Worship As Faith

Worship as Faith

Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening. Acts 16:25

IT TAKES A LOT OF FAITH to worship when you’ve been unjustly accused, attacked, beaten, bound, and left to contemplate your offenses in jail. But that’s what Paul and Silas did. We don’t know if they were praying for deliverance (no hint of that sort of petition is mentioned), but we do know they were not concerned for their deliverance. They understood that God was in control. After all, he had beckoned them into Macedonia through a vision, given them a reception in Philippi with God-fearing women gathered at the stream, and worked his power through their ministry, declarations, and demonstrations of deliverance for spiritual captives. What could possibly go wrong in that day’s riot and that night’s imprisonment? Through eyes of faith—nothing. So Paul and Silas worshiped at the top of their lungs.

God honored their faith with a dramatic release, the conversion of a jailer and his family, and a citywide testimony that vindicated them and their cause. They still had to leave town—nobody under the watch of Rome likes a riot—but their point was made and a church was established. By shifting their focus from their own problems to the glory and majesty of God, they remained at peace in their hearts above their circumstances. They brought heaven’s environment into their earthly surroundings, and God worked mightily through them. They insisted on the character and nature of God regardless of what their eyes—and their bruises and broken bones—told them.

If every believer approached their trials with the same response, the world would be radically transformed. That’s because the church would be radically transformed, and observers would be amazed. Not everyone would be converted, to be sure; many reject even the most obvious testimonies. But faith would do its work by inviting God into the world’s worst offenses. And anyone with half a heart to believe would be moved to embrace the God who invades the lives of his people.

To believe God is to worship God.