Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“‘On the first day of the seventh month hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work. It is a day for you to sound the trumpets. As an aroma pleasing to the Lord, offer a burnt offering of one young bull, one ram and seven male lambs a year old, all without defect. With the bull offer a grain offering of three-tenths of an ephah of the finest flour mixed with olive oil; with the ram, two-tenths; and with each of the seven lambs, one-tenth. Include one male goat as a sin offering to make atonement for you. These are in addition to the monthly and daily burnt offerings with their grain offerings and drink offerings as specified. They are food offerings presented to the Lord, a pleasing aroma.

• Numbers 29:1-6

And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.

• Revelation 5:8

Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.

• Revelation 8:3-5

“God collects our prayers. In Revelation, we are offered a glimpse at the receiving end of our prayers: ‘The twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.’ Do you realize what that means? It means every prayer you’ve ever whispered, from the simplest throwaway request to the most heartfelt cry, God has collected it like a grandmother who scrapbooks a toddlers finger paints and scribbles. God has treasured up every prayer we’ve ever uttered, even the ones we’ve forgotten, and he’s still weaving their fulfillment, bending history in the direction of a great yes to you and me.
“John’s Revelation doesn’t end with God as a scrapbooking grandmother though; it ends with God as a powerful Redeemer. Three chapters later, those heavenly golden prayer bowls reappeared [Rev. 8:3-5] …
“At the proper time, God is tipping the bowl, pouring out our requests on the earth. He has collected every prayer we’ve ever prayed, and redemption comes when he rains down those prayers on the earth once and for all. The renewal of the world, heaven and earth restored as one, begins with God pouring out all the prayers of his children like a purifying fire with one great, resounding yes. Every prayer in the end is an answered prayer. Some are still awaiting that yes, but it’s coming. That’s the kind of ‘judge’ we’re dealing with.”

• Tyler Staton, Praying like Monks, Living like Fools

Rev. Staton makes a great point here.  We can forget the prayers we said twenty years ago, but God never forgets.

Maybe some of the silly prayers that I have asked over the years need to be burned so that they are a pleasing aroma to God, and nothing more than that.

I have written about silly prayers that my wife would pray, and oddly, I have found people writing about asking God for a parking place close to the building because of bad weather or they are just tired and do not wish to have such a long walk.  Those were common among my wife’s prayers.  But then, there were so many of those times when there were no close parking places.  I had to drop her off at the front door.  I had to park in the overflow lot.  And I had to walk a quarter mile to the store’s entrance, then repeating the walk to fetch the car and pick her up at the entrance again.  Then, again, when the bowl is poured out, I doubt if the result will be thousands of open parking places right outside the front door.  On the day that I edited this, I drove through Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio in the wee early hours before sunrise, and I marveled at how huge parking lots look when there is no one parked in them.

But could it mean that God will answer that prayer to the affirmative in Heaven, so that when I visit my wife (although no marriage in Heaven), there are twenty parking places and all twenty of them are right outside her front door?  The engineers out there are thinking that to be impossible, but with God, in Heaven, it probably is possible.

And what about those prayers I had when I was 6 or 7 years old?  I wanted another litter of beagles to play with.  By my teenaged years, those were rare as so many of the original dogs had been killed on the highway.  Will I show up at my mansion in Heaven and find it crawling with beagle puppies?  But then again, maybe it will be a better breed.  I think I will call them “believe-les.”  They might look a lot like a beagle, but they will not eat the rabbits.  They’ll just chase them for a few hours and then do a catch and release, like my dog, Big Red, used to do.  The rabbit was shaken, but unharmed.  It would hop into the woods.  With a five-minutes head start…  Six or four minutes, in that Big Red could not tell time.  But when he sensed the chase was back on, he’d take off after the rabbit again.  You know, good exercise for the dog and the rabbit.  But believe-les would not chase semi-trucks on the highway and get run over.  I would never be handed another shovel by my Dad and told to bury it deep.  Believe-les will be all the good, and none of the bad.

But if you had St. Bernards, German Shepherds, or Walker Coonhounds, your mansion might have a breed similar to them.  If you liked neurotic toy poodles, I’m sorry, there is no hope for you.  Just kidding, sort of.  If you like neurotic toy poodles in this life, I doubt if they will be neurotic in the next.  As I was writing this, I was babysitting a neurotic medium sized mutt that should be old enough to know better – way too much energy and way to big to be slowed down.

But all our sacrifices, offerings, and prayers that were lifted toward God in faith will be remembered by God.  They are a pleasing aroma.  And right before God hits the master switch to do a total reset on this world, He will revisit those prayers, and we will receive something that in our tiny minds with our limited imagination, what happens will be beyond anything we could ever think to pray about.

Lord, guide me. Make my prayers worthy of the treasures that You have in store for each of us.  Whatever is possible within Your will on this earth at this time, let it be so for Your glory, but for those things that await us, give us the greatest surprise beyond what we could ever imagine.  In Your name I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.