Acts 10:1-5 NASB
[1] … Now there was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort, a [2] 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. [3] About the ninth hour of the day he clearly saw in a vision an angel of God who had just come in and said to him, “Cornelius!” [4] And fixing his gaze on 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. [5] Now dispatch some men to Joppa and send for a man named Simon, who is also called Peter; …
10:31, and he said, ‘Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms w have been remembered before God.
We are not told how long Cornelius had been giving alms to the Jewish people, and had been praying continually to God, but we do know that every act of giving and every prayer was remembered before the Lord as a memorial. It is so important for us to understand that even the weakest prayers are forever remembered before the Lord, and in the fullness of time those prayers offered in agreement with God’s will, even in our weakest moments, will be answered. Sometimes the enemy tells us that because we don’t feel that our prayers are very powerful or that because we were not in a very good mood when we prayed, that our prayers don’t impact God, but that is a deception from the evil one. Our prayers being answered are not determined by how powerful we feel or what kind of mood we were in when we offered them; they are answered because we were praying in agreement with God’s will and our father in heaven is always in a good mood when we come to him in utter dependence. Our faith is not in how we feel but it is in the word of the Lord alone and the blood of Christ that provides the way for us to approach the throne of grace with boldness. Cornelius was a Jewish convert and yet he did not have the New Testament, nor had he experienced new birth spiritually; and yet his prayers stood before God as a memorial. In the fullness of time they were answered. We can trust God’s leadership in the timing of answered prayer. We can be totally confident that those of us who are born from above and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, if we are praying in agreement with God’s word and will, no matter how weak we may feel or how weak we felt like our prayers were, can know we are standing before God as a memorial and He is always conscious of them.