Praising God at Midnight

In Acts 16, Paul and Silas find themselves in one of the worst nights of their lives. They had freed a girl from a spirit of divination, and for it they were falsely accused, publicly stripped and beaten with many blows, and thrown into the inner prison with their feet fastened in the stocks. Humiliated, wounded, and locked in the dark, they do the last thing anyone would expect.

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 the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed.

Acts 16:25-26

Why does praise work like this? Why does Scripture keep instructing us to praise the Lord at all times? 'I will bless the Lord at all times,' says Psalm 34:1, 'his praise shall continually be in my mouth.' To understand it, we have to talk for a moment about midnight.

The meaning of midnight

Midnight is the darkest hour of the night. It is the loneliest hour, the hour when whatever can go wrong seems to. But midnight is also the last hour of the night. Every hour after midnight is moving toward morning. If you can make it to midnight, you have made it into the morning.

Before midnight, the sun is setting and moving away from you. At midnight, the sun has already turned and begun heading back in your direction. Midnight is an experience every one of us must pass through at some point. Either you are in your midnight right now, or you are on your way into one, or you are on your way out of one. And Scripture shows us three things that praising God does for us right there in the dark.

Praise sees that God is with you in it

First, praising God in the midnight recognizes that God is present with us in the very situation. Remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace — there was a fourth figure in the flames with them. God himself is with you in the trouble you are walking through.

The worst lie the enemy can tell you is that God is absent, that the reason you are in the dark is that he has left you. Look at Joseph. 'The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the Lord was with him' (Genesis 39:2-3). Here is a good question to sit with: was God with Joseph because Joseph was good, or was Joseph good because God was with him? Do not let the enemy confuse you. God was with Joseph because of a covenant God had made with Abraham, Joseph's great-grandfather. The one thing Joseph did was recognize that God was with him.

So hear this clearly. It is not because God has abandoned you that you do not yet have the job. It is not because he has turned his back that a prayer is still unanswered. And it is not your sin standing between you and God, for that was dealt with at the cross. More often it is simply that we have failed to recognize the Lord standing right at our side. Jeremiah could say, 'The Lord is with me as a mighty, awesome one; therefore my persecutors will stumble and not prevail' (Jeremiah 20:11). Praise is how we declare that God is with us, even in the midnight hour.

Praise sees that God is over it

Second, praising God recognizes that God is not only with you in the situation, he is above it. He is over it, in charge of it, in control of it. God is still on the throne. There is nothing so bad in what you are facing that it means God has lost control.

Remember the disciples straining at the oars in the middle of the sea, the wind against them, and Jesus came to them walking on the very water that threatened to destroy them (Mark 6:47-50). He was walking on top of the thing that was drowning their courage. Today you can see Jesus walking on top of the situation that has been pressing you down. That is what praise does — it lifts your eyes to see who is actually in charge. As Psalm 95 declares, the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods; in his hand are the deep places of the earth, and the sea is his, for he made it. The One who made the sea is not troubled by your storm.

Praise sees that God is ahead of it

Third, and most wonderful, praising God allows us to see that God is ahead of the midnight hour. He is not only with you in it and above it; he has gone before you and already dealt with it.

Have you noticed that even at the cross, Jesus prayed to God and God was still his God? Hebrews tells us that 'for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame' (Hebrews 12:2). He could see past the midnight to the morning that was already prepared. And Scripture promises the same for us: 'God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it' (1 Corinthians 10:13). Before you even fall into the trial, God has already made the way out.

So praise God when there is sickness in your body. Praise him when your finances are strained. Praise him when everything around you seems to be unraveling. Praising him in the middle of the midnight lets you see how God has already gone ahead of you to make a way where there is no way.

Praying and praising together

This is why the enemy cannot defeat a believer who is both praying and praising. Consider the difference. Prayer without praise easily becomes complaining. Praise without prayer can drift into empty contradiction. But praying and praising together is the posture that shook a prison to its foundations. When you pray, you bring your need to the One who is with you and over you and ahead of you. When you praise, you declare that he is exactly who he says he is, before you see the change with your eyes.

So praise him with understanding. It is when you praise this way that walls begin to crumble, that foundations shake, that chains fall off. Praise God because he is with you in the crisis, like Joseph. Praise him because he is above the crisis, like the disciples on the sea. Praise him because he is ahead of the trouble, like Jesus at the cross.

There is nothing you are going through that God cannot take care of. You do not have a job? Did he not command the ravens, birds that will not even feed their own young, to feed Elijah in the wilderness? Did he not feed five thousand with five loaves and two fish? Perhaps you have a job and the job is draining the life out of you. Even then, was it not God who caused the Hebrew women to bear healthy children under the crushing weight of their taskmasters? He has always been able to bring life out of the hardest place.

Remember, too, what surrounded Paul and Silas that night. Their imprisonment had begun with a woman set free from bondage and a household in Lydia opened to the gospel. Even the injustice that landed them in the stocks was woven into a larger work God was doing. The other prisoners were listening as they sang, and before the night was over a jailer and his whole family would come to faith. Your praise in the dark is never wasted; it is heard, and it opens doors you cannot see.

So whatever your midnight, lift your voice. Morning is not far, because the God who is with you, over you, and ahead of you has already turned the sun back toward your direction. Begin to praise, right there in the dark, and watch the foundations shake.