“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them” (Acts 16:25 ESV). What a time to start singing! And what a time to start singing praises! If it was you or me we would be thumping our fist against the door demanding to see a lawyer or the consul or somebody, but here are Paul and Silas singing praises to God when they were right in the middle of serious trouble in Philippi.
It seems they had something within them that enabled them to handle this new experience of being fast in the stocks in the middle of prison. When you read the epistle to the Philippians. the one word that is perhaps repeated more than any other is the word “joy” (the word “rejoice” is from the same root word).
Sixteen times in Philippians Paul speaks of joy and here we have him manifesting the joy, and it brings to mind this great principle in the Christian life — the difference between happiness and joy. Everybody says they want to be happy, but happiness is defined as that which is a result of outward circumstances, a result of good things that happen.
That’s all right so long as you can keep happy things happening, but you realize that in life there is not always an even flow but there are going to be mountains and valleys, the tide is always going to come in and come out. This is just life, but as Christians we do not need to react to the valleys or the ebb tide. As Christians we have joy yet not always happiness.
Think of these men who are sitting with their feet in the stocks in the dungeon. You couldn’t say that their circumstance were happy, right? They are not singing because they are happy, they are singing because there is something deeper in their lives and that thing we call joy, because joy is not dependent on outward circumstances.
Joy is a deep inward thing and this is perhaps why in the epistle to the Philippians Paul spends so much time talking about joy and telling us to rejoice, a repeated experience of joy. He had that experience and he used it right there in the jail. At midnight they sang praises to God. Did they praise God that they were in the jail? No, not necessarily. You don’t have to praise God that you’re in trouble, but you can praise God despite the trouble.
You can praise God for what He is and for what He’s made you: you are God’s living enterprise and neither God nor you can fail if you recognize that. And you can praise God because you know who you are, you know the abilities that you have, and you know what you can do. So you praise God because of the deepness of what He’s done within you, not because of the circumstances that surrounds you.
From a forthcoming book I’m Excited About Philippians by Peter Wade.
Leave A Comment