DECEMBER 17 "MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE...OR PRAYER"

 “Bottled up prayers” that’s a pretty cool idea and concept. People have been almost miraculously rescued by putting a message in a bottle, tossing it out into the sea and hoping, praying it floats safe and sound into the hands of a would be rescuer. A preserved cry for help is what a message in a bottle is. Is a vocal prayer also “a preserved cry for help?” The message in the bottle is a desperate hope that the cry for help will get into the right hands and often a prayer is also a desperate hope that their cry will somehow travel billions of light years through space and time and get into the hands of this incredible deity, we call God. The question is, are our prayers making it through billions of light years and galaxies to God? According to our text today, they are!!! They are the message in the bottle. “ And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. “And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand.” What do we have here? Bottled up prayers! All the prayers of the Saints that have come before God are bottled up, sounds like our prayers somehow made it through billions of light years and galaxies to our creator. The arch angel appears to Daniel and tells him his prayers were heard immediately when he began to pray but the Prince of Persia prevented him from arriving sooner to help One of the great mysteries of the world….”prayer”. We are mystified, stupefied about prayer, yet we all do it, because we are desperate, and sometimes, we think it works. We don’t know if it was coincidence or if it really works, but we keep doing it. Not everyone prays on a regular basis, but everyone one prays. Christians pray, non-Christians pray. The moral pray and the immoral pray. The righteous and the unrighteous, pray, everyone prays. If ever we were to be visited by little green men, one observation they would make and note down about humans,…..is they pray. They wouldn’t know who or what we pray too, but they would surely note, “Humans pray”. Do we pray because it makes us feel better or do we pray because we believe prayer makes it to the Thrown of God. A message in a bottle, that’s what our prayers are. Safely preserved and speedily brought before the Thrown of God. If there’s one quick lesson we will learn when we get to Heaven, the lesson will be, we should have prayed and we should have prayed more! “For the fervent prayers of a righteous man, availeth much!”

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