Never Give Up; Never Surrender! Luke 1:13,14

“But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth.”  (Luke 1:13,14) NIV

Random Thoughts:

How many years had Zechariah and Elizabeth poured out their hearts for a child? Now in their old age, years had stretched into decades and decades into a lifetime. But the angel tells Zechariah that his prayer had been heard. His “prayer”. Even now, when most would give up hope, it appears that Zechariah had chosen his great and shining moment, serving the Lord in the Holy of Holies to offer up a prayer. And his prayer had been for a child. 

Despite how things appear, despite how we may feel or what we are prone to think, God is listening. Sometimes he says “no”, sometimes he says “yes” and sometimes he says “not yet...”

Question: When has God said “yes” in answer to your prayers? What are some long-time prayers that feel “unheard”? In what ways does God encourage you to not give up? 

Journal Response:

Over the years I have heard so many “yes’s”: “yes” to a hamster’s spared life (silly as it sounds--it was important to a 4 year’s old’s first prayer for a miracle); “yes” for merciful relief and full recovery for my husband’s disk surgery; “yes” to dreams of mine to have a fireplace to curl up by in winter, a dog to make me laugh each day, and “yes” to relationships I’ve always wanted--children who make me crazy in their teens and a husband who who keeps me sane in my middle age.

Lot’s of “yes’s”. But there is silence, too. Decades of silence. I pray for parents I haven’t seen in 20 years and hold on to hope that God is working in their lives, caring for them and working on their hearts to communicate His love to them. I hear silence to my prayers for the long-time friends who still seem so far from wanting to know the One who made them. And silence for the wish that God would come back and mend all that is broken. I long especially for that.

But I still pray. I am waiting. Sometimes (actually, a LOT of times) it feels so ridiculous and futile praying those prayers that I find myself adding like some perfunctory closure, “...and please be with those you know I love. You know their names. I’m tired of saying them.” And then I feel a twinge of guilt for my miserly words and I close my eyes and concentrate on their faces as I name them one by one. 

I am encouraged, though. I hear things, now and then, about those I love, and know God is at work. How much more so, then, in ways I never hear about? And then there are the stories about those like Zecharias and Elizabeth, preserved in scripture, in part, to encourage us that nothing is impossible with God. 

“Never give up!  Never surrender!”  I love that quote. Captain Taggart must have read Luke too.