It’s Monday morning. Perhaps the Point of View is one of your Monday morning routines: you allow me to have this conversation with you before you head out the door and engage your week. What challenges are waiting for you as you hang your virtual “Open for Business” invitation for trouble?

There’s no lack of crisis on your Monday morning skyline. The opening salvos of World War III are being exchanged in Ukraine this morning. The stock market is poised to open in negative territory – after losing 20%+ of its pre-conflict highs – as investors attempt to speculate the future. Supply chains are seriously broken and participating with global oil prices to drive inflation to the forefront. Those headlines are screaming for attention, but – more than likely – your efforts this week will have little impact on those macro issues.

Your conflicts are less headline, but more headache. First issue is to create two mental bins: one marked “Facts of Life;” the other, “Problems.” The difference? Facts of life are beyond your ability to alter or change; Problems are circumstances within which you have the ability to stimulate solutions.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, your Problem list is longer than the one your unredeemed friends are reviewing. Why? Along with your human capacities – relationships you can access, resources you can control – you have the ability to tap into the supernatural power of God to join forces with your efforts to effect positive change. Lost people don’t have prayer lists; you should.

Here’s something I’ve noticed about me – and others like me – when we begin to operate with the promises of God in our strategic reserves. As students of the Bible – God’s account of His history with people, past and future – we are often at risk of assuming that God’s interventions in the past will be the blueprint for His solutions in the future. Can I read a great Bible story and “claim” that divine solution as the one God must bring my way?

It was early in the emergence of the Church, after Pentecost. Much of the crucial activity surrounding the global launch of the Gospel was going on in/around Jerusalem. Peter was known to be the human face of the Spirit-led movement, and the Jewish leaders were acting to quench the excitement surrounding the declaration of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. James – brother of John – was executed by Herod; other leaders of the church were arrested. The decisive blow: Peter was arrested and put in prison with plans to convene a public trial – as they had with Jesus – and eliminate his leadership threat once and for all.

“So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.” (Acts 12:5). The story, in brief: the church had an all-night prayer vigil going for Peter, while Peter was sleeping-like-a-baby in his cell, chained between two guards with layers of armed guards out the doors of his cell. An angel appears in the cell, sedated the guards, woke Peter, eliminated the chains, opened the locked prison doors out to the street, and told Peter to get dressed and get going. He followed those directions…

It’s almost comedic: Peter goes to the house where the church is praying and knocked on the door. The servant girl – Rhoda – recognized his voice and ran into the prayer meeting to tell them that their prayers had been answered. Their response: “You’re out of your mind.” (v 15).

Question asked, and answered: when you’re in jail, what do you do? Get the church to pray for you, and the angels will get busy with a jail-break. Is that a promise you can claim?

Run the clock forward a couple of decades. Paul has been pursuing his mission to take the gospel to the frontiers. He was arrested – multiple times – but ended up in the Mamertine Prison in Rome. It was death row, and the churches were praying for Paul’s release. Paul’s confidence: “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack” (2 Timothy 4:18). Paul’s release from incarceration was his execution which delivered him to Glory.

My reminder: both great Apostles were in the middle of God’s plan, and both had the prayers of the church in support of them. For Peter, God sent an angel; for Paul, He sent an executioner. Both were answers to prayer.

My encouragement today: don’t put God in a box. Don’t find a favorite Bible story – with a favorite outcome – and “claim” it as if the Bible is a coupon book for Christians. Pray the smart prayer, like Jesus did: “not my will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

Then live in the confidence of His answer – in His timing, on His terms – as His will for your life.