Daily Devotional for Tuesday, February 7th

The Death of the Prison Keepers

“And when Herod had sought for him, and found him not, he examined the keepers,
and commanded that they should be put to death. And he went down from Judaea to
Caesarea, and there abode,” Acts 12:19.

When the kids in our house were young, we tried to teach them to not be tattletales. Of course, we wanted to be told of important things, but we wanted them to learn not to tell on others just to get them in trouble. We wanted to teach them pure motivations. So, we had a rule that if one ratted out a sibling just to see him get in trouble, that the tattler would suffer the punishment for the offense. It never really worked, but we tried!

Roman law at the time dictated that guards who allowed a prisoner to escape would suffer the fate of the prisoner they had been guarding. As we see, these guards were sentenced to death which this tells us that Peter was in big trouble. What awaited Peter was his own execution. Herod was killing Christians whenever he could, and Peter was on the list.

We know that never happened because the disciples prayed in one accord, without ceasing and an angel delivered Peter to freedom as he slept chained between the two guards. We can see earlier in this passage that Peter was being freed even as his friends prayed. In fact, they were still praying when Peter came to the house and knocked “at the door of the gate” (verse 13).

His friends were quite shocked. They even accused Rhoda, who answered Peter’s knock, of being quite mad! They seemed amazed that God answered their prayers and set Peter free. We may look sideways at them over this, but do we do the same thing? Are we surprised when God answers our prayers? We ought not to be, because the God who spoke the world into existence can still do anything He wants.

JUST A THOUGHT: God’s Word tells us that fervent prayers work, not half-hearted ones.

Wally Fry