One of our uncompromising values is “Sing At Midnight”. We worship God in every season and in our darkest hour like our freedom depends on it.

We take this value from the experience of Paul and Silas in Acts 16.

Imagine it.

You have been preaching the Gospel and are thrown into prison. You choose to worship and pray through the night, singing praises that echoed off the prison walls with such force an earthquake brings the walls falling down breaking you free.

What do you think you would have done if you were in their place in the prison?

Would you have stayed or would you have made a run for it? Having really done nothing wrong, you weren’t meant to be in the prison in the first place. Your freedom is just a few short steps away!

Shockingly, with chains at their feet and prison doors open, they stayed. There they stood, talking to the guard commissioned to keep them captive out of taking his life as he feared the punishment to come from the jail break.

When many would’ve run, they stood firm.

No matter being in prison or in chains Paul and Silas’ freedom was never really at stake. Prison may be a lack of freedom in this world, but prison couldn’t touch their freedom found in Jesus. Their song was proof that although their bodies were chained, their spirits were free. They didn’t run because their freedom was never lost. They were free before prison, in prison, and when the chains broke. They knew that the earthquake wasn’t the reason they were free, it was their unwavering faith in the Kingdom that cannot be shaken!

Their freedom in Jesus could not be conquered.

No circumstance, no prison, no chains, no man could take their freedom in Jesus.

We move different in that freedom.

We stand firm in that freedom when the world would run.

We have faith in that freedom that God is working all things for good.

As Paul and Silas’ freedom was never on the line, the guard’s was. Their praise didn’t just set those who were physically bound free, it liberated the true captive in this story, the guard. Where he feared the punishment of this world, he found freedom from it.

Not only that, his family found freedom too!

After talking him down from taking his life, Paul and Silas preached the gospel to him and he was saved. He then brought Paul and Silas to his house where his entire household was saved.

So why do we worship God in every season and circumstance like our freedom depends on it?

Because our freedom is dependent on our perspective of who God is in the midst of difficulties. The trials we go through aren’t always about us, sometimes they are about the people impacted by our faithfulness and our perspective as we walk through them!

Verses to look into this week.

Acts 16:16-40

Hebrews 12:27-29

Romans 8:18-28

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Tauren + Lorna Wells