Prayer

"Now there was a certain man at Caesarea named Cornelius...a devout man, and one who feared God with all his household and gave many alms to the Jewish people, and prayed to God continually. About the ninth hour of the day he clearly saw in a vision an angel of God who had just come in to him, and said to him, "Cornelius!" And fixing his gaze upon him and being much alarmed he said, "What is it, Lord?" And he said to him, "Your prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial before God...."

Acts 10:1-4

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Our Sunday sermons have been about prayer lately and maybe that is why this verse in Acts stood out to me. (Acts is the current book I am reading aloud to the kids in the mornings.) How much more would we value prayer if we realized the magnitude of this verse?

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A memorial before God.

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After doing a study on the Greek word for memorial, I find it is something that God is mindful of, something He holds in His memory.

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Imagine your prayers being a memorial before God. Imagine your prayers being so important that the God of the Universe, the One who created it ALL, holds YOUR prayers in His memory.

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Reading the rest of the chapter you will see that apparently Cornelius' acts of charity and prayers so touched God that it led to Cornelius, his household, relatives and close friends hearing the gospel and having the Holy Spirit fall on them in the same magnitude as the day of Pentecost in the Upper Room! This was the beginning of the movement of God's Spirit being poured out on the Gentiles, something that amazed the circumcised, new believers of the day.

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Something our pastor has been saying is that prayers are like the track and God's will is the train. Cornelius provided that track for God to move on and some amazing power was unleashed.

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This is one of those concepts that after touching, I want it to be something I never forget or become complacent about again.