Astonished by God

Before diving in, we’d love to invite you to walk through our five-day devotional, Astonishing Prayer. This devotional explores how God empowers us to forgive the impossible through the power of the gospel. You can start the journey here.

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Have you ever experienced something that you truly thought might take you out, and you didn't know what to do? Maybe it's your marriage, business, diagnosis, or someone close to you walking away from their faith.

Some of us have the first instinct to want to escape this difficult circumstance.

For some, maybe you know the Father is in control, but you don't trust that He cares enough to pick you up and hold you in a fear-filled situation.

For others, your circumstances may lead you to believe that God isn't real.

But today, we want to encourage you that we have an astonishing God even when we're threatened. Before we can have an astonishing prayer life and be an astonishing disciple, we must know that we have access to the God who is in control of everything. He isn't shunning you when you're afraid, expecting you to understand everything, but He is a loving Father that you can come and sit with, burying your face in His chest.

You can talk to God about what's going on in your life, and He will make you brave and give you the grace to move forward in your circumstances.

Take a moment to read Acts 4:23-31 (CSB).

Here are four takeaways from this text:

1. Until we pray, we can do nothing better than pray. (Acts 4:23-24a)

In culture, people push back on prayer as a response to disasters, asking for "action" instead of prayer. However, as John Bunyan says, "You can do more than pray once you’ve prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed."

If we genuinely have access to a God who is over all things and truly loves His people, then there is nothing we can do that is more powerful and helpful than asking God to help us.

It's better than giving money, the thing going away, or your business prospering. Prayer is the best course of action.

In this text, we see that as soon as Peter and John were threatened, their minds went to finding their people—people of God—to pray for them rather than to strategy, organization, or connections.

We want to be a culture that asks for prayer and actually prays for others when people ask.

2. We're meant to analyze the king, not our threats. (Acts 4:24b-30)

When we analyze these verses, we don't see a request until seven verses in, and God is referenced 18 times while their threat was mentioned once.

Most of our prayers are talking to God about our threats, but the primary function of prayer is a revelation of God.

What if God is inviting us to talk to God about God 18x more than we talk to God about what's threatening us?

Rulers threatened them, but they realized they had access to the one who owned all rulers.

When we cross-reference Acts 4:24, 2 Kings 19:15, and 2 Chronicles 20:6, we see that in distressful circumstances, their responses were prayers that looked to God.

A function of prayer is revelation from God.

In verses 27-28, we see His will and hand were already in action. He had predestined this situation. So when they face threats, they have the reassurance of Psalm 2 to remind them of the past and give them faith for what He will do in the future.

Maybe you have unanswered prayers. Jesus did, too. He prayed for the cup to pass from Him—and it didn't. This must have been frustrating and confusing for His disciples and mother, but He rose three days later.

God can take a crucifixion and turn it into a resurrection, and in the same fashion, God can take your pain and use it for His purpose.

God's work is toward our highest good and His highest glory, so we will ask because God wants to answer, but we will ask a God that we are analyzing in amazement. These disciples had an astonishing prayer life because they were astonished by God.

3. Knowing who your Father is will change what you ask for. (Acts 4:29-30)

Do we actually know who our Father is? Are we astonished by Him?

God wants us to move forward, so we ask bold prayers because we know who He is.

The disciples didn't ask to be safe or to stop the persecution. But in prayer, their hearts were aligned, and they knew there would be pushback. So they asked for bravery in the persecution. They didn't want to shy away from their calling.

The mission that we have been given is a supernatural one.

Boldness was also a gift, not a characteristic trait. If we ask God, He will give it to us.

4. God wants to answer your prayers. (Acts 4:31)

We have a Father who loves His kids.

So much of our lack of prayer is rooted in self-sufficiency, a low view of God, or a lack of belief that God actually loves us.

What if we were a church that was more surprised when God was silent than when God answered? We should be shocked when God doesn't answer a prayer.

"The place was shaken, and that made them all more unshaken." - John Chrysostom.

We want to be a church that is shaken by the power of God.

John Bunyan knew his family would be safer if he were obedient than if he weren't. After choosing obedience, he went on to say this:

“I was not at all daunted, but rather glad, and saw evidently that the Lord had heard me, for before I went down to the justice, I begged of God, that if I might do more good by being at liberty than in prison, that then I might be set at liberty: but if not, his will be done… at my return, I did meet my God sweetly in the prison again, comforting of me and satisfying of me that it was his will and mind that I should be there.”

His family was safe because the church rallied around them. During his 12 years in prison, he wrote over 50 books, one of which was The Pilgrim's Progress, which is one of the best-selling books in history.

John Bunyan was astonished by God, which led to an astonishing prayer life, and God came through in astonishing ways.