Power to Stay!

In Acts 16, we see what real faith looks like under pressure. Paul and Silas are doing exactly what God called them to do—preaching, delivering, and advancing the gospel. But obedience doesn’t lead them to comfort… it leads them to conflict. 

After casting a spirit out of a young woman, they are beaten, falsely accused, and thrown into prison. Bound. Broken. Publicly humiliated.

Yet at midnight… they pray.
 And they don’t stop there—they praise.

Not in freedom.
 Not after the breakthrough.
 But in the middle of the pain.

And heaven responds.

An earthquake shakes the prison. Doors open. Chains fall. But what makes this moment truly powerful isn’t the miracle—it’s the decision that follows.

They don’t leave.

In a moment where escape was possible, they stayed. And because they stayed, a jailer and his entire household were saved.

This episode reveals a deeper level of obedience—the kind that doesn’t just praise in pressure, but stays when it could leave.

Your obedience isn’t just about you.
 It’s about who God wants to reach through you.

👉 Sometimes the real miracle isn’t getting out…
 …it’s staying.

#PressToPray #FaithUnderPressure #MidnightPraise #ObedienceToGod #Acts16 #StayInTheFight #ChristianPodcast #PrayerWorks

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Transcript

Press means to apply force. When God said press, prayer reaches every single situation. He
gave us permission to apply force to every situation that we will go through.
And in this podcast, we are going to learn to apply force to what's applying pressure to us.
Greetings, everybody, and welcome to the Press Movement Podcast. We are rounding out the
Book of Acts.
And as you can tell, this podcast is coming to the end of a journey. So if you're just jumping on
the track with us, go back, listen to some of the previous episodes. We have been blessed to
just continuously look at prayer and God through the scriptures, his responses, the way he
moves.
It is amazing. And today will be no less as we travel to the Book of Acts, Chapter 16, with Sister
Alicia Owens. I'm going to hand it over to her because she is a veteran and she can take it from
here.
Hello, everyone. So today we are going to be in Acts 16. Paul and his companions, they are
traveling to spread the gospel.
And after being stopped from going to certain places, regions like Asia or Nicaea or Macea, I
believe it is called, Paul has a dream or a vision, I mean. And it is a man basically shouting and
yelling for him to come over to Macedonia and help them. So immediately they go taking that
direction as being led by the Holy Ghost and they go to Macedonia.
That is when they meet Lydia. So they met Lydia there and her and her entire family were saved
as a result of their teachings. And she asked him, if you have judged me to be faithful to the
Lord in Chapter 16, verse 15, if you've judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house
and abide there.
And so they went to stay there and it came to pass, we're in verse 16. As we went to prayer, a
certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her master's much
gain by soothsaying. Verse 17, the same followed Paul and us and cried saying, these are
servants of the most high God, which show us the way of salvation.
And this she did many days, but Paul being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command
thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out in the same hour. So after
Paul cast the spirit out of her in verse 19, her master saw what happened.
And they saw that now they're not going to be able to make any money off of her soothsaying.
They basically dragged Paul and Silas into the marketplace and brought them before the
magistrates complaining about that they are bringing trouble to the city. They're teaching
customs that are not lawful to us.
This is in verse 21, that are not lawful for us to receive, neither observe being Romans. And the
multitude in verse 22 rose up together against them and the magistrates rent off their clothes
and commanded that they be beat. And after they beat them and laid many stripes on them,
they were cast into prison.
In prison, they prayed, they sang songs to the Lord. And in verse 25, it says, and at midnight,
Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God. And the prisoners heard them.
And suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.
And immediately all of the doors were open and everyone's bands were loosed. I thought this
was so powerful because it spoke to your ability to pray and praise God in a hard place, in a
impossible place.
Your ability to still speak the name of Jesus, even after being beat for just telling the truth and
beat for doing the work of the Lord, but also cast into prison. Your ability to be bound literally in
this scripture and still be able to keep to the assignment. The charge does not change.
The assignment does not change. And regardless of my comfortability, regardless of how I feel,
what I was charged to do doesn't change. And I just thought that that was, I thought that was
beautiful.
You have anything? Well, looking at it, I was excited when you said Lydia, first of all, because we
did go to Macedonia and Macedonia is partly in Greece now. And we were there in November,
October, both. I must say that changes my view of all these scriptures.
It just does. Because being there, you can still feel in a lot of ways the spirit of what Paul had to
contend with. I had read from a missionary previously that Greece and the area are back prebiblical times, spiritually speaking.
I was able to see that more so firsthand. And the area is not, I don't know, how would you
explain it? I would say they know what they believe. They know why they believe it.
They're very set. Most of our interactions with the people of Greece weren't necessarily in the
outreach. It was just kind of like normal interactions.
And even in their normal interactions, they're very stuck in what it is they know to be true, what
they believe to be true. It felt like I can definitely see why he was in an uphill battle when he was
there, because they're very firm in what they know. I wouldn't call it stubborn.
I think that kind of being fully persuaded, it's kind of something to admire almost, because
that's what we are to be. They are very set. They know what it is they believe, what it is they do.
And you can't talk them off of that. So I think that would be the way I describe it. Yeah.
And their religious perspectives are totally entwined with their whole life. Yeah. It's the way they
name themselves, the way they celebrate their birthdays, the way they carry themselves on a
day-to-day basis.
Yes. The way they respect the religious monuments. And I mean, when I say birthdays, I think it
was our tour guide who said they celebrate the birthday associated with the patron saint.
Yes. They're named after. Yeah.
I was like, wow. So it's really a whole culture, it's a lifestyle when you walk into a place like a
Macedonia and you come in with a different message. I can see, even from this angle, why they
were saying they're trying to teach customs that are not lawful for us to receive, neither to
observe.
They don't belong here. They're trying to start trouble. And I can also see how strong-willed as
a people they are, that this could be a real fight.
What I admire as you do is that Paul and Silas were celebrating that fight because it was for the
name of Jesus. They were able to worship and praise in the prison. And that is an amazing thing
because it teaches us how we're supposed to act.
Right. When we take on things for the name. And as we're looking at it, you get to see how
heaven reacts when things are taken on for the name.
Because that great shaking and the foundations of the prison were shaking and the doors were
open and everyone's bands are loose. Tell me you wouldn't have freaked out. Oh my gosh, I
would have ran immediately.
But even in verse 26, when the bands were loose and everything, they didn't leave. They were
still there. And so your immediate response not being, okay, I'm out of here.
I would be out of there. And I would be completely freaked out, but I would see it as the miracle
that it was. I would be gone.
But they stayed. And as a result of them staying, the prison guard, his family, was even able to
benefit and their family was saved. So I think if this story doesn't show you anything, it shows
you that your obedience blesses others.
It makes me think of your mother specifically with how she was obedient to God at a young
age. And now camp is on its, what, 46th year. And there's so many people that have in contact
with camp that whether it is they believe or not, you can't deny what you felt there.
You can't deny what you got there. You can't deny that that camp has saved so many lives. And
so I think that there's a benefit to choosing God, even in a hard place.
It kind of made me think of my parents, my dad and the fight in his body. And I remember, and
I can't, I'm not going to even try to tell his story for him, but that's a story that you'll have to
have him on to talk about one day. But I remember when I asked him, I was like, is this, I
couldn't even ask him, are you going to die? But I was like, is this it? And I remember him telling
me, he said, this is not going to kill me, but this is a fight for my faith.
And he said, this is to build my faith. And the way that I watched him and my mother, it didn't
kill them. And I don't just mean physically.
I mean, spiritually, it didn't kill their marriage. It didn't kill the love that they have for God. It
didn't kill their devotion to God.
They still served, even while he was sick, even until this day, when he's not necessarily feeling
well, they still put serving first. And I just, I think it's something that's admirable because we as
humans, when things get hard and our humanity, we're predisposed to kind of like back up
because it's like, okay, this is getting a bit to be too much. But you know, with Paul and Silas,
they're thrown into prison, they're beaten, and they still chose the mission that you can't teach.
You can't train that kind of devotion either. You either have it because you love them or you
don't. So, yeah.
I agree. They had not just the desire to praise, not just the desire to pray, but they also had the
desire to stay. And sometimes that's bigger to stay in a fight when you could get out of it.
That is bigger and more of a flex, if you would, than just going and leaving. But because of their
stay, not because of their praise, not because of their worship, not because of how they prayed,
but because they stayed in the place that was trying to hold them hostage, somebody else's life
was changed in this prison, God. And his whole family, I believe the scripture says, his whole
household.
Today, I pray God gives us the strength to stay in the fight, even when we see the door open,
that we don't just leave or run for the door before he says, get up and go. One thing that I know
I really want to be able to do and be called as I get older is a follower of Jesus Christ. And I pray
that we follow him and that we learn to stay and that we watch and see that prayer reaches
every single situation.