Acts 4:27-31: in context

Peter and John, released after being threatened by the authorities for preaching Jesus, return to the believers, and the whole company lifts up its voice in prayer. They acknowledge God's sovereignty, that Herod and Pilate and the nations, in gathering against Jesus, only did what God's hand had foreordained. And then they pray, but not for what we might expect. They do not ask God to remove the threats or protect their safety; they pray: Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal. And the place is shaken, and they are filled with the Holy Spirit and speak the word with boldness.

The striking thing is what the threatened believers pray for. They have just been arrested, warned, and threatened by the authorities; the natural prayer would be for safety, for the danger to pass, for protection from those who could harm them. But that is not what they ask. Facing the threats, they pray for boldness, that they might go on speaking the word all the more courageously. They do not ask God to remove the danger; they ask him to make them brave in it. This is the prayer of a courageous faith. Its concern is not first for its own safety but for faithfulness, not for escape from the threat but for the strength to keep proclaiming Christ despite it. And notice how God answers: not by removing the threats, which remained, but by filling them with the Spirit and the very boldness they asked for. There is a challenge in this to the way we so often pray under pressure. Our instinct, when threatened or opposed, is to pray for the trouble to go away, for our comfort and safety to be restored. These believers show another way: to pray, in the face of opposition, not for the danger to be removed but for the courage to be faithful within it. God did not always remove his people's dangers, but he gave them boldness to stand in them. To pray for boldness rather than only for safety is to pray as the early church prayed, and it is a prayer God delights to answer.

When I am threatened or opposed, do I pray only for the danger to pass and my safety to be restored, or can I pray as these believers did, not for the trouble to be removed but for the boldness to keep being faithful within it?