The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. 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.
Acts 16:22-26
Paul, once a Pharisee of Pharisees, anti-Christian, is now filled with an overwhelming passion to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to all who will listen. Receiving a vision to come to Macedonia, he finds himself in Philippi, a leading city of its time. As bearers of the gospel message, Paul and Silas soon found themselves hounded by a slave woman who was a fortune teller. As she followed them, loudly shouting that they were servants of God and telling how to be saved, Paul wanted to silence the demon within her as he didn’t want her voice to be the testimony of their mission.
Once he cast out the spirit within her, her owners became angry and rallied a crowd to come against Paul and Silas. They quickly found themselves being severely beaten and thrown into prison. It was in this cold, dark prison that Paul and Silas continued to worship and glorify God. Even in the midst of their pain, they were praying and singing to God as the other prisoners listened in … all for the sake of the Gospel.
The Lord brought such a great earthquake that all of the prison doors opened and everyone’s chains fell off. When the jailer saw what happened, he immediately assumed the prisoners had fled and raised his sword to kill himself, since he knew he would soon be killed by those in charge as a result of escaped prisoners. Yet, Paul quickly shouted that they were all there and for him not to harm himself. The jailer immediately was struck by the power of their testimony and he asked how he might be saved.
This story in Acts 16 became so real to me as I stood at the jail believed to be the one Paul and Silas had been in. I imagined how the enemy thought he was silencing Paul and Silas’s message of the Good News when they were thrown into jail, yet the opposite happened. The Good News was spread and the number of believers grew.
Paul and Silas spent their lives for the sake of the Gospel – this was their sole focus.
As my husband and I were standing at the entrance of the jail, he asked me to say a prayer. My words came out in the form of an old song that poured from my heart,
Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary
Pure and holy, tried and true
With thanksgiving, I’ll be a living
Sanctuary for You
As I ended the song in a whisper, tears came to my eyes as I thought about the extreme honor the Lord gave us to be His witnesses. My prayer at that jailhouse doorway was for God to purify me and to dwell within me that I might be a powerful ambassador of His good news. With all of the confusion and noise this world offers, it simply winds down to what is most important … living my life for the sake of the gospel.
May we continue to live…
Rooted in Him,
