Week 3 Day 4 - Holy! Holy! Holy!

WEEK 3:  Holy, Holy, Holy!

Day 4:  Acts 16:25-26

²⁵ About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. ²⁶ Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.

These scriptures pick up in a time where Paul and Silas had just received a terrible beating.  They were locked up in a jail cell and no doubt in pain. They knew suffering and probably, if they listened only to their bodies, they probably didn’t much feel like singing praise.  Their bodies must have been screaming at them and no telling what their thoughts were replaying back to them over and over.  Traumatic events are real and the responses of our physical, emotional, and mental bodies are real too.  But Paul and Silas made the choice to turn to God.  In spite of the prison walls holding them and the suffering of their physical bodies, they prayed and sang songs of hymn, even in spite of what they must have been feeling.  And what was the result?  Miraculous power.  The doors flew open, simply because they prayed and praised!  I don’t know about you, but sometimes, even when I know God is Holy, my flesh is pretty strong and I sometimes  feel bogged down and beaten up in my own circumstances.  Sometimes it just isn’t automatically easy to fill my heart with praise.  Paul and Silas are such an encouragement to me in those times because I realize that their circumstances were horrendous.  They had every right to want to take some time to lick their cruel and unjust wounds.  But, even when they probably didn’t fleshy feel like it, they made the choice to praise God anyway and because of that freedom came!  FREEDOM came!  Most of us are not in an actual jail.  Most of us experience a different kind of prison.  It may be illness, a rebellious child,  broken relationships, failed dreams, but whatever it is, the beating is real on the inside as much as Paul’s was real on the outside and we can almost hear the echoes of the doors that have slammed shut cramming us into our tiny cell of struggle.  But if we can just look past it, and if we can do nothing else but say, ” Holy, Holy, Holy” with the faith that we know it to be true, like Paul and Silas, the doors will start flying open and we will be loosed.  We may not be free of the circumstances, but we will be free within those circumstances.  The key is to realize that God is bigger than our feelings and even if we can’t find strength to even go to church or share our pain openly with others, we can cry out with the faith of a mustard seed saying “Holy, Holy, Holy!” and God will move within us where most of our prison cells reside and will throw open the doors of our heart and refresh our beaten soul until our praise because more than our pain.  What keeps you from praise?  What prison cell is too big for God?