Good to see you guys here this morning. If it’s your first time here, as Heather mentioned, we’re really glad that you guys are here, and I hope that you do feel welcome and that you do feel at ease being here at Big Valley. But if you’ve been here a couple times or three times, or you’ve been here a whole lot of times to where your name is engraved into your seat or something else is engraved into your seat, we’re glad that you’re here too. I’m glad that you’re here, and I hope that with expectancy you’re thinking about what God may be doing in your life and how we might walk out of here different than when we first came in. It’s great to have you guys here.

If you don’t know, my name is Ben Kelly, and I work here at the church. My role is to work with some of our 25-to-35 young adults, and then I also work with some of our young married couples here at the church between the ages of 18 to 35. They’re fantastic. I love being with them. In fact, tonight I’m going to be with our 25 to 35. It’s going to be a great time being together. They really are a joy to be around. I say I work with them, but that’s not the proper term. We get to share life together, and it’s really a joy to be around them.

I do that on a part-time basis. Tuesdays and Sundays I’m here at the church, and the rest of the week I have the privilege of working with some guys out of Ripon, and we build and remodel homes. That’s a lot of fun. I get to go to work and they say, “Ben, we want you to build that wall,” or, “Ben, we want you to climb up that ladder,” or, “We want you to take down that wall.” I just love the blend of both of them. I get to be in the office enjoying meetings, which is fantastic. If you guys have experienced meetings, you know as well that it’s incredible.

I’m serious too, okay? I don’t know what kind of meetings you guys have, but we just had one this last Tuesday and it was pretty great. In fact, it’s going to really impact all of 2026 here at Big Valley. It was great. But just when I’m kind of wearing down from the exciting meetings, that’s when I get to go outside and swing a hammer or climb a ladder. It’s really just a perfect blend of what God’s allowed me to do.

That’s a little bit of who I am. I know some of you here. Maybe some of you I know pretty well. Some of you, we may just shake hands and say, “How’s it going? Nice to see you.” Some of you guys I know nothing about, and the only thing you know about me is pretty much what I just shared.

I think that’s what’s really fun about church. I think church is one of the most unique places, if not the most unique place, on the planet. We are all so different. We walk in here from all kinds of different backgrounds. We’ve all had great, amazing things take place in our life, and we’ve also had things that are not so great, not so amazing, take place in our life. But there’s one thing that draws us all here, and it’s the person of Jesus Christ. That’s the one person we have in common. Or there’s something we’re longing for that can only be found in Him, and that is hope, and that is peace, and that is redemption.

I also like church for a couple of other reasons. It’s a little serious. It’s mysterious at the same time. It’s very reverent. I don’t know what type of churches you grew up in, but I remember going into a church and it was very serious all the time, full of great people worshiping a great God. But on the flip side, church is something else that’s full of messy, crazy people.

I feel like I can say crazy people because the passage we’re going to look at this morning actually uses the term, “You’re crazy.” So it’s not really bad to say it in the sermon. I also think I could say it too because I fall into the messy category when it comes to church people.

I don’t know about you, but my life has had plenty of ups and plenty of downs. It seems like the downs far outweighed the ups when I look back on my life. But I can think of three specifically.

I remember 33 years ago when I was in a spot of just feeling stuck, unable to do anything about my situation. I felt that feeling of despair because that was the first time someone explained to me that your sin keeps you from having a relationship with the God of this universe, and if you were to breathe your last, it wouldn’t be that great.

I remember as a junior in high school going, “Oh my goodness. I don’t want that to happen. How do I not end up in that scenario?” That’s when someone explained to me Jesus and what He accomplished on the cross, how He was buried in a tomb, and then He rose three days later.

I remember 25 years ago when my wife and I had been married for a little while, and we’re like, “I think we should have kids.” She’s like, “I’ve always wanted kids.” I’m like, “I’ve always wanted kids.” Then all of a sudden, kids weren’t happening. We were thinking through, “Okay, God, what’s taking place? Is this going to be in the cards for us?”

I realized how there was nothing we could do about it. We tried just about everything we could, and we were like, “God, what’s next? How are You going to work this situation out?”

I think about seven years ago when I was at a place in my life when I was in the dumps. I, along with my wife, along with my kids, and those closest to me were feeling the effects because of my own hurts, my own habits, and my own hang-ups. I was at a place where I was thinking, “Lord, You have to intervene because on my own, I am incapable of escaping the situation.”

I don’t know where you find yourself today. You may be coming in here and life is good, and that’s fantastic. There are moments in our life when it is going well, and you look at the Lord and say, “God, thank You for this time of grace, this time of fun, this time of enjoyment.”

But you may be at a spot right now where you came in and you feel like you’re in a moment of despair. You feel stuck. You may think about your own marriage and go, “I feel like we’re always right around the same issue. We can’t get past it. It just always keeps coming up, and we never agree on it.”

Maybe that’s not in your marriage. I shouldn’t speak for you. Perhaps in my marriage that’s happened one or two times.

I think about with our kids, or if you’re a kid, I think about our parents, right? Are they ever going to begin to listen to me? Are they ever going to change? Are we ever going to get past this issue?

I wonder if those of you who are single are thinking, “God, is Mr. Right or Mrs. Right going to come along? What’s the next step for me? Who are You going to bring into my life to bring joy, hope?”

It may be finances. Finances, goodness, right? It’s like one of those things that’s always up, always down. Maybe you get married and you’re like, “Wow, we’ve got two incomes. We’ve got more money right now.” Then all of a sudden, kids come along, right? You’re like, “We’ve got no money right now.”

Then they go to school and you’re thinking, “Hey, we kind of have one and a half incomes now because we’re kind of back at work. It’s better.” Then all of a sudden, kids go to college. You’re like, “Now we’ve got no money again.”

We’re thinking, “God, are You going to allow us to ever get ahead because the bills seem to outweigh the income?”

It could be your own addiction. You want to quit. You want to stop. But no matter what you do, you end up right back at the same place. You could be married to someone who is dealing with addiction. Your parents or your relatives or your friend could be dealing with that, and suddenly you’ve realized that even though this is not my addiction, everything about my life, our life, revolves around it.

You may be looking at other people as you’re scrolling through your phone and different things and comparing what you don’t have to what they seemingly do have and thinking, “God, am I ever going to be able to be like that?”

It could be a whole variety of things. Regardless of where we find ourselves this morning, I believe that the passage of Scripture we’re going to talk about today will give us some great direction as to how we deal with whatever issue we find ourselves in, because we’re going to talk about a principle that truly transforms our life.

When I heard it one time, I started to realize, “Ah, now it makes sense as to how this is to affect every relationship, every scenario, good thing and bad thing in my life.” So I’m excited about it, and I hope that you would learn something. I hope that God would teach you. I hope that it would be something that’s impactful.

If you do have your Bibles, you can open up to Acts 12. You can look on your phone if you like. If you don’t have any of those and you just enjoy looking at the screens, it’ll be up there too, whichever you enjoy more.

But let me pray for us, and then we’ll hop into that.

Father, thank You for today. Thank You for each person in this room this morning. Lord, I pray that You would encourage them. Lord, I pray that You would teach us, that You would lead us. Lord, if the things that I plan to share, if You want me to continue on sharing them, then let them happen.

But Lord, if there’s something that I’ve prepared that’s not necessary, Lord, just let it not even come out. Lord, give us courage and give us boldness. In Jesus’ name, amen.

All right. So Acts chapter 12 starts off like this.

Acts 12 begins by describing King Herod violently persecuting the church, killing James the brother of John, and then arresting Peter when he sees that it pleases the people. Peter is placed under extremely heavy guard, while the church earnestly prays to God for him.

Actually, let me just stop. As I’ve talked the last few services, whenever I read the book of Acts, specifically this story, for me it reads just like a suspenseful movie. It’s one of those things like, man, this sounds like a lot of movies that I’ve watched before. I just enjoy how Luke keeps us in suspense for these first very few verses here.

But let’s read it again. And now we have some suspenseful lighting for us too.

About that time, King Herod cruelly attacked some who belonged to the church. He killed James, John’s brother, with the sword. When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter too during the days of Unleavened Bread. After the arrest, he put him in prison and assigned four squads of four soldiers each to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover. So Peter was kept in prison, but prayer was being made earnestly to God for him by the church.

So here you have it, right? Like a lot of movies that I’ve seen and probably you’ve seen, it starts off and there’s a bad, bad man, and he’s doing really bad things. He’s killing people, killing Christians.

I don’t know if you’ve recognized this. Every time that God’s doing some amazing things, every time God is making things happen, whether it’s in the Bible or whether it’s in other people’s lives or whether it’s in your life, you are always going to see opposition.

That’s just the nature of things right now.

As you think about John 10:10, a verse that’s so dear to me, it says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Every time God is doing a good work, the enemy is going to seek to thwart it.

That’s what we see here. That’s what you may be experiencing even now in your life, regardless of what it is. If we seek to honor the Lord and pursue Him first, there is always going to be pushback. Expect it.

Actually, sometimes in a weird way, you can rejoice that it’s happening because you may think, “I’m doing something for the Lord because I’m facing opposition.”

It goes on. On the night before Herod was to bring him out for execution, Peter was bound with two chains, sleeping between two soldiers, while sentries in front of the door guarded the prison.

All right, so Luke, the author, sets it up and he tries to make a point. He does it all throughout this passage. He says he’s bound with two chains between two soldiers, and there are other guards. There are sentries that are guarding the door.

What is he trying to drive home?

He’s trying to drive home the fact that the situation that Peter was in was inescapable.

There was nothing Peter could do to get out from this.

He was in a situation of being stuck.

Even still, what I find interesting is what was Peter doing?

Snoozing.

I don’t know to what extent. I don’t know if he was snoring. I don’t know if all the other guards were sleeping. I’m assuming they were, but the guy’s sleeping the night before his execution.

If I knew that was taking place the next day—and you’ll find out that I’m a pretty big baby—I’d be weeping probably. I’d be rocking, trying to text someone. Well, they didn’t have text phones back then, but I would be pretty afraid.

And here you find Peter sleeping.

But he goes on.

Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell. The angel struck Peter on the side, woke him up, and told him to get up quickly. Immediately, the chains fell from Peter’s wrists.

So this intense story now turns supernatural.

An angel shows up, which doesn’t happen very often in my life. I don’t know about yours, but just poof, he’s there.

A light shines in the cell.

He either nudges, punches—I don’t know—does he kick Peter in the side?

He wakes him up and says, “Hey, quick, get up.”

Then the chains fall off.

They fall off.

It goes on.

The angel tells Peter to get dressed, put on his sandals, wrap his cloak around him, and follow. Peter follows him out, still not realizing that what the angel is doing is actually happening. He thinks he’s seeing a vision.

Peter’s waking up like a lot of us do at times, sort of waking up, making his way, not understanding fully what’s taking place.

After they passed the first and second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads into the city, which opened for them by itself. They went outside and passed one street, and immediately the angel left him.

The author again points out the fact that they passed two guard posts.

There’s an iron gate that opened, right?

It opened to them by itself.

Again, Luke is trying to point out the fact that Peter could not get out of this prison.

There was nothing he could do.

But the angel shows up and leads him out.

Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel and rescued me from Herod’s grasp and from all that the Jewish people expected.”

Now, as any good writer, most movies that you see nowadays, when they keep you in a lot of suspense, they realize, okay, people need to start breathing a little deeper now. We need to bring a little comedy, perhaps. Keep people moving and not freaked out the whole time.

So this is what takes place.

When Peter realized what had happened, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many believers had gathered together and were praying. He knocked at the entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. She recognized Peter’s voice, but she was so overjoyed that she ran back inside without opening the door and announced that Peter was standing outside.

Peter escapes prison, which doesn’t happen very often, I don’t think.

He’s knocking at the door, recognizes that someone hears him, and then all of a sudden they’re like, “It’s Peter! It’s Peter!”

And then they don’t let him in.

It’s nighttime.

Peter’s knocking at the door thinking, “I just escaped prison, but I can’t even get into my friend’s house. This is not right. God, is this really how You planned it?”

But it goes on.

She goes and tells who’s in the room that Peter’s outside.

What do they say to her?

They say, “You’re out of your mind!”

Don’t you love that “you’re crazy” is in the Bible?

I feel like it gives me power when my kids say something or do something. I can say, “You’re crazy.”

But she kept insisting that it was true.

Then they said, not even realizing the irony of their statement, “It’s his angel.”

Not knowing that, nope, it’s not his angel.

In fact, an angel just saved him and let him out of prison.

Peter, however—pans back to Peter—still knocking.

Still knocking on the door.

“Is someone going to let me in?”

When they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.

Why were they amazed, do you think?

I think they were amazed because when they said, “We think it’s his angel,” most likely they had the assumption that Peter wasn’t going to make it out of there alive.

In fact, they probably thought that Peter had already died, and that’s why they said, “It’s his angel that’s here,” because Peter’s not going to make it.

So when Peter shows up and they see him, they were truly astounded, astonished, amazed, thinking, “Did God really do that?”

Peter really is alive.

He’s not going to die.

I mean, I know we’ve been praying about it, but that’s pretty impressive.

Then lastly it says Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and explained how the Lord had brought him out of prison. He told them to report what had happened to James and the other brothers and sisters, and then he left for another place.

My dad’s a little older now, and when we go over to his house, my siblings and I and then our spouses are all over there. It’ll be kind of loud because we’ll all be talking. Some of us are louder than others, and we’ll be telling stories, talking about the week and the day.

It’ll just be loud, and my dad will want to chime into the conversation or he’ll want to share a joke. So he does this thing. He’ll be sitting in his chair, and all of a sudden he’ll just lift up his hand like this. It’s the weirdest thing.

But he does it, and we’ll all start noticing it slowly. Like, Dad’s got his hand up. We’ll start being quiet, and then one of us will say, “Dad, did you want to say something?”

He’ll chime into the story, or most of the time he’ll say a joke that we’ve heard a couple times, and it’s great.

It’s great.

That’s not—it’s just my dad.

It’s great to be around my dad and have him do those things.

But Peter motions and says, “Be quiet,” because you might think that it’s pretty loud in there at that moment.

Hooting and hollering.

“Man, you’re alive! We thought you were going to die! How did you get out of there? Oh my goodness! Can you believe this? I can’t wait to share this with—”

It was exciting.

That’s why Peter had to say, “Hey, hey, hey, hey. Listen to what happened. Listen to what God did.”

Now, we don’t have time to watch the rest of the movie when it comes to this. You can read this on your own, but it’s important to note a couple of things.

First, you’ll find out as you read the rest of Acts 12 that King Herod, the man who was doing very bad things, ends up dying in an unnatural way, which is significant. You can figure out and find out why that is.

But this story is sandwiched between a couple things, between a few statements.

If you were to read before Acts 12, you’ll hear a phrase similar to one that sounds like, “And God’s message was increasing and the church grew. People had everything in common.”

Then after you look after this story of Peter’s escape from prison, you’ll hear the same phrases.

God’s message flourished and increased.

I bring that up because this story, the life of Peter, just like our story, just like our life, it is meant for something greater than just what we see right in front of us.

We learn from this story that our role is to be a part of God’s amazing story.

That is our role in life.

We are to be a part of God’s amazing story.

I don’t know if you know that.

I don’t know if you’ve thought of that.

But that’s what we get to be part of.

I was talking with some of our young married couples last Sunday, and we were having pizza together. It’s always great to have pizza and talk with other people.

I was asking them, I said, “Hey, you guys, I’m talking about Acts chapter 12 coming up this next week. What do you guys think of this story? When you read it, what do you think about?”

One of my friends, Tyler, was looking at it, and we were talking. He said, “You know, Ben, I think that when we read this story, we can be tempted.”

I’m like, “Tempted about what?”

He goes, “I think we can be tempted to think that in the story Peter is the hero. And likewise, I think when we’re dealing in our own life, we can be tempted to think that we are the hero of the story.”

When he said that, I was like, “Oh man, that stinks. Why’d you have to tell me that?”

Because so often I think that.

I think, “Oh man, I want to be like Peter and escape from prison,” or, “I want to be the hero of my own story.”

God’s saying, “No, Ben, you got it all wrong. I’m the hero of your story.”

When you heard us talking about that story about Peter, remember I was pointing out all the things about the two chains, the two guards, the two guard posts, the iron gates.

How much of that story and that escape was due to Peter’s being a hero?

Now when you think about it, how much of it points to God being the hero of the story?

All of it.

Our role is to play a part in God’s amazing story that’s unfolding in front of all of us, that’s been unfolding in front of humanity for years and years and years.

It’s pretty extraordinary.

Now, when I was preparing for things this week about this morning, about last night, I was trying to think, okay, Ben, so if you’re sitting in the chair just like you do most Saturdays and Sundays, how would you respond to that statement that you play a part in God’s amazing story?

I was sitting at my table at the house, and I said to myself—it wasn’t really like an out-loud conversation to myself. I don’t want you guys to think I’m super strange, okay? Just a little strange.

But I told myself, man, if someone said we play a role in God’s amazing story, my first response would be like, “So what?”

So what does that mean for me today?

What does that mean for me in light of the situation that I’m dealing with, and the place where I feel stuck, and the place where I feel like I’m in despair just like Peter was?

Well, for me, I would go back to the passage that we’re looking at today and take our cue from that because I think that’s a biblical thing to do.

What do we see Peter doing and playing a role in God’s amazing story?

He motions to everybody, right?

He says, “Be quiet. Let me tell you something. Let me tell you about how God saved me.”

Our job is to direct people to the Lord.

Our job is to point people to Jesus.

That’s our role when it comes to our spouses.

You know what?

Your job is to direct your spouse to Jesus.

Your job with your kids is to direct them to Jesus.

Kids, your job is to direct your parents to Jesus.

“Well, wait a minute. I thought that’s their job, not my job.”

It’s all our job.

When it comes to our finances, when it comes to any discrepancy in life, it’s to be about Jesus.

That’s our role.

That’s what we need to be doing.

That’s how we accomplish being part of God’s amazing story.

I don’t know about you, but that can be hard some days.

I think about my own life, and when I think about playing a role in God’s amazing story and directing people to Him, I think about some of those things that I shared earlier.

As I mentioned to you, my wife and I were always wrestling like, “Okay, God, how is it going to work out having kids? It just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for us. God, what do You want to do?”

We kept trying to make our own way, trying to do whatever we can.

“Anyway, maybe if we try this. Maybe we try this. Maybe if we go to this place, they’ll help us out.”

God said, “No, I’m writing a different story than what you guys had planned, Ben.”

Then all of a sudden God’s like, “I want you guys to be adopting a couple kids.”

Then we’re like, “Lord, how is that going to happen? God, we’re on that financial spot right now where it’s way down here. We can’t do that.”

All of a sudden, God said, “Nope, I’m going to make it happen.”

Sure enough, He did.

People began asking like, “Wow, what’s happening in your guys’ life?”

We’re like, “I don’t know. God’s doing something. We don’t know how He’s going to do it, but He’s making it happen.”

All of a sudden, we have our daughter, who God somehow worked it out to where we were there when she was born, and likewise with our son three years later.

People look at it and go, “How did that happen?”

We said, “It’s God’s story.”

We don’t say that very much.

Maybe you think that because I’m up here on stage and I work at a church that I’m always talking about Jesus 24 hours a day.

I do my best to.

But it doesn’t just flow out of my mouth perfectly all the time.

I can be kind of private.

But in those moments, I couldn’t keep quiet about what God was doing.

“You wouldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t believe how God has saved us.”

I think about my own life wrestling through those hurts, those habits, and those hang-ups.

If you don’t recognize the vernacular, I’m talking CR language, which everybody should be a part of.

You may think, “Man, Ben, I’m not addicted to anything.”

We’re all addicted to self, okay?

We all want to be the hero of the story.

So if you find yourself wrestling with that, it’s a great place to be.

I used to think, “God, how are You going to save me from this? What are You doing? How are You working things out?”

All of a sudden I realized God’s saying, “Yep, I’m going to do something amazing. It may not be exactly how you like it. It may involve a little pain, but it’s necessary in order to get you to the place that I want to get you to.”

You may hear this thing of our role is to direct people to the Lord, and we think, how does that happen in our life?

Because when I was thinking about these statements, I began to think, if all God is concerned about is His story and I play a role in it, is God not concerned about my life?

Does my life have no value then?

Am I just supposed to be a robot and play a role in God’s story?

How does that work out with my marriage?

How does that work out with my kids?

I would absolutely say to you that God is near, that God is concerned about your life, everything that’s going on in your life.

When we direct people to the Lord, for some reason God does an amazing thing in caring for our own life because God wants to make it something different.

He wants to make it into what He wants it to be.

Sometimes I get the chance to meet with married couples, and they’ll come in and say, “We just can’t get past these issues, man.”

I admit to them, “Okay, I’m not the one who’s going to help you get past them.”

Quite honestly, I deal with the same things with me and my wife.

But we get to a point to where we start to realize, you know what?

God doesn’t want to make our marriage into what it used to be.

God doesn’t even want to make our marriage into what we think it should be.

God wants to make our marriage into something that He wants it to be.

Likewise, every aspect of your life.

We fight so hard to grow all of our relationships into a spot we think and want them to be when God’s like, “You’re so narrow-minded.”

I shouldn’t speak for you.

To me, He says, “You’re so narrow-minded, Ben. Don’t you realize that I have much bigger things in store for you?”

Even when I think to finish the story off, right, of my wife and I walking through infertility things and kids, all of a sudden we thought, you know, at some point we’re just going to have our kids and we’ll have a great family and it’ll be really fun.

We’ll live happily ever after, right?

As we all think.

God said, “No, I’m going to do it a little differently.”

God says, “Your perspective is too narrow. See, while you’re having your kids, while you get to experience adoption, and you get to communicate to other people that I am the Author of adoption, you’re going to share that with your extended family.”

Then I think about the last couple weeks.

I think about how our kids now, as they’re older, reaching into adulthood, and the fact that my wife was with our daughter yesterday and they were picking out her wedding dress.

Thinking about, man, that’s pretty cool.

That’s pretty fun.

I think about my son and how he’s now getting the work-hard bug, I call it, where he’s like, “Dad, I’m working this many hours right now, and I’m driving a forklift.”

I’m like, “Yes, I love that.”

They text me in the morning sometimes.

Both my kids have jobs right now to where they have to wake up when I’m up, and I love the morning.

They’ll text at 5:00 and be like, “Hey, have you heard this song or done this?”

For some reason I’m like, “Yeah, my kids are up early. That’s a great thing.”

But there’s more to it.

Last year, when my daughter graduated college, it wasn’t just me and my wife and some of our family members there.

Madison’s birth mom was there too.

To experience that relationship, it’s a pretty extraordinary thing.

Just this last week, we had some of my son’s birth family—his birth mom and his birth grandparents—over as we had a big lunch together.

You see, my perspective was so narrow when it came to, “God, I think kids should work out this way.”

God’s like, “No, it’s going to work out like this.”

You can play that out in all areas of our life.

Our perspective is small, and God’s thinking, “Nope, it’s much bigger.”

That’s not to say in every arena in our life it’s going to work out happily ever after.

Some of the issues we’re wrestling with right now and we might feel stuck in is the fact that we’re waiting for results to come back, and we’re wondering, “Is this going to be the time when we hear that word? Is this the point to where we’re kind of nearing the end of our life?”

We are all going to face that at some point or another.

But here’s the thing.

God’s also saying in those moments, “Don’t let the hardships, don’t let that moment of despair keep you from viewing what I view, and it’s something much bigger.”

God’s saying it’s eternity.

While we can’t fathom it yet, because this is all we know and this is all we experience, God says, “One day eternity will be more of a reality than anything you have ever experienced before.”

I don’t fully grasp it.

But God, in His wisdom and His understanding, He does.

Folks, our role is to play a part in God’s amazing story.

Our job is to direct others to Him, whoever we come in contact with.

Is that simple?

Not always.

Some days it is simple.

Can it be joyful?

Yes, it can.

I think about Peter and how exciting it was for him and all those other early Christians when they were hearing how God saved him.

Likewise, when I hear people sharing stories about how God’s saving them, that’s an exciting thing.

It’s an exciting thing because there may be some of us here today who are in need of saving.

God says, “Man, cry out to Me in those moments.”

Whether it be for the first time and giving your life to Jesus, or whether it be a time when you’re just like, “I need someone to listen to me. I need someone to pray for me because I need saving right now.”

If that’s you on either level, I’d encourage you guys after we’re done here.

There are people in the altar room, and it’s not like a weird place.

It’s a great place.

I think God allows us, with other believers, to say, “This is the issue that’s going on.”

That’s what we saw when Peter was in a place where things were inescapable.

People were praying for him.

God, in His wonder and majesty, works along with the prayers of His people to accomplish His will.

It’s a pretty extraordinary thing.

Let me pray for us, and then we’ll be done here.

Father, thank You.

Thank You for Your Word.

Thank You for the book of Acts, for this story about Peter, how amazing it is.

But Lord, don’t let us forget, please, that You have done amazing things in our life.

The greatest miracle that we experience in humanity is the forgiveness of our sins.

Let us stand and live in awe of the fact that You’ve given us life and life abundantly.

Although many hardships and difficulties in life can keep us from remembering that, I pray that You would keep it in view of us at all times.

Watch over people in this room.

Watch over their families.

Lord, give us boldness to share with others how You have saved us.

We pray this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.