Memorial Offerings

“Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.”

Acts 10:4

My grandfather had a prayer ritual that involved kneeling next to his bed at night, taking out his hearing aid, and praying for his family. He couldn’t hear himself without his hearing aid, but everyone else in the house could. Few things leave a more lasting impression than hearing someone intercede for you by name. These prayers are some of my earliest memories.

Grandpa Johnson died when I was six years old, but his prayers did not. Our prayers never die! When we pray, our prayers exit our four dimensions of space-time. Our prayers have no space or time limitations because the God who answers them exists outside of the four dimensions He created. You never know when His timeless answer will reenter the atmosphere of our lives, and that should fill us with holy anticipation. Never underestimate His ability to answer anytime, anyplace, anyhow. He has infinite answers to our finite prayers. He can answer them more than once. And He answers them forever.

Acts 10:4 declares that our prayers are memorial offerings. I cannot promise that God will answer your prayers how you want or when you want, but I can promise that God will answer. He always answers! At critical points in my life, the Spirit of God has whispered to my spirit: Mark, the prayers of your grandfather are being answered in your life right now. Those sacred moments rank as the most humbling and exhilarating moments of my life.

Like a parent who collects their children’s elementary artwork and displays it prominently on a refrigerator door, the heavenly Father loves our prayers. Each one is a keepsake. Each one functions like a memorial that jogs the memory of the Almighty.

If our prayers are that precious to God, shouldn’t they be more significant to us? Aren’t they worth collecting like snapshots in a family photo album? Shouldn’t they be treated with respect and dignity, like the monuments that grace the nation’s capital?

Every prayer we utter is like the marble stones used in the building of the Washington Monument or Lincoln Memorial. When we pray, we are building a monument to God, a memorial to Him. And those prayers are not perishable. They aren’t wood, hay, or straw. They are a foundation^a of gold, silver, and costly stones.

They will not be forgotten. They will not go unanswered.

Eternal Prayers

I recently met with a pastor-friend who is a circle maker. I’ve met very few people who pray with more intensity, more specificity, more consistency. Over lunch, Wayne told me a story about his grandmother, and it was evident that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Intercession is part of their spiritual DNA as a family.

Wayne’s grandmother raised twelve children while managing their household. After every meal she prepared, she would go to her bedroom to pray. Three times a day, the children could hear her interceding for them by name. When she was on her deathbed at the age of ninety-one, the entire family gathered at the family home. She invited them into the bedroom where she prayed three times daily. Then she prophetically declared to her twelve children, “I’m going to die, but the power of my prayers will come to pass in each of your lives.”

Her predominant prayer was that every member of her family would surrender their lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ. At the time, six children were following Christ, and six weren’t. That was fifteen years ago. The tally is now ten yes and two no — or maybe I should say in faith, not yet. Wayne shared with me how the tenth yes (the oldest child) came to Christ.

I did the math. Wayne’s grandmother passed away when Johnny was seventy-seven years old. From the day he was born until the day she died, she prayed for him three times a day. If you add it up, that is 84,315 memorial offerings. She didn’t get to see the answer to her prayers on this side of the space-time continuum, but she will be one of the first people to greet her son when he steps into eternity!

Did her prayers have anything to do with the neighbor’s middle-of-the-night dream? I cannot imagine they were unrelated. And that is the beauty of prayer. We never know when our prayers will be answered, and we never know when we are the answer to someone else’s prayer. You might be the answer to 84,315 prayers! When we live by faith, we will harvest prayer seeds that have been planted for decades, for centuries, for millennia. When we live by faith, those memorial offerings turn into crowns of glory. Prayer offerings turn into praise offerings.

Our prayers don’t die when we do. God answers them forever.