When Not Yet Becomes Now
For many of us, there may be a particular prayer or hardship that you’ve made peace with. Perhaps you’ve prayed for years about it and finally came to a place of peace where you quit fighting the circumstances and praise God from within them.
In my life I’ve had several “longstanding” prayers that God either answered or gave me peace in the lack of understanding. If you live long enough with the Lord, there are things that don’t change quickly, and sometimes never change but YOU change within the time you’ve prayed.
The story we’re looking at today is rich in patience and miracles. We are going to look at the life of Elizabeth and Zacharius the parents of John the Baptist.
We first see them in Luke chapter one, and it’s the only time we get a glimpse of these remarkable people who teach us about “longstanding faith.”
Read Luke 1 5-10:
This was a difficult time in Jewish history. King Herod was brilliant but deeply insecure. He built a lot of impressive buildings and even the temple in the city but became increasingly paranoid as time went on. It explains why he had all the little boys killed in Bethlehem after hearing about Jesus’s birth.
About 400 years had gone by since the last old testament prophet Malachi. Many were wondering if God would fulfill His promises…
He seemed silent and unresponsive.
We know a few things about this couple that help us to understand their lives and their hearts
They were righteous in the sight of God (God was pleased with them)
They were walking blamelessly in all the way of God
They had no child, which was a source of great heartache and disappointment. Yet we see that they stayed faithful and blameless.
How do WE handle a longstanding prayer or heartache that God seems to ignore or deny?
Do we quite believing and think that prayer doesn’t work?
Do we serve out of duty rather than faith?
Give up hope and just go through the motions?
Their story is powerful because the faithfulness of Zechariah and Elizabeth shows that ordinary obedience during long seasons of waiting can become the setting for extraordinary acts of God! GOD WAS ABOUT TO END HIS SILENCE AND CHANGE THE WORLD WITH HIS REDEEMER…Jesus.
Once or twice a year a priest from many divisions would be chosen to go into the temple to burn the incense while everyone else stayed outside to pray.
Read verses 11-16:
Zacarius is minding his business when the angel Gabriel appears at the right side of the altar. Verse 12 says Zach was terrifies and gripped by fear.
The angel speaks so kindly and assuredly! First, he acknowledges that their petitions have been heard.
A petition is different from a prayer. This indicates it was an ongoing, serious request. A petition is something agreed upon and presented to authorities. This is how they’d been praying for years.
Then Gabriel encourages him and says they would have joy and gladness—a replacement for the emptiness of barren years and unanswered prayers.
It was also the promise of a baby filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb. This is one of the first times we see this description of an actual child before Jesus!
After so many years of petitioning type prayers, you’d think Zacharius would be jumping for joy…but instead, he’s got questions and doubt!
Zacharius stated the physically obvious, while Gabriel was explaining the spiritually miraculous!
I’m too old and unable! Sometimes we’ve let prayers die of an expiration date God never created.
Gabriel has an “angel moment” and reminds him that he stands in the presence of God. He’s on assignment to come and speak this good news.
Why do supernatural moments sometimes turn to fear moments? It’s as if we don’t think God can perform the miracle after the timeframe we laid out for him.
Why would God make Zach unable to speak until after the birth? Gabriel told him it’s because he did not believe it!
How many things is God trying to do but you’re so busy either moving past it or staying stuck in unbelief?
Sometimes it’s a matter of SURRENDER and sometimes it’s a matter of “right now belief.”
After that many years praying and seeing nothing, he’d gotten cold believing His loss of his voice had two benefits:
1. It helped remind him that God was in control and still did miracles
2. It helped Elizabeth not to have to flush out any negative or fearful voices.
3. What is OUR voice in the midst of a miracle? Do we drown out the miracle with negative chatter and disbelief?
As we look at the lives of Elizabeth and Zechariah, we are reminded that God does some of His deepest work in the waiting.
Their story teaches us that long seasons of prayer are never wasted, even when heaven seems silent. They stayed faithful before the miracle, kept serving when nothing seemed to change, and trusted God through years of unanswered petition. And when the answer finally came, it was greater than they could have imagined.
We need to keep praying, keep obeying, and keep believing that God is still at work even in the long, quiet places shaping our faith, deepening our surrender, and preparing His perfect answer in His perfect time.
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