A Prayer Once Prayed is Never Forgotten
Like many Christians around the globe, I have a daily habit of prayer. I get on my knees, I close my eyes, and I petition the Lord for a variety of things. And like many of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, from time to time I struggle to believe that my prayers are being heard, and if they are being heard, then that they are being answered.
I have prayers of mine that I’ve prayed for years on and not seen the answer to. Prayers that by this time are old enough to have graduated high school and have entered their first year of college, so to speak. And I know that I am not alone in bringing continual petitions before the Lord, I’m sure that many of you could rattle off at least a handful of prayer requests that you have not seen the answer to yet, either.
Logically speaking, there’s only a few different answers from the Lord that can exist: the “yes” and its corollary, the “not in the way that you think”, the “no”, the “not yet” .
the “Yes”
the “Yes, but not in the way that you think”
the blessed “No”
the “Not Yet”
I have to laugh a bit here because even now as I’m writing this, distinct “no” prayers are coming to mind that I really rallied against in the moment, and post-mortem all I can do is praise God for that “no”. I was at the Altars Conference in January and one of the speakers did a whole talk on the “blessed no” and how sometimes the most gracious thing God can do for us in that moment is to deny us the things we ask him for.
And this is where I also praise God that when I pray, “let your will be done, let your Kingdom come,” the Lord is gracious as to not answer all of my prayers. I take full advantage of the fact that he’s the only one I can fully and freely express all my desires to, and also the one who I can trust always has my best interests at heart. I can know that as long as I am faithfully praying in the way Jesus taught all of us, that he will let his good will be done in my life, whatever the outcome may be.
Zechariah: Luke 1:6-7
As we’re going through the Advent season, I’m sure quite a few of us have been reading through the Gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus, and I hope the Lord is bringing fresh revelation to your eyes as he’s bringing it to mine.
We begin the Gospel of Luke with the introduction of an elderly couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth. Both Zechariah and Elizabeth had their roots in the line of the Levitical priesthood, and Luke makes a note to point out to us readers that both of them walked blamelessly in all of the commandments and statutes of the Lord. This is not to say that they weren’t perfectly sinless, but they walked as faithfully and as best they could. (1) Luke points out the blamelessness of Zachariah and Elizabeth so that we as readers can understand that their childlessness was not a result of their own sin and moral failure, but that it was a decision made by the Lord, and that their barrenness would end up playing a role in the larger story that God had in mind all along. (2)
We can imagine how as newlyweds, they might have eagerly talked about how their children might look, their sons would have Zechariah’s hair, their daughters would inherit Elizabeth’s eyes. But then after the first few years, the prayers they sent to the Lord became more and more serious, as they began to see that nothing was happening. And as the years went on, the hope of children slowly dimmed as they realized they wouldn’t get that joy for themselves.
I can imagine that as faithful servants of the Lord, Zechariah and Elizabeth didn’t just sit back and give up on life, but that they devoted themselves and their attentions to the temple service and to helping those around them.
One thing I love about this Gospel story is how human Zechariah is throughout it. The angel Gabriel appears and Zechariah is immediately overwhelmed with fear, but when Gabriel tells him the good news of a son, the news is so incredulous to him that he seems to get over that fear pretty quickly, and his first reaction is to doubt!
Compare that with Mary’s reaction when she’s told the news of her own son, she questions as well, but in verse 38 she humbles herself. Zechariah’s own doubt is so intense that Gabriel strikes him with deafness and muteness until the birth of his son, “because you did not believe my words” (v. 20).
When Zechariah points out his and Elizabeth’s old age, the same term used here in the Greek was used of Sarah in the Old Testament too, which has led some to theorize that Elizabeth may have been in her late 80s by this point. (3) Whatever the case may be, Elizabeth was definitely beyond childbearing age, but unlike his ancestor Abraham, Zechariah had a hard time believing that God could take a dead womb and bring it back to life.
But there’s something in this scene that caught my eye as I was reading. Gabriel appears to Zechariah and says, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard” (Luke 1:13). Why is Zechariah’s immediate reaction to doubt?
Because this prayer for a son had been prayed long ago, and had been laid to rest long ago. As the years went on and on, Zechariah’s prayers for a son likely diminished, until one day, he no longer remembered to pray for it.
But God remembered.
And this is where the beautiful twist to this beautiful Gospel story occurs. Because Zechariah means “Yahweh remembers”. In Zechariah’s own name, God planted the answer to the promise that he would one day see. (4)
And so when Gabriel shows up and tells Zechariah, “your prayer has been heard,” Gabriel reminds Zechariah of a special prayer he prayed for long ago, a prayer that might have been forgotten by him, but the Lord remembered.
When Zechariah and Elizabeth prayed that prayer all those years, they had no way of knowing that God’s answer in that moment was, “not yet” and “not in the way that you think”. They had no way of knowing that God in his infinite wisdom and grace, would let this faithful man and woman take part in the greater, glorious Gospel story, in a way that neither of them could have ever foreseen or imagined.
There were two times a day that the priests went into the temple to clean the altar and to burn the incense: morning and night. When Zechariah entered that temple to do his duties and burn the incense, we are not told what time of the day he went in. But it is possible that Zechariah was in the temple ministering in the evening, and that would mean the prayer that he was praying in that moment while he was cleaning the altar and burning the incense was the prayer of salvation for Israel at the time of evening sacrifice. (5)
On his lips was the prayer for a Messiah to come and to save them all. Little could he know, that when the angel of the Lord shows up, God would answer Zechariah’s words two-fold: he would have a son, and that son would help usher in the arrival of the Messiah. How cool is that?!
A Final Thought
And so I want to leave you with this, a prayer once prayed is never forgotten. God has heard you, and he will answer you. With our own minds we cannot understand what we are praying for, and how our Father will choose to answer that prayer, but just as Zechariah’s “not yet” was answered in “not the way that you think”, so too do I believe that God will do abundantly more than we can ask of or thing to imagine when we entrust our prayers to him (Eph. 3:20).
But I have more good news for you.
We have something even more than Zechariah or Elizabeth had. We have two intercessors by our side, who day and night petition the Father on our behalf, and who never grow weary of doing so. It is Jesus Christ who lives to intercede for us, and it is the Spirit who also intercedes for us according to the will of God. (Hebrews 7:25, Romans 8:26-27)
Zechariah and Elizabeth were right on the cusp of that momentous moment in history, their own son played a role in preparing the way for that new covenant. But they didn’t have what we have. We have a comfort that Zechariah never knew, the comfort of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, interceding for us, and speaking to us. And today he’s saying, “God remembers.”
As 2023 comes to a close and we look back on all that God has done this year, join me in reflecting on the prayers that we’ve prayed this year. I don’t know if you keep track of your prayer requests, but ask the Lord to show you what he’s done this past year, and what he’s still working on.
What prayers did the Lord answer “Yes” to this year?
What prayers did God say, “Yes, but not in the way that you think”?
What prayers did God give you a clear and blessed, “No” on?
What prayers are you standing faithfully on, as the “Not Yet”?
Footnotes
(1) Robert H. Stein, Luke, vol. 24, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 74.
(2) Stein, 74.
(3) Stein, 74.
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zechariah_(given_name)
(5) Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1978), 56.
