“Your prayers...have gone up as a memorial before God.” Acts 10:4 NET
God told Cornelius; “Your prayers…have gone up as a memorial before [Me].” Memorials are usually built for people who are dead and gone. What a great promise that is. Even after you have gone to heaven, the prayers you pray on behalf of your loved ones become a memorial before God, getting His attention and moving Him to action. So don't stop praying.
Many of us, like my mother, are weeping, pleading and assaulting heaven in prayer on behalf of our children, especially those wayward ones. Well, I was one of those. My mother prayed for me, along with my grandmother, for years. The older folks would say, “She so rude and rebellious. I don’t know what her mother is going to do with her” or She’s not going to amount to nothing.” I travelled through some dangerous terrain that held me stuck at times.
One day, I hit my lowest and it seemed I wouldn’t get out or up. So, I cried out to God from that low place. It was then He told the Angel, “Pass me that Vial” and He began to smell the scent of the incense. He said, “It’s time. Pour it out.” The Angel began to pour out the answer to my mother’s years of prayers for me. I was miraculously set free and my journey hasn’t been the same since. My mother never lived to witness the answer to her years of prayers that were bottled up…but they came up as a memorial before God that day. I'm sure some of you can join me in saying, "I'm glad somebody prayed for me."
You may or may not live to see your loved ones turn to Christ, but know this: God says, “Your prayers...have gone up as a memorial before [Me}.” We're talking about the posthumous power of prayer. When I pray, I am sure to bottle up prayers for my children and grandchildren, asking the Lord to “let my prayers rise up like incense before You” (Psalm 141:2). In otherwards, don’t forget them, like you didn’t forget my mother’s prayers.
John the Revelator caught a glimpse of it when he visited heaven and describe what he saw in these words: “Then another Angel, having a golden sensor, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the Saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the Angel's hand (Rev. 8:3-4 NKJV). So today, keep praying, and God will answer your prayers. It’s all in His appointed time.
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