Reversed Thunder and What It Means

I know I keep quoting this book...but it's just that good and today, I discovered from where the title comes and I just have to share it!

Each chapter starting with the second is called "The Last Word on ____________ (something)" because after all, Revelation is the "last word" as far as Spirit-inspired Scripture goes. The chapter I began this morning is entitled, "The Last Word on Prayer".

Prayer is an area where I have struggled my whole life. I've shared this on previous posts. But what I've realized over the last few years is that the times of crisis we've experienced more recently opened me up to a whole new world in regard to my prayer life with God. I've relished every moment! And I miss it when that closeness, that special openness to His Spirit isn't there. I'm currently experiencing a time like that...I've shared that as well.

And while I'm processing and praying and asking for discernment why I don't feel as close to Him right now as I'd like, He brought this amazing chapter to me today. I'm only on the second page of it, so there may be more...but this is what blessed me this morning:

     "The Apocalypse is a fusion of vision and prayer. When the seventh seal is opened, there is silence in heaven for about half an hour. A climax has been reached. The silence prepares the imagination to receive an incredible truth. While conflicts raged between good and evil, prayers went up from devout bands of first century Christians all over the Roman empire. Massive engines of persecution and scorn were ranged against them. They had neither weapons nor votes. They had little money and no prestige. Why didn't they have mental breakdowns? Why didn't they cut and run? They prayed.
     It was in order to hear those prayers that there was silence in heaven. Out of silence, action developed:  an angel came before the altar of God with a censer. He mixed the prayer of the Christians with incense (which cleansed them from impurities) and combined them with fire (God's spirit) from the altar. Then he put it all in the censer and threw it over heaven's ramparts. The censer plummeting through the air, landed on earth. On impact there were "peals of thunder, voices, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake." (Rev. 8:5). The prayers which ascended, unremarked by the journalists of the day, returned with immense force--in George Herbert's phrase, as "reversed thunder." Prayer reenters history with incalculable effects. Our earth is shaken daily by it." (emphasis mine)


Like me, have you ever doubted that your prayers mattered? Make a difference? Or are even heard?

Ohhh! BELIEVE loved One! They are heard, they do make a difference and they definitely matter. In fact, they 'reenter history with incalculable effects' and the "earth is shaken daily by it"!

Amen!!!