God doesn’t need us to accomplish his will. He is perfectly capable of executing his divine decrees without us. So why pray? Have you ever really thought about that? I’ve heard others say that in light of who God is, with all his power and wisdom, prayer seems pretty clumsy and inefficient. After all, if God owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10) and is incomparably wise and inimitably strong (Isaiah 40:28-31), why does he delight to hear my prayers concerning my recently widowed aunt? Why would he graciously come alongside me to translate my groans over my mother’s failing health or my friend’s troubled marriage? God knows what is best. He could give us and those we love everything we need without us asking for it and he could accomplish all his will without our ever being involved.

Of course, prayer is more than making requests. It’s also about fellowship with God. In Psalm 62 we are exhorted, “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.” In this pouring out of our hearts we express our deepest longings and receive the comfort only God can give. In prayer we also learn how to confess our sins and delight in his forgiveness. Between the Fall and the Consummation, Spirit empowered and Spirit directed prayer enables us to enjoy communion with the Lord until we see him face to face.

But consider again the intercessory aspect of prayer. If we’re honest, we don’t have the wisdom or foresight to know how to pray. And many times we’re not privy to how God is responding to and answering our prayers. His ways are wonderful and inscrutable. But in Revelation we get a peek into how God sees prayer and responds to it. In Revelation 5 and 8 we read these descriptions of prayer:

And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

Revelation 5:8

And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.

Revelation 8:3-4

While the content of these prayers is not clear, they at least refer to the cry of the martyrs in Revelation 6:10 where they lament, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” If Revelation is written to give us a heavenly perspective on earthly events, what do we learn about our prayers from these passages?

Our prayers are heard and remembered.

Our prayers are precious.

Our prayers are part of God’s unfolding plan in redemptive history.

Some of us are good at making prayer lists and recording answers. I am not one of those people. Oftentimes, I forget to pray for people and am overwhelmed by all the needs around me. But God does not forget and he is never overwhelmed. He hears every prayer and records every lament. The image given to us includes a golden bowl, incense, an altar, and heavenly beings offering up our prayers before the throne of God. Psalm 56:8 gives us a complementary image that further emphasizes the truth that our prayers matter. They are not lost in the spiritual ether somewhere. God keeps track of them. “You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”

Our prayers are also likened to incense contained in golden bowls. In Exodus 30:1-10 God instructs Moses on building the golden altar of incense. This was placed in front of the veil, in front of the mercy seat. Aaron was to burn incense on it continually. The incense would rise before the mercy seat, which represented the throne of God in the tabernacle, symbolizing the prayers of the priests and the people rising to heaven. I am very particular about smells. I am not a fan of scented candles or perfumy deodorizing sprays. But for God, our prayers are likened to a sweet aroma rising before him. Our prayers are precious to him. Psalm 141:2 contains the same image: “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

If you read the context of Revelation 8 you learn that the prayers of the saints are used by God in fulfilling his plans on earth. And part of that plan is judgment. The prayers of the saints rise before God from the hand of the angel and immediately afterward the angel takes a censer, fills it with fire from the altar, and throws it upon the earth resulting in loud thunder, lightning and an earthquake. After this we’re told of the seven trumpet judgments. Connecting our prayers to God’s judgment is a little unsettling and raises some prickly questions, the same questions we have when we read the imprecatory sections of the Psalms. Is it right to pray this way? What about Jesus’ admonition to love our enemies? But God’s judgment is real and it is righteous. And there is real evil in the world and in the deep recesses of the human heart. What if the cries for justice in the Psalms that sometimes confuse and embarrass us are related in some way to the martyrs’ cries in Revelation 6 and the unfolding of God’s will in Revelation 8? What if there was a way to pray for God’s justice to be realized while at the same time maintaining a burden for the lost who are in danger of experiencing it?

I don’t have full answers to those questions, but what I am seeing in these passages is that God desires us to pray and even uses our prayers to fulfill his purposes. Stop and think about that for more than a minute! The God who needs nothing and is able to do all his holy will invites us to participate in his work. What a sobering privilege. What a challenging responsibility. It makes me think about two people from Luke’s gospel. Simeon and Anna. You can read about them in Luke 2:22-38. They show up at the beginning of Jesus’ life and we never hear about them again. But I believe their years of prayer and fasting, their faithful seeking for the first advent of Christ can teach us a lot about what our devotional posture should be as we wait for the second advent of Christ. Luke says Simeon was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. And after Anna saw the baby Jesus presented in the temple, Luke says she went out speaking to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Simeon and Anna spent years prayerfully devoted to the Lord, straining their eyes of faith to look for the Christ who is the consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem. God heard them, counted their prayers as incense before him, and I believe he used their prayers to hasten the coming of the Messiah. What if we followed their example, prayerfully devoting ourselves to the Lord, eagerly waiting for our Lord’s return? He hears us. Our prayers are precious to him. And who knows how he could use them to hasten the Day when the Lord Jesus will come again?