What Paul and Silas Knew at Midnight

About midnight, in the inner cell of a Philippian jail, two men began to sing. Paul and Silas had been stripped, beaten with rods, and locked in with their feet fastened in the stocks. Their backs were torn open. It was dark, and the pain intense.

And they sang.

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them” (Acts 16:25).

That’s not happiness. Happiness depends on happenings. If Paul and Silas had let their circumstances set their mood, that cell would’ve been full of groaning, not hymns. What they had was something circumstances couldn’t reach: joy rooted in who God is, not in where they were.

Jesus promised exactly that kind of joy. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). And later, “no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22).

Joy Comes Through Obedience

Remember why Paul and Silas were in that cell. They weren’t there by accident. They’d obeyed God and cast a demon out of a slave girl, and her owners had them arrested. They could have kept quiet and played it safe. They chose obedience, and obedience cost them.

Yet at midnight, they sang.

I learned a small version of that in 1993. I was leading a monthly prayer call for our company’s field teams, twenty to forty people scattered across the country. No mandate. No title. Nobody asked me to do it. But I watched colleagues who’d never prayed out loud learn to speak honestly before God, and some of them came to Christ.

That call gave me more lasting joy than any multimillion-dollar contract I ever closed. Not because it was impressive, but because it was obedient. “The joy of the LORD is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). Not the joy of success. The joy of the LORD.

Joy That Witnesses

Here’s the rest of the story. While they were singing, an earthquake shook the prison. The doors flew open and the chains fell off. The jailer, sure his prisoners had escaped, was about to take his own life when Paul called out, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” Before the night was over, that jailer asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” He and his whole household believed and were baptized.

The other prisoners were listening. The jailer was listening. Midnight worship that looked pointless turned out to be the very thing God used to shake foundations.

God sees you and hears you in your darkness too.

Start Before You Feel It

You don’t have to wait for your circumstances to improve before you worship. Paul and Silas didn’t. And you don’t have to feel joyful before you begin. I’ve prayed prayers that started angry and ended in gratitude, not because anything changed during the prayer, but because turning toward God shifted my spirit.

So here’s something to try this week. When things are hard, stop and thank God for one thing about His character: His love, His faithfulness, His goodness, His sovereignty. Say it out loud, or sing it if you can. Paul would later write from another prison cell, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). Always. Not just when things go well.

This is the heart of Chapter 8 of Divine Gratitude: Joy Beyond This World. Joy isn’t found in getting what you want. It’s found in knowing who God is. In Divine Gratitude, I walk through three practical ways to find that joy when life feels like the darkness of midnight.

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Originally published at davidmclarkauthor.org: https://davidmclarkauthor.org/what-paul-and-silas-knew-at-midnight/