My Deliverer is Standing By

Read: Acts 12: 1-24

My favorite, favorite praise song of all time is Rich Mullin’s My Deliver is Coming. It’s a song steeped in imagery, a beautifully written song indeed. The chorus says, “My Deliverer is coming. My Deliverer is standing by.”
Today the biblical narrative lands us with the apostles in trouble... again. Keep in mind that from now until about 200 years later Christians the mass persecution of Christians would continue. King Herod enters the picture. The “King Herod” mentioned here is historically known as Agrippa the Great (or Agrippa I). He was a very selfish and utilitarian ruler, enacting policies that simply enable him to stay in power. Thus, when the Roman emperor Claudius wanted to erect a statue of himself in the Temple courts, Agrippa quickly went to him to change his mind so the Jews won’t revolt and make him look bad. He eventually succeeded, but in exchange for the emperor leaving the Temple alone Agrippa would encourage the Jews to lavish praise after praise upon the emperor.

Agrippa was no speaker like Obama, and his popularity ratings were barely hovering above the 50% point. Anything that could even remotely upset the Jewish population will bring him down. When he found out that killing Christians for no judicial reason pleased the population, so he proceeded to take down Peter. But the Church was praying for him! And so God delivered Peter from Herod’s grasp and later, after meeting James, who leads the Church in Jerusalem, Peter left for other business. There is no time to rest when Jesus personally entrusted the apostles to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

The prayer ministry has put out a huge list of prayer requests, and I was very happy to see that it involved praying for everything in the world, from the nuclear disarmament debates to the economy, from the health care issue to spiritual well-being. Oftentimes when we pray such big Weltanschauung (worldview) prayers we become discouraged, especially if the news reports that things are getting worse. As I write this devotional 2 hurricanes have blown through the Philippines and two earthquakes have hit Samoa and Indonesia... all in the space of just one week. But such is the beauty of hope. When we truly hope, we have faith that God will not leave things the way they are, but will make them better. But lest we think that’s all to hope, think again!

Later in the Bible, St. Paul would write about hope, faith, and love. We always focus on love because Paul follows it with “the greatest of these is love.” But hope and faith are important too. Faith drives our relationship with God based on what we know from what God has done in the past. That’s why we read our Bibles because it is the story of what God has done in the past. Based on that, we know how to live our lives today. That is faith. Hope says, “based on what we know God will do in the future, we know how to live our lives today.” Faith is living today based on the past. Hope is living today based on the future.

You see, when we pray we are exercising hope. Biblical hope affects how we live our lives today. So, if I truly hope and pray that the hungry will be fed and the weak will be strong, I will live my life so that the hungry will indeed be fed and the weak indeed will be strong. Biblical hope in prayer is not “God, we pray for peace” and then do nothing about it in our lives. By praying for peace in Iraq or Afghanistan, we must live a life where we support efforts to bring peace in those conflict-ridden countries. Biblical hope in prayer is not “God, please deliver the poor from poverty.” and not helping raise money or doing service projects to raise money for the poor.

That’s why, if anything, prayer is important for the Church, because we live our prayers out in our Christian lives! I realize that at WCAC, prayer meetings are boring and that there are issues with people “Kobe-escaping” from it. How unfortunate! Let me tell you that it was your prayers that kept our family afloat when my dad went to be with the Lord. I don’t know how I could’ve kept my sanity without your prayers! I know prayer is not as “fun” or as “nice sounding” as singing praises is, but it is so important! Let us, then, be people of prayer, that we can live the Christian life faithfully, and be people of hope in a time of great hopelessness.

One tangent before I sign off: one of the beautiful aspects of prayer, I think, is when brothers and sisters pray for each other, even if they’re oceans apart. So just as you guys have prayed for me and my family, it would be my joy to pray for you all as well. So if you have any prayer requests please email me: henry.sc.kuo@gmail.com.


PRAYER CALENDAR
Wednesday: Pray for friends (inside and outside church)
Pray for your friend’s busyness and that they will look to God for strength.