In the lifetime ministry, God has given me, I have seen God in answer to prayer set many free from sickness, drugs, alcohol, debt, a disintegrating marriage, even jail. The list goes on.

In Acts 16, we find the Apostle Paul and Silas being faithful to God, carrying out the ministry He had called and sent them to do. 

Their faithfulness to God got them thrown in jail. 

Now, jail back then is nothing like jail today. There were cells full of the refuse and filth of previous prisoners. You were usually whipped and left with a bleeding back and thrown in the jail into the sewage and all. 

No beds, just the filthy floor to sleep on and sit on. The stench must have been unbearable. 

The potential of infection and disease was extreme. It was certainly nothing to sing about. 

Then the guy who guarded you was a murderer at heart, and if you tried to escape, he was under orders to just kill you however he pleased. He was the worst of the worst. 

If a prisoner did accomplish an escape, his superiors would kill him.  Really a “pleasant” place.

Paul and Silas needed to be set free from this death, but how? What unlocks everything for a true believer? What sets us free to endure or escape our situation?

Look at Verse 25 and 26 “About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly a strong earthquake shook the foundations of the prison. At once all the doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.”

Now, if you go on reading, you find the jailer was about to kill himself, thinking the prisoners had escaped, but Paul yelled to not do that because they were still there. The jailer fell before Paul and asked what he must do to be saved and Paul said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou will be saved.” 

The jailer was saved, took Paul and Silas to his house, washed their wounds from the whippings, and his whole house came to believe in Jesus as their personal Savior and they were all baptized and a church was started in Philippi. 

God had Paul write the epistle of Philippians back to that church later on.

Do you get my point? The prayer of an effectual and righteous man avails much. It will unlock and deliver whatever a true believer needs to be delivered from.

MD Anderson, the cancer center in Houston, had been watching a lung cancer on my right lung for a year. It kept lighting up as cancer in an area I had been healed from lung cancer 4 years before through radiation treatment. 

The last PET Scan showed it was completely gone. Prayers.

I have watched God deliver people from drugs, alcohol, and jail through prayer. 

I have watched God restore marriages, children, financial disasters, etc. through fervent prayer. 

I have seen recently a case that appeared impossible in a woman’s health, but she is preparing to come home from the hospital raised up. 

We’ve seen God heal another lady of fast-growing cancer. 

I have watched God set people free from demonic possession through persistent prayer. 

Prayer can shake the room and deliver one who is a true believer from whatever he or she needs deliverance from.

 

Charles Empey is the Interim Pastor of Cove Baptist Church, Orange, Texas.