A PRAYER FOR COURAGE

Many of us spend much of our prayer lives asking God for protection and safety for ourselves and our families. This is valuable, and it’s good that we can entrust ourselves and those we care about to God’s care and provision. But a smooth and untroubled journey through life is not guaranteed, and, in Jesus’ teaching and the experiences of the early church, we can observe that following Jesus can often be a narrow and rough road (see Matthew 7:14).

It is also interesting to note that safety was not at the top of the prayer list for the early believers in the aftermath of this first arrest of Peter and John.

These disciples reported their appearance before the council to the rest of the church, and the gathering became a prayer meeting. But instead of praying for safety and protection, they prayed for courage that despite the warnings and threats from the Jewish leaders, they would be able to continue to preach and teach “with great boldness.” Rather than praying for their circumstances to change, they followed Jesus’ model (see John 17:15) and prayed for courage and endurance in whatever those circumstances might be. This was a prayer that God responded to immediately and that the people themselves helped to answer.

“After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts 4:31).

It is not wrong to pray for God’s protection and care.

In their prayer, these first disciples did entrust the threats from the Jewish leaders to God. But we should also pray for courage to live and love well, to face our inevitable trials and challenges, and to share the story and power of Jesus in our families, communities, and the wider world.