Reveling in The Revelation Revelation 5 and 8 Our Prayers in Heaven
What Happens to Our Prayers?
What happens to your prayers after you pray? Are they
treated like that box of old tax records in my office
headed for the shredder to become heavenly confetti?
Do they evaporate into a mist, never to be heard again?
Or does God consider our prayers so crucial that He
stores them to be ultimately answered as “Thy Kingdom
come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven?”
Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-5 tell us angels are holding
golden bowls of incense in the throne room of Heaven,
and the incense rises as a pleasing aroma to God. This
is one of the few times in Revelation where we are
specifically told what a symbol or image means. The
incense is the prayers of the saints offered up to God.
Prayers are Acts of Worship
In the Old Testament, incense was burned continually
to rise before the Lord in the Tabernacle and Temple.
Prayer is often seen as incense in the Bible. In Psalm
141:2, King David prayed, “May my prayer be set before
you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like
the evening sacrifice.”
In Revelation, our prayers are offered to God like
incense, which is a pleasing aroma to God. That means
our prayers are acts of worship and have eternal
significance beyond what we might imagine.
The fact that these are prayers of the saints indicates
that God hears and remembers the prayers of His
people. You need not be a “super Christian” to be a
saint. Saints are all believers in Jesus, living or dead,
saved by grace through faith.
Our Prayers Have Eternal Consequences
We pray all kinds of prayers. Some are out of
desperation, and our need for help. Many others are for
intercession on behalf of another. Often, we pray in
confession or for guidance. Revelation does not tell us
what kind of prayers are stored in the bowls and lifted to
God. But we can be sure God hears our prayers,
treasures them, and ultimately acts on them.
In his book How to Pray, Pete Greig comments on these
prayers: “I find it awesome to imagine that all the true
prayers I ever prayed – all the frustrations, the tears, the
dashed hopes, and the yearnings - are not wasted, but
cherished, remembered by God, stored up in one of
those golden bowls, awaiting their fulfillment.”
So, if our prayers have eternal significance, doesn’t it
make sense for us to take praying more seriously? To
learn to pray more often and more deeply? Greig
suggests the best way to learn to pray is to pray, and he
offers a quick guide to effective praying -P.R.A.Y.
Pause—We cannot pray while we multitask. Psalm
46:10 says, “Be still and know I am God.” Jesus often
went off by himself to pray. If he needed alone time with
his Father, imagine how much we need to set aside
quiet time to pray, talk to God, and listen to Him as He
responds through the Holy Spirit.
Rejoice – Anxiety is a wet blanket that can smother
prayer. In Philippians 4:4, Paul tells us the first step to
defeating worry is to “Rejoice. Again, I say rejoice.” The
simple act of listing our blessings and rejoicing over
them allows God to put an exclamation mark where our
anxiety often puts a question mark.
Ask – God promises to answer our prayers in Matthew
7:7, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will
find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Asking,
seeking, and knocking are continual actions, not one-
time events. God invites us to stay at it as we develop a
lifestyle of dependence.
Yield – Yielding to anything except self in our “in itto win
it” world is counterintuitive. Yet, Romans 12:1 tells us,
“...offer yourselves as living sacrifices, holy and
pleasing to God.” Pray is placing ourselves in the proper
alignment with our Creator and allowing Him to be the
Lord of our lives instead of ourselves.
Prayer is an ongoing journey of being with God each day.
But that is just the opening act to an eternal adventure,
where what we pray here on Earth has eternal
consequences. So, let’s take it seriously.
Maranatha,
Andy
