Pray First (Acts #12)

How many of you have heard the phrase “history repeats itself”?

Historians love pointing out that history seems to move in patterns. They see it in wars, in economics, in pandemics — practically everywhere. The stock market crash of 2008 that led into what we called the Great Recession mirrored what happened in 1929, when Black Thursday touched off the Great Depression. Others note that Hitler’s invasion of Russia in the Second World War looked remarkably like Napoleon’s invasion roughly a century and a quarter earlier — both launched around the same point in the calendar, and both failed catastrophically. Apparently you don’t invade Russia in winter.

I woke yesterday to news that Hamas had invaded Israel and all-out war had broken out. Within hours people online were pointing back to earlier conflicts and saying, in effect: doesn’t this remind you of… That’s the instinct. History repeats itself.

But I don’t think it only repeats on a global scale. It repeats personally too.

Have you ever had a friend who keeps ending up in the same kind of relationship — the guy is disrespectful, treats her badly, and it happens over and over? Or a friend with health problems whose doctor told him to cut out certain foods or drinks, and somehow those items keep landing in his cart every trip to the store?

Or just watch kids. The little one should know from experience that if he keeps pestering his big sister, he’s going to get walloped and run crying to Mom. And he pesters anyway. History repeats itself.

Today we’re going to watch Luke tell us a story of history repeating — and when we compare it against the earlier story it echoes, we’ll find one difference. For some of you, that single difference is going to make all the difference.

Where We Left Saul

Open to Acts 9.

We started this series in February and took a couple of breaks over the summer. When we came back in September we picked up chapter 8 and the first half of chapter 9 — three men changed by the gospel.

The third of those was Saul. When we met him he was a fiercely zealous Jew rising through the ranks of Judaism, convinced that this whole business of Jewish people claiming Jesus was the long-prophesied Messiah was flat heresy. The Messiah wasn’t going to die, and nobody rises from the dead. It had to be stopped. So he set about arresting anyone proclaiming Jesus as Messiah, throwing them in prison, putting them on trial, and if necessary having them killed.

He set out for Damascus with letters authorizing him to arrest any followers of Jesus he found and haul them back to Jerusalem. On the road, Jesus appeared to him in blinding light and asked why he was persecuting Him. In that instant Saul realized he was catastrophically wrong. There really had been a man named Jesus. He really did die on a cross. He really did rise. He really was the Son of God, the Messiah.

So when Saul reached Damascus, instead of arresting believers he went into the public square and defended them.

I ran out of time two weeks ago before we could finish his story, so let me catch you up. His defense of the faith in Damascus infuriated the Jewish leadership there. This man was supposed to be their enforcer, and now he’s arguing the other side. It looked like betrayal, so they hatched a plot to kill him. The plot was discovered, and the believers in Damascus lowered him in a basket through an opening in the city wall so he could escape at night. He made his way back to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem wasn’t much better. The believers still there — many had already fled the persecution — were terrified of him. It plays like an espionage film: the man who approved the execution of their friend Stephen now claims to believe the very thing Stephen died for. They kept their distance.

Then Barnabas, whom we met at the end of chapter 4, sought Saul out, listened to his story, and brought him before the apostles. They heard him and recognized him as a brother. With that endorsement he began teaching publicly, explaining how Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

And you can imagine how his old colleagues took it. This was the deepest possible betrayal. So they formed the exact same plot the leaders in Damascus had: kill him. The plot was discovered again. This time, instead of a basket, they put him on a ship home to Tarsus.

And that’s where Saul disappears from the narrative. He doesn’t reappear until chapter 13, and most scholars place roughly a fourteen-year gap in there. Fourteen years of preparation before the missionary journeys that fill the rest of the book. God put him away for a while to work on him.

So Luke says, in effect: Saul’s story is on hold — let’s go catch up with Peter.

Dr. Detail

Acts 9:32:

Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed. And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” And immediately he rose. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord.

Luke was a physician before he traveled with Paul and before he wrote the Gospel that bears his name and this book. Good doctors give obsessive attention to detail, and it shows everywhere in his writing.

Look how much he packs into four verses. He doesn’t say Peter went to a small village — he names Lydda, the only place in all of Scripture that town is mentioned. He doesn’t say Peter healed a man — he names Aeneas. He doesn’t say the man was paralyzed — he tells us bedridden eight years. And he doesn’t stop at the healing; he tells us the residents of Lydda and the surrounding plain of Sharon saw it and turned to the Lord. It’s a regional revival, and word is spreading.

But Luke isn’t only being a careful historian. He’s setting up the next story, and he needs three things in place.

He needs us to know Peter is in Lydda, because Lydda is only about three hours from where the next story happens. He needs us to see Aeneas healed, because that’s verification of the message Peter has been preaching. And he needs us to see the revival spreading — because that means word has reached the next town over. Joppa.

Tabitha

Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter rose and went with them.

Another name, another pile of details. Tabitha was a remarkable woman — if you know Proverbs 31, she’s practically the prototype. Full of good works and acts of charity.

She also went by Dorcas, and if your parents named you Dorcas I understand the impulse to switch. Tabitha is the Aramaic word for gazelle; Dorcas is the Greek. Same name, different language — much like Saul, who didn’t become “Paul” at conversion. Saul was his Hebrew name and Paul the Greek equivalent.

Then she gets sick and dies. And as the women are preparing her body, somebody has an audacious thought: Peter is three hours away, and we’ve been hearing that God has done miracles through him back in Jerusalem. What if he came?

Time mattered enormously here, which is exactly why Luke told us Peter was only three hours off. We have means to preserve a body so a family can plan a funeral, hold a viewing, or allow an autopsy. They had none of that. When someone died, the body was washed — in this case by women, since Tabitha was a woman — then prepared with spices and buried within hours.

So two men from the church made that three-hour trip. I doubt they walked it. They arrive winded, find Peter, and say come now. And they hike the three hours back.

And when he arrived, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed. And turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then, calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. And he stayed in Joppa for many days with one Simon, a tanner.

If you’re new to the Bible, I recognize that reads like fiction. A dead person came back. Maybe she was only in a coma. I understand the skepticism.

But understand that the entire Christian faith rests on the miracle of a resurrection. Without the resurrection of Christ, Christianity simply doesn’t exist. And when a writer this fanatical about verifiable detail — details archaeology has repeatedly confirmed — reports this, most Christians don’t balk. He isn’t inventing. He doesn’t need to.

The Story Underneath the Story

But I don’t think Luke is only reporting what happened. I think he’s showing us history repeating. He’s alluding to another story — one found in Mark 5.

Let me set that scene. Jesus is at the Sea of Galilee preaching to a crowd when a synagogue leader named Jairus comes to Him: My little girl is dying. She’s twelve. Would You come? Jesus agrees, and the crowd, sensing a miracle, follows along.

On the way Jesus suddenly stops. “Power has gone out of Me.” Everyone protests — the whole crowd is pressed against You. But a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years comes forward and confesses.

And while Jesus is speaking with her, men arrive from Jairus’s house with the quietest, most devastating message: don’t trouble the Teacher any further. Your daughter is dead.

Jesus looks straight at Jairus and says, “Do not fear; only believe.”

And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement.

Now the parallels light up.

In both stories a female has died — a twelve-year-old girl in one, an older woman in the other. In both, she was deeply loved, with people weeping over her. In both, the one who will do the healing clears the room. And in both, nearly the same words are spoken. Jesus says in Aramaic, Talitha koum — little girl, arise. And since Tabitha is her Aramaic name, Peter almost certainly said, Tabitha koum.

Which makes complete sense when you remember who Jesus let into that room in Mark 5: the mother, the father, James, John — and Peter.

So I can’t help imagining Peter climbing the stairs to that upper room in Joppa, hearing the weeping, seeing the garments this woman had sewn held up by grieving widows, seeing the body laid out — and having a flashback. He has stood in this exact room before. And a sense settles on him: I think God brought me here to do what I watched Jesus do.

So he does what he saw. Jesus cleared the room; I’ll clear the room. Jesus said Talitha koum; I’ll say Tabitha koum. Jesus took her by the hand; I’ll take her by the hand. I’m supposed to live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved, and I think God brought me here to do this.

The One Difference

But there’s one enormous difference. Look at verse 40 again:

“But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed.”

Nowhere in Mark 5 does Jesus kneel. Nowhere in Mark 5 does Jesus pray.

Elsewhere in Scripture we absolutely see Jesus kneel and hear Him pray. But walking into that room, He doesn’t even pause to gather Himself. The Son of God, who holds authority over death and hell, simply walks up and says, in effect, Sweetheart, wake up. Time for breakfast. You’ve got a whole life to live. Arise.

Peter understands something about himself. I am not the Son of God. I have no authority over life and death. There is zero power in me to do this. Only God can.

So he stops. He kneels. He prays.

And I can’t help wondering whether some of you, watching history repeat in your life day after day and week after week, need exactly that. Stop. Kneel. Pray.

Because you’ve been fighting the addiction with your own willpower. You’ve been trying to repair the relationship with whatever wisdom the world hands you. You’ve been attempting to change your behavior and your thought patterns through your own mechanisms — and it isn’t working. You’re trapped in the cycle.

A Card on the Couch

Years ago a friend of mine — a brand-new Christian, part of the ministry we had in Cedar Rapids — asked to meet with me.

She told me she was having severe panic attacks. My first question was whether she’d seen a doctor. She had; she was on medication, and it wasn’t helping. She’d had panic attacks through her teens and twenties, but those lasted a couple of minutes. These were far more intense and ran ten, twenty, thirty minutes, sometimes longer. Her heart raced, she couldn’t breathe, her whole body seemed to shut down.

What terrified her most was that she was a single mother of two little boys. What if she had an attack and something happened to them and she couldn’t help? And the moment that thought entered her head, the attack got worse.

My next thought was to send her back to the doctor for a medication change. But she kept talking. “I can’t help thinking this is spiritual warfare.”

I remember thinking: you’re a brand-new Christian — how do you even know that term? She’d been talking with a close friend the day before, and the friend said, “I think you’re under spiritual attack.” She had no idea what that meant, so her first instinct was to ask her pastor.

There is real wisdom in counseling. There is real wisdom in diet, sleep, and exercise. But I began to agree with her that something more than the medical and physical was going on. So I took her to Ephesians 6 and the armor of God.

Paul, writing to the church in Ephesus, uses a Roman soldier’s gear as a picture of how God equips us for a spiritual battle. He says we wrestle not merely against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers we can’t see. If you follow Jesus, there is more happening than a coworker being unkind or stress at the office. There is a spiritual conflict, and God has given you armor for it — the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth.

But as we talked, I sensed she needed more than protection. She said it outright: “I want to fight back.”

And in that whole list of armor there is exactly one weapon. One. The sword of the Spirit. And Paul defines it for us: the word of God. In a spiritual battle, a follower of Jesus can wield the Scriptures.

So I gave her some passages. We wrote them on index cards, and she decided to leave them around her house — one in the bedroom, one in the bathroom, one in the living room, one in her car.

Two days later I ran into her at an event and she came running up. “It worked.”

That morning an attack started. Her heart raced, breathing tightened, her body began shutting down. It was all she could do to get to the couch and grab the card.

And here’s the thing — when I gave her those verses I told her this wasn’t about reading the verse. It was about praying the verse. That’s exactly what she did. I believe she used Philippians 4, which tells us not to be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, to present our requests to God — and the peace of God, which surpasses understanding, will guard our hearts and minds.

She prayed it. And she said that within seconds the whole thing dissolved. She’d never had a panic attack lift that fast. She had tears in her eyes telling me.

For once, history stopped repeating.

That didn’t end the battle. She still had attacks. She still reached for those cards. She confessed to me once that an attack came on and, because they’d been lifting so quickly, she just started reading the card — and it got worse and worse. Then she realized she wasn’t praying it. She’d turned a Bible verse into a magic incantation and forgotten that God was inviting her into surrender.

But whenever she stopped, knelt, and prayed, she watched God work.

“But I’ve Already Tried That”

I know some of you hear this and feel it’s unfair, because you do follow Jesus. You have stopped. You have knelt. You have prayed. And history keeps repeating anyway.

You’re tired. You’re worn out. You’re starting to wonder whether God is as good as you thought, whether you’ve done something wrong, whether He really loves you, whether He’s actually powerful, whether He exists at all.

So what do you do?

You won’t like the answer. You stop, you kneel, and you pray. It’s called waiting on the Lord.

In Psalm 13, David writes, “How long, O Lord?” His enemies are pressing in. Nothing is going right. He is exhausted by the repetition. And at the end of that same psalm he says, “But I have trusted in your steadfast love.”

If you follow Jesus, you know what He did for you on a cross, and you can look at that. This is not “fake it till you make it.” This is putting your faith in what you already know is true. Even when your feelings pull one direction, you do what you know is right.

That isn’t to say emotions are worthless. God is an emotional God and He gave us emotions. You simply aren’t meant to be ruled by them. You’re meant to be ruled by the King.

Not My Will

If you need encouragement, look at Jesus.

In Luke 11, Jesus tells the religious leaders that their ancestors repeated history over and over — God would send a prophet, they didn’t like the message, they killed him. A generation later, another prophet, same result. Again and again. And when Jesus says it, it’s a warning: I know your hearts, and I know you’re going to do the same thing to Me. And they did. They handed Him to the Romans, He was crucified, and they thought they’d finished it.

Which is why, in Gethsemane the night before, you see Him weeping and sweating blood and saying, “Father, take this cup from Me.” That’s His way of asking whether there’s another way — because He knows the history. He was there when the prophets were killed. He knows how painful this will be, and that He will do it entirely alone.

But He doesn’t stop the prayer there. “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.”

When Peter stops and kneels in that upper room, that is exactly what he’s saying. He wants her alive — he can see how loved she is. But he also knows he has no power over life and death. So: All right, God. Not my will but Yours. I believe it’s Your will that she rise. I believe that’s why You brought me here. But I can’t do this. Only You can.

His kneeling is an act of surrender. An invitation for God to bring it.

Too often we want the power without the prayer.

And I know many of you have been praying. But if Jesus Himself asked whether the cup could pass — and then said not My will but Yours — how much more do you and I need to say, “God, I don’t like this. I want a different future. I want it to go differently. But not my will, Yours.”

That’s hard. It’s painful. And you have no idea what God is doing behind the scenes. He may be putting you somewhere for fourteen years, working on you, so He can bring you out and do something glorious.

For some of you, today is a breakthrough day. You’re going to pray “not my will but Yours” and sense something shift. But whether it comes in fourteen seconds or over fourteen years, keep waiting on the Lord. Not as fake-it-till-you-make-it, but as honest reality: Jesus died on a cross, and that’s enough. Because I can see God’s heart through Christ and God’s power through the empty tomb, I will keep trusting Him — and I will trust that He changes history.

So stop. Kneel. Pray.