The Knock at the Door They Couldn't Believe

There was a night when everything looked lost.

Peter was in prison. Locked behind heavy doors, with soldiers on every side. Chains on his wrists. Chains on his ankles. A guard sleeping on his right and a guard sleeping on his left, so close he could not turn over without them feeling it.

The king wanted to hurt him. And in the morning, the king meant to.

While Peter slept in those chains, his friends were awake. All over the city, in a small dark house, the church was praying for him through the long hours. Please, they asked God. Please bring him home.

And they were so afraid. They wanted Peter back so badly that hoping for it felt like it might break their hearts. Have you ever wanted something that much?

That is exactly where they were.

And while they whispered in the dark, something happened in the prison.

A light came into the cell, soft and warm, and an angel stood beside Peter. The angel nudged him awake. "Get up, quickly," he said. And as Peter stood, the chains slipped off his wrists and fell to the floor with a clink. The iron that held him fast could not hold him at all.

Out they went, past one sleeping guard and then another, all the way to the big iron gate at the very edge of the prison, the gate that locks everyone in. And the gate swung open by itself. It opened for Peter like it had been waiting all along.

Peter walked out into the night, free.

He came to the house where his friends were praying, and he knocked. A young girl named Rhoda came to answer. And when she heard Peter's voice, oh, she was so amazed, so full of joy, that she ran back inside to tell everyone and forgot to open the door. She left Peter standing right there on the step, knocking and knocking.

"It's Peter!" she cried. "Peter is at the door!"

And the very people who had prayed for him all night said, "It can't be. You must be wrong." Their hands were still folded for the very thing now standing outside, and they could hardly believe it had come.

But Peter kept knocking. And at last they opened the door. And there he was.

There is Someone who knows how to walk out of a locked place where no one can follow. The chains fell from Peter in the dark. And Jesus had already done something even greater: a stone rolled back, and he walked out of the grave alive, and death could not hold him at all.

That same Lord has made a promise. He is gathering his children one by one, and not one of them will be left behind. He has begun it already, and he keeps every word he says.

So when you pray and you are almost too afraid to hope, listen. That knock at the door may be the very answer you were asking for.