

But something very surprising happened at midnight, as Paul and Silas were sitting on the cold stone floor with their backs throbbing in agony. Instead of grumbling and complaining, Paul and Silas began praying and joyfully singing. And as they prayed and sang, a violent earthquake shook the prison. According to verse 26, “All at once the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.” The jailer, who had been sleeping at the time, woke up. And when he saw that all the prison doors were open, he assumed all the prisoners had escaped. Not wanting to face the public disgrace of being shamed and possibly executed for letting his prisoners escape, the jailer pulled out his sword, ready to take his own life. But Paul called out to him, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”

After the jailer turned on the lights and found the prisoners right where he left them, he fell trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out of their cells and asked them, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (v. 30). And that night, after hearing the gospel message, the jailer and his entire household accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and were baptized.

And there you have it: three very different individuals who became followers of Christ in Philippi: a wealthy businesswoman, a poor slave girl and a middle-class Gentile man in law enforcement. As Paul had recently written to the Galatians, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28).

I’d like to give you two powerful insights from this chapter to meditate on.

Insight #1: Any fool can sing during the day. But God gives His followers songs in the night. It’s easy to sing when the lights are on, the kids are behaving and you’ve just polished off a hot cup of coffee. It’s much harder to sing at midnight when you’ve been wrongly accused, beaten up and thrown in the Big House. But that is the BEST time to praise God. That’s when praise becomes REALLY powerful. Just like in that Philippian dungeon, that’s when people around you will sit up straight and listen, saying to themselves, “There’s something different about this person. They have something that I don’t have, and I want it.”

Insight #2: Always be ready to share the Good News of Jesus Christ—at any time, at any place and in any way. God calls you and me to share Christ with those around us: whether we’re in our family room, in our neighbor’s driveway, at school or work, on the basketball court or in the checkout line at WalMart.

Think about it: Paul was never really imprisoned. He could sing in jail just as easily as he could sing at church. And he could share Christ with cons in the clink just as easily as he could share Christ with law-abiding citizens in a synagogue. It didn’t matter, because as long as He was right where God wanted him to be, He was free to sing and free to share Jesus. The same could be said about you and me. No matter where we are, no matter who we’re with, we are free to pray, free to sing, free to lead people to Jesus Christ.

Dane Davis is the pastor of Impact Christian Church in Victorville. Join us at Impact for Sunday services: in person at 9 a.m., or online at 10 a.m. on YouTube or Facebook Live. For more information, visit www.GreaterImpact.cc.

How to Deal with a Living Nightmare

“After [Paul and Silas] had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer…put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.”

– Acts 16:22-24

Can you remember a time in your life when a celebration suddenly turned into a nightmare? May 2015 was one of those times for my wife and me. The month started off well with a Mother’s Day celebration. And we were looking forward to my wife’s birthday and our seventeenth wedding anniversary at the end of the month. But just four days after Mother’s Day, my wife and I found ourselves sitting in the Loma Linda Medical Center ER with our five-year-old daughter hooked up to an IV.

Our daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, and effective immediately, we would have to prick her fingers to test her blood sugar at least seven times a day and give her shots of insulin at least four times a day. If her blood sugar dropped too low, she could pass out and suffer life-threatening injuries. If her blood sugar elevated too high, her organs could be permanently damaged. It seemed as if we were in a bad dream from which we couldn’t wake up.

As our happy little family’s life was suddenly turned upside down, we found ourselves asking God the question, “Why?” My wife and I had dedicated our lives to serving Christ and following his will, so this gut-wrenching curve ball didn’t make sense. We knew in our heart of hearts that God must have a clear purpose for our daughter’s disease, but we wanted to know: “Why is this happening to us?”

In Acts 16, the Apostle Paul set out on his second missionary journey with his sidekick, Silas. After they visited many of the churches he had previously planted, the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision, instructing him to preach the gospel message in Europe, not in northern Asia as he had originally planned. So, the two missionaries obeyed God’s command. They traveled west into Europe, and the first city where they preached was the Greek city of Philippi.

Very quickly their ministry efforts produced much fruit. An influential Jewish woman named Lydia, along with her entire family, chose to follow Jesus Christ. And on one occasion Paul was empowered by God to cast a demon out of a poor little slave girl. On the heels of such life-changing ministry and the clear demonstration of God’s power, Paul and Silas must have thought that they were on the verge of witnessing a great spiritual revival in the city.

But their celebration quickly turned into a nightmare. In the matter of a few hours, Paul and Silas were dragged into court, stripped, beaten to a bloody pulp, thrown into prison, and placed in foot stocks. And if I had been in Paul’s shoes I would have been asking, “Why, God? You told us to come to Northern Greece, so we came. And look where it’s gotten us. We are shackled in a jail cell with our backs bruised and bleeding. And who knows what they’re going to do to us tomorrow? We don’t understand! Why, God? Why?”

Sometimes when we obey God, things seem to go terribly wrong. Oftentimes, persecution and heartache and pain increase when we’re in the center of God’s will. But as Jesus taught us in Matthew 5:11-12: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Honestly, Jesus’ command in these verses seems idealistic. Come on, Jesus, do you really expect Christians to “rejoice and be glad” when we’re being beaten up for our faith in Christ?

Surprisingly, yes. That’s exactly what He expects. And that’s exactly what Paul and Silas did as they sat in agony on the cold prison floor in Philippi. In Acts 16:25 we read these amazing words: “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.” What a remarkable response to such unjust, excruciating persecution! Bruised, bleeding and with their feet confined in stocks, Paul and Silas spent their time praying and singing to God. And in response, God sent a fierce earthquake that flung open the prison doors, unlocked everyone’s chains and, more importantly, put the fear of God into both the prisoners and the prison guard.

The prison guard fell on his knees before Paul and Silas and asked them, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” You see, revival had come to that prison, and before the end of the night, the jailer and his entire family had accepted Christ and proven that decision by being baptized. If Paul and Silas had been wondering a few hours earlier, “Why is this happening to us?” by the end of the night God had answered clearly, “This is why I brought you to Europe. This is why I allowed you to be arrested, beaten and thrown into this Philippian prison. This is why. This is why.”

When the inevitable times of persecution for Christ come, you and I have some important questions to answer. Will we gripe and complain and shake our fists at God, or will we patiently praise God anyway? Will we simply trust our own five senses, throwing God’s commands to the wind, or will we trust God and continue obeying His will? My friend, when you are in the midst of the pain, you may not understand what God is up to, but one day you will. So, rejoice in Him. Trust Him. And obey His commands. Weeping may remain for a night, but joy will certainly come in the morning. In God’s plan, pain always has a purpose.

Dane Davis is the Lead Pastor of First Christian Church in Victorville. For more information, visit www.YourVictorvilleChurch.com  and join us for our first worship service of 2019 Sunday at 10 am.