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Within every living creature there is a natural will to survive. God also placed that survival instinct in every human being. I have had the unfortunate opportunity to be at several bedsides when the family had decided to "pull the plug" on the life support machines of a loved one, and every time the doctor or nurse told them that "it will be just a few minutes once the machines are turned off." Every time that I have been there, there was a moment of tense anguish as the machines were disconnected and EVERY time the person has gone on to live for several more hours and in some cases days before entering into eternity. Why is that? Even when it is unconscious and not coherent, there is a natural drive in the human body to survive and to fight for that survival.

You can take a normally docile and flighty creature and when it is cornered, it will fight to survive. The old saying in South Louisiana was "never corner a coon or a skunk." In their own way, both will come out of the corner fighting to survive. I was coon hunting one night with some men in the church and we had ran this particular coon for what seemed like all night long, and finally the dogs treed him way back in the swamp where the coon could not escape. My friend, Brian and I stood beside the tree holding the flashlight up on the coon's eyes while another guy tried to shoot it with a .22 rifle. The guy somehow missed and the agitated coon ran out of the beam of the flashlight. As we were trying to figure out what to do next, either the old coon's survival instinct kicked in or it fell because next thing I knew, the coon had landed screaming and biting on top of Brian's head and with a yell he sent it flying onto the dogs. All we could do was watch as coon dog and coon went round and round and after the coon had whipped up on the dogs a while, he ran off into the river and disappeared. If I would have been asked to score the fight that night, I would have said that the coon definitely won! Both Brian and the dogs had to receive a little first aid after the encounter! As we were driving back that night, I mentioned that if the coon could win the fight with the dogs then why did it run in the first place? For some reason the only way it would fight was if it was cornered!

Most people that are always attacking other people view them as a threat to their survival. You can tell when a person is more dependent upon themselves for survival than on God because they will always take every opportunity to tear into someone else. But my friends, if God is on your side, then you have nothing to fear. In Exodus 17:15, Moses called God, Jehovah-nissi which literally means "the Lord God my banner" but in context means "the God who fights my battles!" We need to learn to allow God to fight our battles! The Psalmist said:

Christian, you must "let God arise" for Him to fight your battles! When we take matters in our own hands, we limit the hand of God! There will be times that you want to fix something, or that survival instinct wants to rise up and take over! But if we let God arise, our enemies will change from attack to running for their lives! When God fights our battles, He does so much more effectively than we could have. So how do we "let God arise?" The answer is in verse 3 of the afore mentioned psalm: "let the righteous be glad"..."let them exceedingly rejoice!" You've got to be able to praise God in every situation! Sometimes the best thing that you can do when you are fighting for survival in your situation is just begin to praise God! It sounds strange, but when you do so, you are "letting God arise!" That's why the first thing that the devil attacks when you are going through a trial is your praise and worship. He does not want you to praise the Living, Almighty God! Why? Because he knows better than we do, that if we will begin to praise God, God will arise! God will begin to fight! You can't whip every situation in life on your own! You cannot take on every devil in hell by your own power! But if God be on your side, then who can be against you?! The next time you are in the fight of your life, you need to throw your hands in the air and begin to praise God! Let God arise! And see if God does not rush to your rescue! Praise is the key to take us from survival to revival!

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There is something about the time of midnight that causes us to feel eerie. I had a book growing up in the "Hardy Boy series" entitled "What Happened At Midnight." It was about a bunch of criminals that did all of their horrible deed at exactly the moment when the clock struck midnight! That book used to scare me as a kid because there was just something scary about something happening at "midnight." Even today, we associate "midnight" with desperation. Maybe we got this from human nature or maybe we got this from scripture.

In scripture, "midnight" always represents a time of anguish and desperation. It represents when a person is at their last wits end. It refers to a time of trouble and uncertainty in a person's life. Job referred to "midnight" as being a time of trouble. In I Kings we find the story of the two mothers who were asleep and one of them found that she had accidentally killed her baby by crushing it, and so she got up and switched her dead infant with the other mother's living baby. Their case was brought before Solomon who discovered who the real mother of the living child was by offering to split in half with the sword. The mother who had killed her infant and then switched the babies, quickly agreed to split the baby in half, but the true mother of the child said "no, let her have it so it can live." Solomon then knew who to give the baby in order to return it to it's original mother. In the story, though, the evil mother switched the babies at midnight. So midnight represents at time when the most precious thing that you have is threatened. It represents a time of trial and tribulation.

In Matthew 25:6 we find that there were 10 virgins waiting for the bridegroom to come which symbolized the return of the Lord one day. Five of the virgins were wise and five were foolish, and only the five wise were ready to meet the bridegroom when he came back ... at midnight! Can I tell you, church that the prophetic "midnight" is almost here?! If Jesus is coming back at "midnight" then we must be at 11:59! We need to make sure that we are ready, because you do not want to miss out on the rapture of the church! You do not want to face any midnight, and especially that one, without the Lord!

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In living for God and even allowing God to rise and fight your battles, you are going to have times of a personal "midnight." There will arise times in your life where you feel alone, hurt, and even desperate! There will come a time when you will simply feel as if you are just trying to survive, just trying to make it spiritually or physically to another day; where the pleasures of life dim in comparison to the struggle in the midnight of your life!

It may be at the loss of a dearest loved one. It may be at a time of intense spiritual struggle. Your midnight, may be a tough test or trial that just seems to never go away. It may be a time of pain either spiritual or physical or it may the be the dissolving of a relationship or prized possession. Whatever it is, being a child of God does not shield you from going through a midnight. You will have to face the midnight just like the sinner! We all will go through a time in the future where our thoughts and energies are just on surviving the night! To just making it to a brand new morning!

But as I began to study this week, I discovered something that you need to file away for a rainy day. You need to take this nugget of truth and store it in that brain of yours so that you can remember it and act upon it in the darker times of your life. Here it is: OUR GOD IS THE GOD OF THE MIDNIGHT HOUR! Did you get that? There is a difference between you and the common sinner. Your God is the God of the Midnight hour! Let me quickly prove it to you with scripture.

You and I have never faced a dark midnight hour in our life like the Jewish people in the time of Moses! Moses had gone to Pharaoh and demanded that he let the Hebrews go, and Pharaoh had responded by making their jobs much, much harder. The scriptures say that Pharaoh and the Egyptian taskmasters beat and worked the Jewish people so hard, that they actually lost their interest in leaving Egypt. They turned on Moses and Aaron and began to demand why they were aggravating Pharaoh! It is easy to criticize their attitude from where you and I sit on padded pews today, but they did not know what God was about to do! All they knew was that they were being treated like common animals and were working long hours under grueling conditions so much that they did not have even time to think or have a life! To make matters worse, Moses kept bringing plagues on Egypt and the first three plagues, the river to blood, the frogs, and the lice affected the Jewish people as well! It was not until the fourth plague that God spared the area of the Hebrews from His plagues. Can you imagine having to work horrible slave hours and then come home and your house is full of frogs or lice? For the Israelites in Egypt, they had reached a time in their life where they were just fighting for survival! They just wanted to get their day over with and make it through to another day!

But on the 10th plague, God decided to pass through Egypt and kill all of the Egyptian firstborns! God told Moses, that although things had gotten rough, that this last plague would be what would cause Pharaoh to release the Jewish people! I have brought this story up because I find the timing of God to be highly interesting in studying this plague:

God passed through the land of Egypt and killed every firstborn male at MIDNIGHT! You see God loves to work at midnight! But what brought judgment upon the Egyptians brought freedom to the Israelites! Pharaoh, at midnight, could no longer fight against God and commanded that the Israelites to go. The scriptures say that the Egyptians brought their bread dough and food that they had prepared to cook the next day to the Israelites and gave it to them trying to "pay them" to leave! The Egyptians wives brought their finest gold and silver and mirrors and gave them to the Israelites saying "here, take the best that we can give, just leave!" It was at midnight that the children of Israel left Egypt for good, loaded down with the blessings of God and richer than they had ever been before! Leaving the hard labor and nightmares of slavery behind, headed to a relationship with God that they had only dreamed about, headed for a land flowing with milk and honey where they would live in houses that they did not build and eat the grapes from vineyards that they did not plant! God specializes in working at midnight! You need to remember that when you are in your midnight hour of desperation, that if you will turn to God, and trust Him, God will use the midnight hour to turn your survival into revival! To go from slavery to bountifully blessed! To go from beaten down to victorious! To go from lower class to the most exalted! When God is for you who can be against you? He loves to work for His children at midnight!

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Nobody knew that power of God working at your hour of desperation and survival like the Apostle Paul. In our text, we read the story of when Paul and Silas were on the second missionary journey, and were trying to start a revival in the town of Philippi. They had already won several ladies and their families to God including the seller of purple, Lydia, but then it seemed that if their efforts came to a grinding halt. We tend to overlook the physical pain that these men endured for the gospel because we are just reading about it on black and white pages and not having to endure it ourselves, but we must never forget that these men, though mighty men of God, were ordinary human beings and felt pain and discouragement just as you and I do! David mentioned that once he had to "encourage himself in the Lord!" That means that David knew what it was like to be down, discouraged, and lonely!

Paul and Silas aggravated the wrong men in the town of Philippi when they cast out the demons from a certain young fortune teller that was making the influential men of the city rich. In fury, the city councilmen laid hold of Paul and Silas, stripped them naked in front of the entire town square and tying their hands to a pole, beat them severely across their backs until they were at the very point of death. Acts chapter 16 tells the story that then they brought Paul and Silas to the local jailer, and he put them, beaten and badly in need of medical help in the innermost, dirtiest prison cell and put their feet through stocks so that they could not even turn over but had to sit up to try to keep the pressure off of their badly beaten backs.

I want to tell you that for Paul and Silas, it was not a pleasant night. No doubt they were in and out of conscience and wondered if they were about to die and if their ministry had come to an end. Can you put yourself in their shoes for a moment? The thoughts that went through their mind? "It wasn't supposed to end this way!" "We wanted to have revival and now we lay in a Roman jail, dying and forgotten by all those who would care!" They did not go into that jail cell singing God's praises at first. They did not go in rejoicing. They had reached rock bottom in disappointment. They were not worried about reaching somebody else, they were just trying to survive the upcoming night.

In those days, it was unlawful for a court to meet and try a case and administer judgment after sundown. That's why when you read about Jesus' trials you will find that He had three trials, two illegal ones before sunrise and then an official one that could only be held after sunrise because it was illegal to hold court during hours of darkness. That's probably one of the reasons that God brought three hours of darkness upon the land when Jesus Christ was dying upon the cross: God was shutting down the courts of the land while the most important trial of eternity was taking place -- the judgment of the sins of humanity by a holy God who was giving His very life!

What this means to the Paul and Silas story is that the latest that Paul and Silas could have been arrested, beaten, and jailed was at sundown or around 6 pm that day. There is about a six hour gap between verses 24 and 25 in our text. We do not have any exact details of what Paul and Silas were doing in those six hours, but from the circumstances I believe that I can fill in the situation. Paul and Silas were simply trying to survive. There were questions in their minds. They had reached the lowest point of their lives and they were just trying to regroup and find the will to go on! Those six hours passes as they simply focused on survival, and wondering if their budding ministries were going to end that night.

I've never been physically beaten and cast into jail, but I have been where Paul and Silas were spiritually. I know what it is like to being moving in faith and expectation of what God is going to do and then suddenly find myself in the throes of a spiritual dungeon just simply trying to survive! I know what it feels like to be walking in the liberty of the Spirit one moment and then suddenly seem to have my spiritual strength beat out of me to the point that I wonder if I am going to be able to even live spiritually myself! It's easy to have faith when the Spirit is moving and we seem to have a grasp of God's will in our life, but what about when you feel depressed? What about when God's perfect will for your life suddenly takes a drastic, unforeseen turn and you find yourself in a spiritual dungeon simply fighting for your spiritual life? What do you do? Well, one thing that you can do is to get mad at God and take matters into your own hands and try to pull yourself out of your situation, but usually that just makes things worse. I'll tell you what you do: you hold out to midnight! When it gotten as bad a situation that it can get, then you can trust and know that God, the Almighty God of the universe who specializes in working at midnight, is about to intervene!

Get the picture in your mind: Paul and Silas have been sitting in the stocks in the innermost dungeon for six hours. They've been fighting for survival and consciousness as the night has fast approached. All around them they hear the groans of other prisoners that are as helpless as they are, and the pain is unbearable! Then look what the scriptures say that Paul and Silas did:

"At midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them!" They couldn't figure out why they were in the situation that they were in. They couldn't understand how it worked in God's master plan, but Paul looked over at Silas and a scripture came to his mind that he had learned long ago in school. Maybe it was the other verse that we read as our text:

If ever a scripture applied to their circumstances, this one did! The bands of the wicked had seemingly robbed them of their ministry, joy, and freedom, but Paul and Silas remembered the psalmist' command: "at midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee!" Paul and Silas looked at each other and they realized that they could not physically rise because their feet were in stocks. I can see Paul as he thinks about it "what can I cause to rise up in praise to God?" Then the thought hits him: "Silas?" "Yeah, Paul." "It's midnight and I just remembered a scripture that just may help us out of situation!" "I know this sounds crazy and it doesn't look good, but let's raise up our voice and begin to praise and thank God!" "Silas, why don't you sing with me!"

The scriptures say that they began to pray and sing and they lifted up their voice so loud that all of the prisoners heard them! And as they gave thanks to God in their midnight, suddenly an earthquake began to shake the prison. The Bible says that the foundations of the jail were shaken! Not only that, but EVERY prison door opened and EVERYONE'S bands were loosed! In just a few moments of praise at midnight, Paul and Silas had gone from SURVIVAL to REVIVAL!

Listen carefully to this preacher: I don't know what it is about midnight that causes God to move. I don't why He loves to work such miracles in such tough situations. Maybe it's because God always responds to sincerity and when you are in the dungeon and beaten in your midnight hour, if you praise God, you are not faking! Maybe it's because God loves for everyone to see how He can take the impossible and turn it into a massive miracle! Maybe it's because of the passion and determination of the cry of His child in distress! Maybe because there is something about just trying to survive that causes us to get beyond our pretenses and false fronts, and causes us to get real with God! Maybe it's a combination of all of those things. But whatever the reason: God loves to work at midnight! He loves to turn survival to revival!

When you find yourself at a midnight hour and an impossible situation! When you find yourself spiritually bound and desperate, you need to learn from Paul and Silas and begin to pray and give God praise! You need to rejoice! Why? Because you have been set up for a move of God that you have only dreamed about! When you are in a midnight hour, God is just getting ready to bring a great victory! God loves to take a night of survival and turn it into an Apostolic revival in just a few seconds!

I want you to notice that not only were Paul and Silas freed, but ALL of the prisoners were loosed from their bands! When God places you in a midnight situation and frees you from it, you are not the only one who will be released but God is going to free others around you! God has a purpose for the dungeon and midnight! It's to bring revival to those captive around you! Paul and Silas would have never been able to reach those men and women who were in the jail had their circumstances not brought them there. When they began to pray and praise at midnight, it set men free that they had not even been able to reach! God can set the worst captive free! God can save the most wretched sinner, but sometimes it takes that sinner seeing the response of a child of God at midnight and a spiritual earthquake to bring their freedom!

I also want you to notice that ALL THE DOORS were opened! Before they got to Philippi, Paul and Silas had wanted to travel east to Asia but the Holy Ghost had forbidden them! The spiritual door to an entire country was shut in front of them. But when you have a midnight situation and God moves in and takes you from survival to revival, it will be a revival unlike you have ever seen! I promise you that the spiritual benefits of the shaking will far outweigh the severity of the pain of the night! Have you ever felt like that there were some doors in the Spirit closed to you? Have you ever felt like that there were areas of the Spirit that you just could not enter into? Have you ever been where you felt like reaching certain people was like a locked and barred prison door standing before you? Well if you pray for God to open those doors and suddenly find yourself in the fight of your lives just trying to simply survive, then you need to begin to rejoice and praise God, because God is about to work at midnight and open EVERY door! You are being set up to go from survival to revival!

When God wrote to the churches of Asia in the first part of Revelation, He commended the church of Philadelphia for their surviving and told them "I know that you have a little strength." He implored them to endure the tribulation and persecution that they were enduring and to keep the faith and then He promised them:

You see, when God shakes your life at midnight and opens the doors that were previously shut, you have reason to rejoice because no man will ever be able to shut them! Don't complain if you feel despondent and locked up spiritually when things get worse! Begin to rejoice! God is about to set before thee an open door!

The other thing that happened when Paul and Silas prayed at midnight was that the foundation of the prison was shaken. I know enough about buildings to know that if the foundation is shot, then the building is worthless and unable to be inhabited! God made sure that the prison would never hold prisoners again in that area! Another reason that God allows a child of God to get into impossible situations only to come in and deliver them, is so that the works of Satan and bondage can be permanently destroyed in an area! Once you have broken through the chains and prison cells in a midnight situation by praising God and giving Him thanks, you will never have to worry about being bound by that situation again! The prison loses it's ability to hold another person in that area! We need to change the way that we view trials! God is trying to give us freedom in that area of persecution! But He's just waiting on our response: are you going to get discouraged and give up or will you thank Him and trust Him and allow your fight for survival to become a jail break!?

The last thing that happened when they earthquake came at midnight, was that the jailer and all of his family were baptized and received the precious Holy Ghost! Salvation had come to the very one who had been the cause of the midnight situation! Let me tell you something: don't think that the world does not watch how you respond to persecution! Don't think for a moment that others do not take notice how you handle the worst trial of your life! They are watching and waiting to see if what you have is real, and sometimes they provoke you just to see how you'll react. That's alright. Don't get upset. Just trust God and praise your way through the midnight hour! God WILL respond by turning your survival into revival!

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I must close. I wish I had time to really impress upon you the importance of not losing hope in the worst time of your life! It will have to suffice to just close this sermon by briefly mentioning some other stories of scripture. In Acts chapter 20, Paul was preaching and a young Eutychus fell asleep in a third story window around midnight and fell to his death. But I can almost hear Paul check his watch and laugh as he walked down to the broken body of the young man. "Don't worry folks, it's midnight, God will fix this situation!" He simply prayed and God instantly raised the boy up! God loves to work in the midnight hour!

Seven chapters later, we find Paul on a ship in one of the worst storms that the sailors had ever seen. For two weeks they had thrown cargo overboard and been tossed around in the ocean waves simply trying to survive. The scriptures say that it was at midnight on the fourteenth day that they had gone without food or hope when they spotted land! The ship broke up at midnight and it seemed that the situation was as hopeless as it could be. On the Island, a place called Melita, they built a fire to try to stay warm and as Paul carried sticks to the fire, a very poisonous viper bit him! The natives shrank back in horror to watch Paul die, but God healed Paul! Amazed the natives of this island took Paul to their leader who was deathly sick and Paul prayed and God responded by a miraculous healing! As a result of the events of midnight, the doors to the Maltans were opened and Paul was able to tell them about Jesus Christ, and Calvary and the power of His Blood! A church was established in the primitive culture of Melita all because Paul gave God the glory in a midnight situation! God had taken their survival and turned it into revival!

Time fails us to detail how that the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson at midnight and saved him from the Philistines and how that Ruth went from being an idolatrous Moabite to becoming the great, great (many times) grandmother of Jesus Christ because of a situation that happened at midnight! We do not have time to go into the story of Joseph whom God took from the bottom of the well and the dungeon to the ruler of all of Egypt! Or tell you how that God took Daniel from the den of the lions to converting the ruler of all of Persia! Or of how the beautiful Jewish girl Esther became the queen of all of Persia and saved all of God's people through trusting God in a midnight type situation! The disciples were never so scared or depressed as the time after Calvary and the death of Jesus Christ, but little did they know that a resurrection, and the Day of Pentecost were soon to follow!

Get it in your mind and spirit and never forget it: God loves to work at midnight! And He loves to take survival and turn it into revival! But we must be willing to trust Him with the darkest times of our life! We must be willing to praise Him and lift up our voice! When you do so, God will NOT fail!