Your Prayer Has Been Heard

Two significant people in the Christmas story – and certainly in the pre-Christmas story – are the priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth.  You can read their story in Luke 1. 

They were both elderly and had prayed for a child all their lives.  Now both were past the age where they might expect to conceive and bear a child.  But one day while Zechariah is performing his duties in the temple an angel appears to him with this message:

The angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 

Luke 1:13

I won’t go into all the details of the story but Elizabeth and Zechariah had prayed all their lives to have a baby and nothing had happened. 

Now God is telling them that when they are old they will?  Hard to trust, but trust they did

God was true to His word and Elizabeth did conceive and give birth to a son whom they named John and he became the famous John the Baptist.

“Your prayer has been heard.”  Are there lovelier words than those? I often stop in amazement when I think that the God who created the earth, and even the vastness of space is paying attention to what you and I have to say on any given day, standing ready to act.  It’s pretty mind-bogglingly amazing.

Heavenly Father, Sometimes we pray and then feel pressured, assuming our prayers have not been heard because we haven’t yet seen the result we asked for,

Help us to remember that it’s our job to pray and trust. Just like with Elizabeth and Zechariah, God, we know You are in control and doing things in the right way and the right time.

In the Bible we read,

Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I shall call upon Him as long as I live.

Psalm 116:2

So we do choose to trust that You are the God who hears and answers prayer.  You are listening.  You are responding to every single prayer we send up to you.  Amen

We all have them – situations where we’re still praying and still trusting.  If we’ve settled back and are not praying still about some things anymore, why not offer those situations to God again today and let faith in God’s goodness be stirred up in us again.