He Remembers the Prayers You Forgot—and Answers Them Better Than You Asked

You can find the blog post for this episode HERE: He Remembers the Prayers You Forgot—and Answers Them Better Than You Asked

Chapters

• 2:25 Setting the Story in Luke 1
• 4:52 The Angel’s Promise and Zechariah’s Doubt
• 7:42 God’s Timing Versus Our Expectations
• 11:32 Preparing Hearts to Believe
• 15:52 Faithfulness Amid Cultural Shame
• 19:22 Reviving Long-Lost Dreams

Transcript

Audrey McCracken: 1:13

Hello and welcome back to Grace for My Home. I'm Audrey McCracken, and what a blessing it is to be back with you again this week. I hope and pray that you're doing well, you and your family. Today I wanted to read to you the story of Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth. And you may have you may know this story, but today I just want to share a few things with you, a few a few encouraging things from this story. And so let's start in Luke chapter one, starting in verse five. It says, In the days of Herod, King of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abigail, and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both advanced in years. Now it happened that while he was performing the priestly service before God in the appointed order of his division, according to the custom of the priestly office, he was chosen by Lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were in prayer outside at the hour of the incense offering. And an angel of the Lord appeared to him standing at the right of the altar of incense. Zacharias was troubled when he saw the angel, and fear gripped him. But the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God, and it is he who will go as a forerunner before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. So here is this priest and his wife, who are well advanced in years. He's drawn by lot to offer incense in the temple. And as he's doing this, an angel appears before him and tells him something quite spectacular. And I love the way that the angel says in verse 13, Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John. So the angel was saying, The Lord has heard your prayer, he's heard your cry, and he has answered your prayer for a son, for a child. And Zacharias is, he's trying to figure this out. And we know from the context of the passage that this was obviously a prayer that he had prayed, but it was not a prayer he had prayed that morning. Because it goes on to say that he was troubled by this, and he told the angel, How can this be? Because my wife is past those, the year of ch the years of childbearing. How can this be? So this is a prayer that he has obviously prayed many times. And here God is sending an angel from heaven to say, I have heard your prayer and I am answering your prayer. And Zacharias is not, he's not, he's confused. And I just think this is such a wonderful illustration of how God does things in his own way and in his own timing. You know, we have things that we greatly desire, and we pray for those things and we hope for those things. And sometimes those things do not happen the way we want them to happen or when we want them to happen. And we may even give up on those prayers and just decide it it wasn't God. You know, this wasn't the Lord's will for my life. And we move on. But God hasn't, and God hasn't forgotten those prayers. And we can tell from this passage that Zacharias did not pray that prayer that morning. That was not something he'd prayed that morning or that that week or even that month, or or even that year, or perhaps even that decade. That was a prayer that he had put in God's hands and forgotten about, or just tucked away and said, Well, you know, it it didn't happen. But God didn't forget. God still remembered, and in the right timing, God answers that prayer. And he doesn't just answer that prayer, but he answers that prayer in spectacular fashion because he says, Not only are you gonna have a son, but your son is gonna be the forerunner of the Messiah, of the promised one. And he is gonna prepare the hearts of the people to receive my son. He is going to bring people back to me. He's gonna prepare their hearts to believe. You know, last week I spoke about belief and how we must trust God. We must believe that God gives us an opportunity to believe. And that's that's so important in the kingdom. It's so important in the kingdom that we believe. It's important to God, and that's how we receive the things that God has prepared for us is we believe that He has He has given us these precious promises. And so by believing them, we become partakers in them and we walk in them. But usually before we believe, there's a lot of groundwork that has to happen in our lives and in our hearts. And often God uses the things in our lives, some are good and some are not so good, to prepare our hearts to receive his word. You know, there were years that I wasn't serving God, but he was still working in my heart. You know, I turned from God and I decided I'm just not sure about that. I'm not sure if I believe anymore, but he still believed in me. And I wasn't, you know, I there was there was a time when I gave up on God, but he did not give up on me. And even through those times, he had his hand on me and he was preparing my heart for what he ultimately called me to do. And he was preparing my heart to believe. And I love this story of Zacharias and Elizabeth because it shows that just because we have given up, just because we think, well, God didn't answer that prayer, doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't. Sometimes it's just not the way we thought it would be or we wanted it to be. And often it takes longer than we think it should or we want it to. But he answered that prayer in spectacular fashion, and he had a bigger plan. He had something much bigger than Zacharias had in mind. And so God sends his angel to say, I have heard your prayer and I am answering your prayer. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that beautiful how God's plans are better than our plans, his ways are higher than our ways, and he cares about the things that that touch our hearts. And I love also the way it says that Zacharias and Elizabeth, they were godly people. They obeyed to the best of their ability under the old covenant. They were faithful and they believed God. And just because God didn't answer their prayers didn't mean that they didn't continue to love and serve him and be faithful to him. You know, they didn't turn bitter and turn away. They continued to obey, even though God did not do the things for them that they asked for. They continued to be obedient, they continued to believe. They didn't just serve God because God gave them what they wanted or because God answered their prayers in the way that they wanted him to. They decided that they were going to be obedient and faithful even when things did not go the way they wanted them to. And in this culture, and in many cultures today, having children was very significant. It was looked upon even as a curse to not have children because that was seen as the blessing of the Lord to have children. And so to not have children, there was there could even have been speculation of well, why don't they have children? You know, what's wrong with them? And and it doesn't sp explicitly say that in the text, but in their day in that culture, that's not too far fetched, but they remained faithful. But in verses twenty four and twenty-five, it says, After these days Elizabeth, his wife, became pregnant, and she kept herself in seclusion for five months, saying, This is the way the Lord has dealt with me in the days when he looked with favor upon me to take away my disgrace among men. So it was considered a disgrace not to be able to bear children, and God, when you when she least expected it, took away that disgrace and that shame. And God told Zechariah in verse 14, he said, You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. And he even told him he will have the spirit of Elijah, he will be anointed to do what I have prepared for him to do. You know, and I love the way that it says that he will be great in the sight of the Lord. And that's what's important, not that we're great in the sight of man, but that we're great in the sight of the Lord. And even before they found out that this child was coming, Elizabeth and Zacharias was great in the sight of the Lord because they put their trust in him, because they were faithful to him, even when it seemed that perhaps God had not been faithful in answering their prayers. You know, God has great plans for us, he loves us, but he also has a master plan, and he weaves us into that master plan. God has a plan for you, and he cares about you. He cares about me, but we are a part of his master plan, and he wants to show us our place in that beautiful plan that he is weaving. You know, he does not waste anything. There are no wasted years with him. Perhaps there are things in your life that you always thought God wanted you to do, but as the years have gone by, it seems that those things have fallen to the wayside or they those dreams have died. But I want to challenge you this week to pray that the Lord would bring back to life those dreams, those desires that He placed in your heart, and that now, even when maybe it seems like you're too old, maybe it seems like that time is gone, that God would breathe fresh breath over all of those dreams that are from him, and that they would spring back into life, and that there would be a new hope and a new joy in your heart as he birthed something new in you this week. You know, there are many things that in the last few years God has done in my life that I I I wasn't expecting it. You know, I thought that these things are over, this time is over, but God said, No, I'm doing a new thing. And, you know, he delights in doing unexpected, he delights in bringing unexpected blessings at unexpected seasons and unexpected times. You know, he loves to do things in wonderful fashion, you know, where we would just take a small blessing. Sometimes he'll withhold the small blessing because he has something bigger in mind. And that's the kind of God we serve. He's awesome, he has a master plan, but sometimes it seems like he does things spontaneous, but usually it's just because we don't know the master plan, you know, and he cares about us. And he he cares about all of us. And he will use us to prepare the way for others. He will use us to plant seeds that will later grow and bring forth fruit, but he will also use the hard things, the things that we wish were different, to prepare our hearts, to get us ready for the things he has for our lives. You know, nothing is wasted. Nothing is wasted, even the hard times, even the hard days, even the unanswered prayers. They're not prayed in vain because God uses those things to prepare us for greater things. He loves you so much. He loves us so much, and he is a good father. And I want you to put your trust in him this week. And before I let you go, I want to tell you about something special that's coming up. I'm going to host another covered in prayer event, but this time I'm going to open it up to all women, not just moms, because during the summer when we held our first, there were a lot of women who reached out to me and said, I'm not a mom, but I'd like something like this. And so this time I want to open it up to all women. No matter your age, no matter, you know, if you have kids or not, we would love to pray with you. And I would love to meet you. So we're going to have our next covered in prayer event for all women on Saturday, November 15th at a Wake and Coffee Bar from 5 to 7 p.m. And that's in Mollin, South Carolina. It's going to be a sweet time of fellowship, a time to slow down, to connect, to pray together. If you came to the last one, then you know how powerful it was. And if you missed it, I'd love for you to come to this one. Bring a friend, come and join us, and I think it will bless your heart. I think you will be encouraged. I don't have the link and and and the registration set up yet, but I will by next week this time. But I just want to go ahead and put that in your ear so you could hold the date if it's something you'd like to participate in. And I'll have more information on that next week. But I hope and pray that you have a great week. I hope that this word has been encouraging to you. And I just want to pray for you before we go. Father, I thank you for my friends. I thank you that you hold the whole world in your hand. God, we're just such a small part of the plan that you have. But I thank you that we are a part and that we're important to you. And God, you made us on purpose for purpose. And I pray for these sweet ones that are listening today. Lord, I pray for your hand on them. I pray that you would revive hope in their heart, that, Lord, you would blow your fresh wind in their cells, Lord God, that things that they thought were dead, that prayers that they thought were just not answered, God, that you would revive hope in those things. God, that you would show us that nothing is lost, that we're not too old to do what you've asked us to do, that you have a good plan for us because you are good. And we just thank you, Lord. We just thank you. And I pray, Lord God, this week that you would cover us, you'd cover our homes, you'd cover our families, our children. And Lord, we we love you and we appreciate you, Lord. And we just thank you for all you have done and all you're gonna do in Jesus' name. Amen. I hope you'll meet me back here next week for another episode of Grace for My Home. God bless.