Psalm 84:2 My soul longeth yea even fainteth for the courts of the Lord, my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
Psalm 84 This is a prayer for closeness to God. The person is acknowledging that those who are close to God are blessed and joyful and strong. In verse 2 the musician states that his soul is faint with longing for God.
Prayer is a way to grow closer to God and understand His plans for your life, you should not only pray to have closeness to God for yourself, you should also prayer for others to grow closer to God so that they can have the joy of knowing Him.
Read Luke 1:5-25 This is the story of Zacharias the priest and Elizabeth his wife and the promise of their coming child who is to be John the Baptist. God’s angel comes and tells Zacharias that his prayers have been heard. This is a good lesson on waiting for answered prayer that even when we have prayed for years and don’t see the answer that God has heard us and will answer our prayers.
Luke 1:5-25 5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 7 But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 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. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
21 Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. 22 When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.
23 When his time of service was completed, he returned home. 24 After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. 25 “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.” (NIV)
If you want to know more about the priestly divisions read 1 Chronicles 23 and 24. The main thing to note about the priestly relationship of Zacharias is that the priestly division of Abijah was directly descended from Aaron, Mose’s brother, through his son Ithamar. So was Elizabeth, Zacharias’ wife. It is stated in Luke that both Zacharias and Elizabeth were righteous and blameless in the sight of the Lord; that they kept God’s commands and decrees. Now the fact that they kept his decrees does not mean that they never sinned, it is just that they were in their daily life and in their hearts devoted to God and doing everything that was required of them by law to the best of their abilities. Blameless and righteous does not mean perfect and sinless. God considered them righteous due to their faith, the same way that he considered Abraham righteous. It was that they had a heart for God.
Now in the worldly view of things these people had no blessing of children and they were old. This would have made the people of their world look down on them with pity, as carrying on the family name was of the utmost importance. It was so important that when a man was married and died childless, his brother (if he had one) was commanded to marry the widow and raise up a child as if it were his brother’s child. Apparently, Zacharias and Elizabeth were used to the idea that they were not going to have any children…after all they were old..they were probably resigned to the fact. Most people would be when that much time had passed, wouldn’t they?!!
Yet, they continued to follow God in their daily lives. Their faithfulness was not based on what God could do for them. It was on the idea that, well, “God was God, and if he wanted them to have children he would make it happen, and if not then God was God; it wasn’t meant to be”
Their attitude of faith stood them in good stead and God recognized it and sent an angel to tell Zacharias that he and Elizabeth would be having a son. Now, here is a hiccup for you…Zacharias didn’t actually believe the angel…he could not get past the idea that he and Elizabeth were too old to biologically have a child. His doubt cost him. He was struck dumb until the child was born and it was time for the naming of the baby. Now, it doesn’t seem that he was deafened, as it says that he made signs to them, but that he could not speak. The rest of the story is that he was not allowed to speak until the time came to name the baby and he said, “His name is John.”
John the Baptist was the cousin of Jesus the Christ…there is a lot more to this story. As the story says John was filled with the Holy Spirit even before he was born, and that Holy Spirit recognized Jesus in the womb when Mary came to visit his Mother, Elizabeth right after she was told that she would bear a child….John the Baptist “leaped in the womb.” In other words, he was excited to see and be near Jesus even though neither of them had been born yet. I find this to be a pretty awesome thing! Holiness recognizing Holiness.
That is what we are to be to God, someone who can recognize him whenever we are around him or his people. Someone who gets excited by being around and involved with God; by being in conversation and worship with him. Just like John the Baptist in the womb recognizing Christ…we should endeavor to draw so close to God that we can recognize him by instinct before we even can work it out in our conscious thought processes. We can know what God is asking of us and know that it is he who is speaking to us.
Charlene's Road 