The Paul of the New Testament is a strong apologetic to me for the credibility of the gospel. A leading Jewish scholar who was a leading member of the Pharisees, he had hated Christians. For example, in Acts 7, a man named Stephen preaches and the crowd of unbelieving Jews stones him to death. In Acts 8:1 we read that Paul was there and "approved of his execution." In chapter 9 he is on his way to Damascus to arrest and imprison other Christians when something remarkable happens. The risen Jesus appears to him and the trajectory of his life does a 180. He was the most unlikely candidate to become a Christian. But as history records, the most strident persecutor of the church becomes a prominent preacher of the gospel. Paul was in no mood to be converted that day. It might be like Rush Limbaugh becoming the lead spokesperson for the democratic party or the ACLU.

Now we fast forward to Paul's preaching days, where he is no longer the persecutor, but the persecuted. In Acts 16 he, along with his comrade, Silas, is severely beaten by Roman guards and put into the deepest, darkest place in a Philippian jail, with his feet fastened in stocks. Rather than protesting the imprisonment and scheming a way to escape, he and Silas were heard "praying and singing hymns to God." What?!  Paul's response to this circumstance was prayer and praise?!

What a lesson. Of course, the point is not to apply the prayer and singing rule when I'm in the pit, but to know the Jesus whose feet were not merely put in stocks, but nailed to a cross. The Jesus who was not merely put in prison, but suffered the agony of hell in my place. Prayer for God to intervene is appropriate (and God did). And the worship of such a Savior strenghtens the heart not only to endure hardship, but to prevail through it. As I heard someone say recently, "The antidote for anxiety in the context of stress is not so much scheming for control and planning how to fix it as much as it is giving up control through prayer and worship."

Anyway, the text in Acts 16 says that "the prisoners were listening to them." It was midnight, and they were not yelling for Paul and Silas to "Shut up!" They were listening in quiet amazement to these bound men cry out to God for help (expression of need) as they celebrated this God (an expression of confidence, thanksgiving and hope) in worship—not in a posh sanctuary with soft cusions and central air conditioning and heat, but in a cold, dark cell in which people were left to die. And if those prisoners were astonished by Paul and Silas' response to mistreatment and suffering, how much more would they be in awe of the one who also had been beaten and was able to say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing."

You know, I wonder if the hymn Paul and Silas sang that night is the same song that is recorded in Paul's letter back to the Philippian church in chapter 2 of that letter:

Jesus made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.