Day 38 - Your answer is waiting for you...

When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. 13Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door. 14When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, "Peter is at the door!" 15"You're out of your mind," they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, "It must be his angel." 16But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.

There is so much going on in this passage! One thing that I find intriguing, but will not go into deeply is that when the servant girl came and told the group that Peter was at the door they thought it more plausible that it was his angel at the door. Most people view this statement as the group declaring just how implausible it was that Peter was at the door. But I tend to think of it exactly opposite. In that maybe encounters with angels were so common among the apostles that this was a rational and normal explanation of who was at the door! Wow!

Now that we have went down that irrelevant rabbit trail, lets look at what is going on in this passage. What we see is that this group had been praying for Peter’s release for quite some time and when Peter arrives they do not believe that God could have answered their prayers. Isn’t that the place that we often find ourselves in? I see believers (myself included) pray for God to do something miraculous in their lives and when he does they don’t believe it really happened. I knew an individual that had been praying for God’s healing in their body for quite some time. One day God healed them! And before they would believe that He actually did they went and got several opinions and tests from doctors! God hears all of our prayers. And unlike us, if we ask Him just one time, He remembers that prayer. Unfortunately we often don’t truly believe that God can and will answer our prayers.

Have you been praying for something for a long time? Maybe it’s a new job, a spouse, a financial blessing, or anything in between. Just because the answer doesn’t come delivered in the package you had preconceived it would doesn’t mean God didn’t answer the prayer. The new job might be doing something you don’t like! But that doesn’t mean God didn’t answer the prayer! And your answer may be waiting for you right outside the door!