“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God.” — Psalm 62:5-7
Reading through Psalm 62 recently was convicting for me. In particular, verse five stood out to me. In my opinion, our world (myself included) doesn’t like to be silent — especially when something bothers us. Because of this, we text or call friends to complain about the lousy customer experience we just had at a store. We also hop on social media to tell the world our opinion about the news story of the day. Without a doubt, we sure love to make our views heard.
Have you ever prayed to God and seemingly nothing happened? How about praying 10 times? 100 times? Maybe you felt like you didn’t even deserve the gift you asked for? I recently read the first chapter of Luke and empathized with Zechariah. God spoke to me in a new way — to not lose heart when I pray. I had three takeaways I wanted to share with you.
Remember These Things:
1. Be faith-filled and pray continually.
Think about how long Zechariah and Elizabeth prayed for a child. Being advanced in years and well beyond the age of having children (Luke 1:18), they must have prayed thousands of times to have a child. They continued to have faith and pray even though their prayers seemed unanswered (Luke 1:6).
2. Gifts from God are good.
When God answered their prayer for a child, Zechariah didn’t believe it. I can certainly empathize with that feeling! There are times I feel like I don’t deserve a blessing from God. In fact, it leads me to doubt the prayer will be answered. God shook Zechariah a bit by removing his voice until his son was born. It was as if God needed to get his attention (in a drastic way) for him to understand the depth of the gift he was about to receive. Being mute drove Zechariah to an even closer relationship with God than he had before (Luke 1:67–79). Take heart, even when things seem like they are “bad”, God is working it for good.
3. God loves us and will answer us.
He hears us and answers according to His will for our lives (Luke 1:13). Certainly, our prayers aren’t always answered the way we want. That’s because our Father knows what’s best for us. I know there have been times I’ve specifically prayed for something and it didn’t happen the way I wanted. But God knew what was best.
When we faithfully pray, we are heard and loved by Him. He will answer us according to His will for our lives. With this in mind, don’t lose heart while you’re waiting. Sometimes, just like for Zechariah, God needs to grab our attention during the process. Take heart.
