What I am about to tell you is true story. It’s crazy, but it actually happened. I found it in “The Insanity of God” by Nik Ripken.

Dmitri was born and raised in communist Russia. His parents were Christian and he believed the gospel at an early age. But as he grew up, the Soviet government destroyed most of the churches near him. Many of the pastors were imprisoned or killed.

By the time he was married with a family, the closest church was a 3-day walk from where he lived. So Dmitri could only take his family once or twice a year.

One day, Dmitri said to his wife, “I don’t want our sons to grow up without learning about Jesus. What do you think if one night a week we gathered the boys together so I could read them a Bible story.”

Well, Dmitri’s family Bible study turned into a church of about 60 people crammed in and around his house every week in his tiny village.

That got the government’s attention, so they began to warn Dmitri and the small house church.

People in the church lost their jobs and had their children expelled from school. But the church continued to meet.

One night, soldiers crashed through the door, pushed their way through the crowd and an officer grabbed Dmitri by the shirt, slapped him around and said, “We have warned you over and over. We will not warn you again. If you don’t stop this nonsense, this is the least that is going to happen to you.”

At that point, a small grandmother in the crowd stood up, waving her finger in the officer’s face and said “You have laid hands on a man of God and you will NOT survive.”

That was on a Tuesday on Thursday that officer dropped dead of a heart attack.

Word spread through the small Russian village and at the next church gathering at Dmitri’s house, over 150 people were there.

That was all the government needed to put Dmitri in prison for the rest of his life or so they thought.

Dmitri would spend his days in a 8 ft by 8 ft, freezing-cold stone prison cell a thousand kilometers from his family where he was the the only Christian among 1500 hardened Russian criminals.

To be released, he simply had to sign a document that said he wasn’t a Christian and that he was a paid agent of western governments trying to destroy the USSR. But Dmitri refused to sign it.

Day after day, month after month, year after year, Dmitri would do 2 things that helped him to have hope. First, every morning when the sun came up, he would stand up next to his bed, raise his hands to God, and then sing a prayer praising Jesus. The other prisoners would laugh, and curse, and mock him. Sometimes they would throw food or their own human waste at him to shut him up. But Dmitri sang on.

The other thing Dmitri did was every time he would find a small scrap of paper in the prison, he would pick it up and sneak it back to his cell. There he would use a small pencil stub or piece of charcoal to write all the Bible verses he could remember. When he filled it up, he walked to a pillar in his cell that constantly dripped water, or was a frozen sheet of ice in the winter, and he would reach as high as he could to stick the sheet of paper on the pillar as a praise to God.

Whenever the jailors would see the paper, they would come in his cell, take it down and severely beat Dmitri and threaten him with death. But the next morning, Dmitri was singing and writing down Scripture...AGAIN.

Year after year, he continued this ritual until the guards finally came in and told him they had killed his family. That sucked the life out of Dmitri.

At that point, after 17 YEARS, Dmitri told the guards that he would sign the document but Dmitri’s family was not dead. In fact, that night, a thousand kilometers away, Dmitri’s wife and grown children, and his brother, who sensed that Dmitri was in trouble and they knelt in a circle and prayed for him all through the night.

The next morning the guards came in with the document for Dmitri to sign and he said, “I’m not signing anything!” The guards demanded to know why he changed his mind and Dmitri told them. “Last night, God let me hear the voices of my wife and my children and my brother praying for me! You lied to me, I know they are alive and well. I also know that they are still in Christ. So I’m not signing anything!”

Dmitri was then dragged from his cell to be executed in the prison yard. But before they reached the door leading out to the execution site, Fifteen hundred hardened Russian criminals stood up next to their beds, faced the rising sun, and began to sing in unison the song about Jesus that Dmitri had sung every morning for the last 17 years.

The guards immediately let go of Dmitri and stepped away from him, scared out of their minds. One of them looked at Dmitri and said “Who are you?”

And Dmitri replied, “I am a son of the Living God, and Jesus is his name!”. Then after 17 years, Dmitri was released and went home to his family.

I gotta tell you. Being beaten and imprisoned for holding a Bible study. 17 years in a jail cell where you barely have room to lay down, missing your children grow up, it’s not fair, but God never promises every Christian’s life will have equal amounts of pain or pleasure.

I’ll tell you what you can be sure of though. It doesn’t matter whether its Soviet Russia in the 20th century, Jerusalem in the 1st century, or Murfreesboro, TN on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when the church gathers and prays, God moves.

Here we go.

Acts 12

About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread. And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people. So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.

Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him, “Dress yourself and put on your sandals.” And he did so. And he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” And he went out and followed him. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. When Peter came to himself, he said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.”

When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. Recognizing Peter's voice, in her joy she did not open the gate but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. They said to her, “You are out of your mind.” But she kept insisting that it was so, and they kept saying, “It is his angel!” But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed. But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, “Tell these things to James and to the brothers.” Then he departed and went to another place.

Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter. And after Herod searched for him and did not find him, he examined the sentries and ordered that they should be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there.

Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king's chamberlain, they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king's country for food. On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.

But the word of God increased and multiplied.

Today, I want you to see 2 things: First, That you can’t judge God’s fairness or his love by whether or not you live a long fulfilled life and second, nobody, I mean nobody, can mess with the church when they are united in prayer.

1) God’s faithfulness is based on the promises he makes, not on the one’s he doesn’t.

Dmitri’s story is beautiful, but what about his kids. They grew up without their father. What about his wife? She was a single parent for 17 years. Not to mention the emotional and physical effects Dmitri probably still experiences to this day from being beaten everyday for 17 years.

This was injustice. This was corrupt government abusing civil liberties. This was unfair in every sense of the word. But Dmitri’s hope wasn’t in being let out of prison although that certainly is what God did for him. Dmitri’s hope was in something far better. So as he was in prison, he wasn’t giving God ultimatums like “If you really love me, you’ll get me out of here” Instead, he was recalling Scripture. He was recalling the promises that God had made and he was turning them into songs and prayers.

I cannot tell you how important it is that you know what God has actually said and what he hasn’t. Especially when it comes to experiencing pain and suffering. See, if you think God has promised you a fair life, if you think that you can thumb through the Bible and pin God down to making you a promise that you get a middle-class lifestyle with 2 cars, 2.5 kids, and retirement at 65, you are going to be terribly disappointed.

See, you can’t even find a promise that you won’t die before your 21st birthday or that you won’t go to prison for 17 years for holding a Bible study. If you put God on trial for breaking promises, at least be sure it's a promise he’s actually made to you.

Did you happen to notice that there are 2 apostles in this passage? If you hold to the idea that God owes you some standard of living or that he owes you some length of life, you are going to have a really hard time with this passage.

This whole chapter starts with James, the brother of John, one of the original 12 disciples, being killed when Herod the king simply wants to win favor with the Jewish constituency. Once Herod sees how popular it makes him, he has Peter arrested with plans to dramatically execute Peter at the close of the Passover celebration. Of course, then an angel shows up and walks Peter right out the front door. It appears that God came through for Peter, and he let James down. It looks like Peter wins, and James loses.

Does this bother you? Why does God let James die, and he dramatically rescues Peter from Prison? Why did God show up for Dmitri in answer to his family’s prayers, but you’ve been praying for husband to change for 17 years and nothing! For me, my wife gave birth to two boys who immediately went into the NICU. Why did Simon live while Chai died? Here it is. Are you ready for the answer to all those questions. I. DON’T. KNOW.

I don’t know why some people get rescued like Peter in Prison and others executed like James. Here’s what I do know. God’s not on the hook for breaking a promise to James or to you or to me because the promises he’s made, he is still keeping.

Let me show you. Did you notice how calm Peter is in this whole thing? Look at verse 6. This is the night before Peter is about to be executed, he’s got chains around his wrists and ankles and two armed guard on either side of him, and he is sleeping! I don’t know about y’all, but that sounds pretty tough to do.

In fact, Peter is so settled and at ease with dying the next day, that when the angel shows up to release him, the whole time he’s walking out of his chains and blowing past the guards without being seen, he just thinks he’s dreaming.

Clearly, Peter is not holding a vigil expecting that if God really loves him that he won’t let him experience this unjust death. He’s not saying to God, “There is one outcome here that proves whether you are a good loving God, and that is my release. Anything else and you are a sadistic, lying God that can’t possibly care about me.”

See, Peter and James had something in common beyond just being apostles. They had both heard a promise directly from Jesus that they were going to die for following Jesus. Look in Mark 10:38-39.

James heard it when he and his brother John went to Jesus asking if they could be 2nd and 3rd in command. But Jesus told James, “Do you think you can drink the cup I have to drink?” In other words, if you are going to follow me, be ready to die like I’m going to die. They said, “Sure. We can do that!” Jesus said, I don’t think you know what you are asking. To follow me means dying to live. And Jesus made them the promise, the cup I drink, you’ll drink. I’m going to die, and so are you. And Peter got the same promise. Look again in John 21:18-19.

Remember, when Jesus was arrested and headed to the cross, Peter denied him 3 times to save himself. After Jesus resurrects, he comes back to Jesus and Jesus asks him 3 times “Do you love me?” Each time Peter insists, “Yes, Lord, I love you.” Then Jesus made him this promise in John 21. Someone is going to take you where you don’t want to go. And John tells his readers what Jesus was talking about. He was telling Peter that he was going to have the kind of death Jesus had, a death that glorified God. So neither Peter nor James are expecting that God owes them their release, because they are looking to a better promise than prison release or a long, full life where you die at 100 years old. Instead, they know that nothing they suffer now will be in vain.

See, there was another time where Peter and James and the other disciples were asking Jesus if losing everything would be worth it to follow him in Luke 18:28-30.

Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.” And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.”

See, both Peter and James knew that whether they died today or were rescued and died another day, they knew God’s promise was not for an easy, pain-free life, in fact, he promised them the opposite.

But their hope was in the promise that in Jesus, death would not have the last word and that he would bring something after death that would make what they had lost in this life look like peanuts. This is the great Christian hope.

That nothing you give up now, nothing that comes against you now, can ever hold you back from the eternal life promised in Jesus Christ. Listen, God has not promised you health or wealth or even a middle class American life. But he’s promised you something so much better. Look in Romans 8:35, 38-39.

He’s promised you that, if you’ll trust him, neither tribulation, nor distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger or sword, neither death nor life, angels nor rulers nothing in the past, present, or future can separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

James didn’t lose right here. And Peter didn’t win. God didn’t fumble the ball with James and score a touchdown with Peter. God knows how, and chooses the way he’ll grow his kingdom and most times, I don’t have an answer for why one person dies and another lives. Why a child gets cancer, and another person lives to 100 and God doesn’t owe me that answer.

But I can tell you, the promise he’s made to me and to you to make all things new again, to bring all things to justice and to wipe away every tear from every eye for eternity. That’s a whole lot better than just getting out of prison.

God is at work to bring glory to himself. Through our death and through our life. Through our imprisonment, and through our release. Through our pain, and through our joy, God is at work to bring glory to himself because He’s the king of the universe, not me.

That rubs a lot of people the wrong way. It can make you feel like God is megalomaniac who doesn’t really care about you. He’s just out to get you to worship him. But that’s not the kind of king God is. That’s the kind of King Herod was.

See, God has attached our joy to his majesty. He’s inseparably connected our good to his glory.

Do you know how he did it?

Adoption. That’s right. See, if a King adopts you, everything that’s good for the Kingdom becomes good for the King’s kids and that mean we can,

2) Pray like your Father is the King and the King is your Father.

If you have ever read any books about prayer, maybe you’re as confused as I am sometimes.

For example, I’ll read one book and the author will say “Just to talk God like he’s your Father. Ask him for anything. Make your requests known to God. Don’t be anxious about anything. Just pray. Pray whatever is on your mind. God is listening.”

Then I’ll pick up another book and the author will say, “Pray for God’s will to be done. Pray for his Kingdom to come. Pray through the Psalms, memorize and pray Scripture back to God. Think through this acronym, make sure you make time for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Also don’t forget to pray with your wife, your family, and before meals”

I gotta be honest, sometimes I get so stressed out about how I’m supposed to or not supposed to pray that I just feel like skipping the whole thing. So, let me show you from Scripture today what this early church kept in mind when they prayed. Remember, this early church was taught and led by the apostles, and there was a time, when those apostles were as confused as you and I about prayer. So they asked Jesus to teach them. Look how Jesus replied in Luke 11:2-4.

And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread,

and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”

Look at that first line. Jesus said pray, “Father, your kingdom come.” He said “give us our daily bread and forgive us.” At the same time he said “as we are forgiving people who are indebted to us.” So, when you look at the way Jesus taught the apostles to pray, should you pray to God like a Father or like a King?

Should you mainly pray “God, you are King of the universe. Your will be done. Get glory however you are going to get glory. Help me to forgive others to show others how much you love them”?

Or should you pray “God, you are my father, give me what I need. Forgive me and right now I need a parking spot or a break from my hectic schedule or a job or I just need to know somebody cares about me.”

Jesus’ answer is both. His answer is pray to your Father who has a Kingdom. At the same time you pray to the King who has you as his child.

See, when you pray you have to keep those two things in mind. One, that God is your Father. A good father always wants good for his kids. A good father provides for his kids. Protects his kids. Loves his kids. Always has in mind what is best for his kids. But, God doesn’t exist for you. You exist for him.

In that way, you must remember that you are praying to a King. A King is always thinking about his kingdom. A king must be honored. He must be understood as someone who is sovereign and in control of his kingdom. A King is always looking to expand his kingdom.

See, you ask a good father for everything. You just open your mouth and ask. For daily bread. When my kids ask me if they can have a snack, I don’t say, “Go away with your selfish request. When you can come back knowing how much that granola bar costs and how it effects our family budget and ask it in such way that you are keeping in mind the fact that I have to put money away for retirement and keep the oil changed in our cars and somehow save money so you can go to college and get a degree that you probably won’t even use because by then the robots will have all the human’s jobs,”

Ok, maybe I do say that sometimes, but only because I’m not a very good dad in that moment. The point is, when I’m thinking like a good Father, I’m not requiring my kids to think big picture when they ask for a snack. They feel their hunger and they rely on me to provide and that’s a good thing. It honors me and it feeds them, and we go through some serious granola bars at our house.

See, God is a Father and it's a good thing to rely on him to supply all your needs. It's a good thing to ask for daily bread. It’s a good thing to pray about even the small stuff. If you don’t pray to God like the good Father he is, he becomes a distant and disconnected Monarch who isn’t interested in the details of your life only in the expanding of his kingdom.

But, Jesus told us to pray to God like a King, too. To pray that his Kingdom would come and that his will would be done. So, I pray outside of myself. I pray for God to be glorified in the world and in my neighborhood.

I pray as best as I can tell for what looks like the way he’ll get glory in our church and in the lives of all the people that he’s called me to lead. I’m not just praying about me. I’m not just praying my daily bread. I’m praying that Earth would look like heaven.

And eventually, the more you pray, the more you read the Word of God, the more you are filled an controlled by the Holy Spirit, the more those things become the exact same request. As you grow in your faith, your daily bread starts getting wrapped up in God’s glory...and the Kingdom of God starts getting into the details of your life.

You start to pray for a new job not mainly because you hate your commute, but because you know with a shorter commute you’ll be able to love and serve your family and your neighbors better. And you start to pray that God would bring spiritual revival to your city not just because you know that HE wants to do it but because you actually get excited about the idea of having 1,000’s more brothers and sisters.

Did you see it in Acts 12? This church is praying for Peter. On one hand, in verse 5, they are doing it collectively. When Luke writes that “the church” is praying, he doesn’t just mean a few people in the church. He means the whole church. Likely the entire Jerusalem church. And, from what we know about the church in Antioch who is very attuned to what’s happening in Jerusalem, likely the church in Antioch was praying for Peter as well.

But, then, in verse 12, we get this zoom in to this Jerusalem church community group. Apparently, these are some of Peter’s closest friends, probably is Peter’s community group. Because when Peter gets this miraculous release from prison, he goes straight to Mary’s house.

Do you see it? The whole church is praying for Peter, but when they pray for Peter, it’s not personal. It’s Kingdom minded. They pray for his release because as best they can tell, its good for the kingdom of God. They are praying to the King who is their Father. But, for Peter’s community group, for his friends, this is personal too. They not only want Peter’s release for the Kingdom, they want it the same you pray for your mom when she has cancer or your kids when they are hurting. They are praying to their Father who is the King.

I love when Peter shows up, Rhoda recognizes her friends voice and is so over top with joy, she forgets to even let him in and then, when Peter finally gets in he has to motion to them to be silent. Why do you think that is? Well, its probably because they are all doing a happy dance. People are whipping and Nae-Naeing. Mary goes and lights up the fireworks, Rhoda is running around like she just won the world cup, and John Mark is hitting Quan and Peter says, “Be Quiet” and he quickly brings them back into Kingdom strategy.

He tells them, “Go tell James and the brothers of my release” and then he leaves for his next strategic place of ministry. I love this. Peter is quickly back on mission. See, James is going to be the next leader of the church in Jerusalem. So Peter says, “Make sure James knows what happened.”

And don’t waste the irony here. At the first of this chapter, Herod killed James and at the end of the chapter, in response to the prayers of the church James is raised up as the next leader of the church.

This is my prayer. My prayer is that when I die, you don’t remember Trevor. I pray that I am so easily replaced by someone else God raises up, that when I die, whether its natural causes or something else that you don't remember me but you remember the King and his kingdom.

Now, this is certainly a different James than the one Herod killed, but imagine Herod’s frustration. “I thought I killed that guy.” “I’m sorry sir, it seems the more you kill these Christians...the more of them that keep popping up.” And I suppose Herod might have said that, if he had lived to hear about it. But see, he didn’t stand a chance against a church that prayed this way. Here’s what they did and what we should do to we need to,

3) Keep asking for a crown and preparing for a cross.

From James losing his head, to Peter and then much later Dmitri walking out of prison doors. There’s something all of these saints, and the church that prayed with them and for them had in common. They always prayed for a crown, and prepared for a cross. James went to Jesus and said, “Can I sit next to you in your kingdom? Can I have a throne and crown?”

Jesus didn’t look at him and say “How dare you ask for such a thing!” No. it was a commendable thing to ask for. But Jesus did look at him and say, “Get ready to die. It's the only way to the kingdom.” When Peter talked to Jesus about how much he loved Jesus and wanted to be with him, Jesus said, “You are going to have to die to follow me.”

See, it’s not as if God wants you to pray for the worst. It’s not like God wants you to pray “Lord, I want to suffer!” No, he wants you to have a picture of his kingdom in mind when you pray. A Kingdom where there is no sickness, no death, no evil, no sin. Only beauty and righteousness. Everything broken made whole. Every tear wiped away.

That is what it means to pray “Kingdom Come. Your Will be Done”

But as you pray that, you must remember what Jesus prayed in the Garden in Luke 22:42. He prayed to his father, , “if you are willing, let this cup pass from me. If there is a way to my being crowned as king that isn’t as agonizing as this cross...let it be.”

But then he recognized the King, “But it’s your will, not mine. I’m ready to go to the cross if that’s what it takes to bring your kingdom.”

See, when Jesus died on the cross, he was dying for his people. For you and me. The children of God. It is through Jesus’ death in our place that we are adopted by the king. You and I are little Herod’s. Daily seeking our own kingdoms. We want people to say about us what Herod wanted people to say about him...We dress ourselves up at our jobs, at church, on Facebook...we don the royal robes of humor, or job success, or an attractive body, or a good looking family....all so people will say comment about us “A voice of God, not of a man.”

But when you seek your own glory at the expense of God’s, your penalty is death. And indeed, the worms ate King Herod, but the church just kept on going. The word of God increased as Herod lay dead and another James just kept on leading right along side Peter.

But, Jesus died on the cross, Jesus’ body went into a tomb, Jesus, the true son was separated from his Father, so you wouldn’t suffer Herod’s faith. Your crown came from Jesus’ cross.

And now, when Jesus says to you, like he did Peter “Follow me” We know that no matter the cross we know we will face, no matter the suffering that is sure to come into our lives, that like our big brother Jesus,we will rise. We won’t have the grave of Herod, a skeleton filled with worms. But we’ll have the grave of Jesus, an empty tomb.

But until that day. Until the day Jesus comes back to raise all those that have trusted him to a new and eternal life, we have to be ready for a cross. Because, it is the way we glorify God.

There’s another story in the book where I read about Dmitri. This time, the author is visiting some Christians in China, also a persecuted people in a dictator’s regime. And he was talking to one of the pastors there who told him this.

Do you know what prison is for us? It is how we get our theological education. Prison in China is for us like seminary is for training church leaders in your country” - China house church leader

That’s a person who prays for a crown, knows its coming but knows its only coming through a cross. That's a person who is thinking like Peter. He knows that he’ll draw closer to the God he loves by going to prison. And he knows the whether or not he is in prison or being killed like James or Jesus that the Word of God will increase, His Kingdom will come, and he’ll be the proud owner of an empty grave for eternity.

Jesus prayed for a crown and prepared for a cross and he’s calling his church to do that today. That’s what the Lord’s supper is about.