Could the hardened layers of disbelief be hindering your prayers? This gripping discussion explores how Zacharias overcame his skepticism, while Mary embraced her calling with unwavering confidence. Through their stories, you’ll discover how holding on to God’s word can help clear the path for your answered prayers. As we explore their journeys, you’ll learn the necessity of speaking and believing in the word, ensuring you don’t make your angel mad when God’s answer is on the way.
Greetings friends and new listeners and welcome to the Sound of Faith. I’m Sharon Knotts thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today’s message, Don’t Make Your Angel Mad When God Answers Your Prayers. I know it’s an odd title, but this Word of the Lord can help you to know if you’re truly believing that your prayers will be answered or if past disappointments have calloused your heart with unbelief. And don’t make your angel mad when God answers your prayers. Wow. Don’t make your angel mad when God answers your prayer. He said, look, I’m not here on some little mission. I’m here on one of the greatest missions of the entire history of mankind. And what I came to bring you is a tidings of great joy. You should be jumping with joy. Amen. And I’m going to tell you, they are going to come to pass in spite of you. They’re coming to pass. Amen. You want to know how this is going to happen. You want to know you want to sign. Well, you just got your sign. Amen. You just got your sign. So let’s see what happened after that. Verse 22, And it came to pass that as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house. So apparently, this happened early in the week. And he had to finish his week out. Amen? And after those days, his wife Elizabeth conceived and hid herself five months, saying, Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach among men. What a powerful thing. So he went home after his week of service was up. And when he got home, he had to get out some of those big yellow legal pads and carry them around with him everywhere. And he had to keep writing everything down and writing everything down. Elizabeth is saying, now, honey, I want you to tell me exactly what he looked like. I want to know every detail. Don’t leave nothing out now. Zacharias, I want to know all about it. I want to know exactly what he said. Tell me what he said. And there he is sitting down there, writing it all down over and over and over again. Amen? And now the news is spreading and their relatives are coming. They’re traveling and they’re getting there and they say, what happened? Why can’t you speak, Zacharias? What happened to you? Did you have a stroke? No. No. Shaking his head no. Well, what happened? Are you ill? Are you sick? What did the doctor say? No. Get the legal yellow pad out and write it down again. And write it down again. Do you see what’s happening? Every time he writes down the angel’s words, the word of God is like a scalpel that cuts away another layer of his unbelief and another layer of his doubt. That’s what God’s word will do for you if you get it out and you speak it and you write it down. He couldn’t speak anything negative. He couldn’t speak his doubt and unbelief. He just kept writing down what happened, what the angel said. He didn’t have Microsoft. He didn’t have WordPerfect. He didn’t even have a Xerox machine. He had to keep writing it down and writing it down. I want to read to you. You don’t have to turn there unless you want to. But there’s a powerful verses in Habakkuk. Chapter 2 verses 2 and 3 says. And the Lord answered me and said. Write the vision. And make it plain upon tables. Of course they wouldn’t have had paper like we have. Make it plain that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time. But at the end it shall speak and not lie. it, Terry. Wait for it. It will surely come to pass. And that’s what God had Zacharias doing. He had him writing it down and writing it down. Your wife is going to have a baby. It’s going to be a boy. You’re going to name him John. He’s going to be great. He’s going to be a prophet. He’s going to be the prophet that brings the Messiah into his ministry. He had to write it down. And I don’t know if you’ve ever used that, but that is a great tool for myself. Especially when I’m trying to memorize scriptures that have to do with whatever I’m going through. And sometimes I get hung up and I get mixed up and I leave a phrase out and I reverse the order of the words. But when I write it down… Something about writing it down. It gets into my spirit. Amen. It gets into my spirit. That’s why to this day I still have handwritten notes. For my messages. I do not do them on the computer. It’s something about writing them down. Amen. That when I’m writing them down. It’s like I’m writing them on the paper of my heart. The parchment of my spirit. It’s inscribed in my spirit. And then I can say my tongue is the pen of a ready writer. I’m ready to declare and extol the majesty of my king. So every time he wrote it down, I believe another layer, another callous of hardness was removed from his heart. Amen. How many know you can get a callous on your heart? But he had nine months that he couldn’t speak, and he had to just keep writing that down. You know how it is when you get a callus. If you go to the salon, and you might go there and get a pedicure, and you know that they have those things that get those calluses off, you’re sitting there, you don’t feel nothing. They’re just rubbing away and rubbing away, and here you see all that dead skin, and you don’t feel nothing. But all of a sudden… They start getting where it’s live, live flesh there. Amen. They hit that spot. Oh, wait a minute. That hurts. I feel that. You know, you don’t feel it when you’re working on the calluses. You don’t feel it when you’re, when you’re working on them, but boy, when you get them calluses off and you get to that living flesh, you feel it. Amen. And you see, sometimes you’ve been saved for so long. You’ve been saved for so many years and you’ve seen so many prayers that you felt like didn’t get answered the way they should have been answered. And you’ve saw too many people that didn’t get healed. And you saw too many people that didn’t make it and you just feel all of that has disappointed you and let you down and it’s put another callous on your heart and another layer of hardness on your heart and it hinders you when you pray so guess what happens you don’t get the answer and when you don’t get the answer because you didn’t really believe you get another callous and it just perpetuates itself You got to get the calluses off. You have to say, I believe the word of God. Zachariah should have said, this is the most outlandish thing I’ve ever heard in my life. But I know what God did for Abraham and I know what he did for Sarah. And he’s no respecter of persons. I know what he did for Isaac and Rebecca. I know what he did for Samson’s parents. And if he could do it for them, he’ll do it for me. Amen. I don’t want to hear about people that died. I want to hear about people that lived, that got the victory, that overcame. Those of you who know my situation, someone sent me for my birthday three CDs that go back to 1989 of Joyce Meyer. 27 years ago. She had breast cancer and it just threw her a curve. Her ministry was just starting to really launch and become big. And she had surgery. But the question was, they told her her cancer was aggressive. Now, I don’t know what it was. That’s all I know she said on the CD. But she never had any treatment after. And she had to walk by faith that she was going to live and not die. And someone said, God is going to bring out of this something great. Your message, your audience is going to be greater because people will know that you’ve been through this. Now, that’s been 27 years ago. Amen. And I want to hear those kind of testimonies. That’s what you need to hear. You need to get in the word of God. And what does God’s word say that God will do? Amen. And so you have to keep speaking the word of God. And God fixed him good. Gabriel fixed him good and zipped his lips. And he could not rain on her parade. Right. You see, when you’re pregnant with a promise, and I think we can use that word, and you know what I’m saying. If you’re pregnant with a promise, you’ve got to go the whole nine months. You don’t want to abort early. You don’t want to have a miscarriage. You don’t want your promise to abort before it’s fulfilled. Amen? Even in the natural, for someone who wants to have a child and then has a miscarriage, it’s devastating. And even today with technology being what it is, a preemie is like, you know, it’s come and go. You don’t know from day to day whether or not they’re going to pull through. Amen? And so you want to carry it the whole time. Before I had my first child, Scott, right before that I had a miscarriage. And then I got pregnant with him. And you know that doubt’s always in your mind. You always have that there. And I remember the doctor said, okay, your due date is May the 8th. Guess what day he was born on? May the 8th. In other words, I went the whole nine months. I didn’t have a miscarriage. I didn’t have a preemie. It’s like God was saying, okay, this one you’re going to go the whole time. Right on the due date. Amen? And that’s the way it is in the spirit. You’ve got to go the whole nine months. And I’m using that as a figure of speech, of course. Amen. So when his course was over, he went home. And we know that she conceived right away. And we know that those next nine months were the most joyful, happy, wonderful days of Elizabeth’s whole entire life. Think about it. I can think of at least five good reasons. Number one, finally, she was pregnant. She had never been able to get pregnant before. It says she was barren. So now she’s pregnant and she knows already they didn’t have ultrasound back then, but she knew she was going to have a son. And not only that, according to the word of the Lord, he was going to be a prophet. I mean, hey, mama’s going to have a baby boy. He’s going to be a prophet. And not only a prophet, but the prophet. So that’s four good reasons. And then number five, I’ll throw this one in. Number five was for the whole nine months, her husband couldn’t talk. So what does that mean? That means that all he could do was listen to her. For nine months, he couldn’t interrupt her. And what did she do for nine months? He heard her going around the house singing songs, singing lullabies. Amen. Going around the house like a silly little schoolgirl giggling. I’m going to have a baby. Amen? For nine months he had to listen to her and he couldn’t say a thing. And if you think that was enough, maybe to get on his nerves, Elizabeth’s joys were about to be multiplied, and Zachariah’s troubles about to be multiplied, because it won’t be very long, they’re going to get a house guest. And then he’s not only going to have to put up with one pregnant woman, but he’s going to have to put up with two pregnant women. Amen? Because somebody else is coming to the house. Let’s look at verse 26. And in the six months, that means the six months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. We just read the verse before she was five months pregnant. Now she’s six months pregnant. The angel Gabriel sent from God into a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. Right. And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail thou that are highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, But they always say, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son and shalt call his name Jesus, Yeshua, the Lord’s salvation. He shall be great. and shall be called the son of the highest, Elyona. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Amen. So Gabriel gets two assignments in six months. I mean, God hasn’t sent an angel for 400 years. It’s been over 400 years since Malachi, the last prophet, had a word of the Lord. And now 400 years, they don’t get any assignments, and he gets two in six months. And it’s about having a baby. Now the first one just seemed over the top that an old man and an old woman were going to have a baby. But now the impossibilities are going up in magnitude. Because now he’s sent to a virgin. And I taught on this last week about the virgin. How many remember from Isaiah 7.14? So now it’s a virgin. You see, Zacharias, he was struggling with the idea that him and his wife could have a baby at their age. But at least they had two to tango. Right? And they had the right configuration. Male and female. Very important. When you want to have a baby, it’s very important you get the right configuration. Male and female. That’s how God made them and married them. Okay, I’m getting another message here. Now look about Mary. She’s a virgin. She is engaged. She’s espoused. She’s betrothed. But they are not married yet. And they’re certainly not at the point of consummation. Amen? And so she was afraid. That’s normal. As we’ve already said, you react to that supernatural thing. But here where it says that she was troubled… It doesn’t mean she was trouble in the sense of unbelief. It meant she was perplexed. She was confused. Amen? She was trying to figure out how this was going to be. Amen? Consider now, she is not a priest like Zacharias was. She’s just a teenage girl. She hasn’t been schooled in the word of God like he has been, serving before God in the temple at the altar. She’s just a simple teenage girl. Amen? And so she cast in her mind, it means, or she considered, I wonder what he’s talking about. What exactly does this mean? Amen? So let’s look what she says to the angel. Verse 34, then said Mary unto the angel, how shall this be, seeing I know not a man? Now there is a huge difference between her question and the question of Zacharias. Zacharias had asked, how do I know this is really true? Give me a sign. But hers was different. How is this going to happen? I’m not married yet. You see, she could have assumed, well, it’s going to happen after me and Joseph get married. She could have assumed that that would have been a natural assumption. After we get married, we’re going to have this happen. But that’s not what God meant at all. Amen. He was going to be the son of God because he told her he will be the son of El Yonah. She knew what El Yonah meant. The most high God. She got that much, amen? She understood Yeshua meant Jehovah’s salvation. So she’s saying, how is this going to be? We are not married yet. Now, as I said, Zacharias had three examples, Abraham and Zerah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Manoah and his wife. As far as I know the scriptures very well, and I could be wrong, but as far as I know, there was only one tiny scripture in all the Old Covenant that might have given Mary something to hold on to. Zechariah had plenty to hold on to, and he did not believe. All that she could have maybe had is what I preached on last week, Isaiah 714. Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, meaning God with us. Did she know that verse? She may have known that verse. And if she did know that verse, that would have been the only thing that she had to hold on to. Amen? But she wanted to know how was it going to happen. See, her faith was like Manoah’s faith. Manoah didn’t question that it would happen. He just wanted to know how we’re supposed to raise the kid right. And obey your word. And she wants to know, how is this going to happen? You know, it had to be almost amazing for her to comprehend it. So the angel said, verse 35, and the angel said, The Holy Ghost shall come upon you. The power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called… The son of God. You’re going to have a baby. And he’s going to be God’s son. What do you think was going on in her mind? What was she imagining? What was she thinking? How did she think that this was going to come to pass? And he goes on to say, And behold, thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age. And this is the sixth month with her, who is called barren. Verse 37 says, he answered whatever thought she may have had in her mind but she had not spoken for with god nothing shall be impossible and mary said behold the handmaid of the lord be it unto me according to thy word and the angel departed from her so here is mary this young girl and she says asked simply how is this going to be i’m not married yet And he told her, something is going to happen to you that has never happened before and will never happen again. The Holy Ghost is going to come upon you, and you’re going to conceive in your womb, and you’re going to become pregnant, and you’re going to become pregnant with the seed of God. This child is not going to have a human father. God himself shall be his father. This is going to answer that first prophecy in Genesis 3.15 that the seed of the woman would crush the hen. of the serpent. Amen. And here’s this young girl getting this tremendous, phenomenal, fabulous, fantastic word of the Lord. And what does she say? Let it be unto me according to your word. I’m your handmaiden. Here I am. Use me. Do it, Lord. I’m ready. I surrender. I don’t get it all, but I say yes, Lord. I believe the word of the Lord. Amen. Amen. And then she acted on it because the next verse tells us she got up with haste and left town and went to see Elizabeth. She believed the word of God. She thought, oh my goodness, my cousin Elizabeth, who was quite a bit older than her, is also pregnant. I can’t wait, I can’t wait to go and see her. Oh, this is just so wonderful. Amen. And she got there to Elizabeth’s house and knocked on the door. And when they opened the door and she walked in and said, Elizabeth, as soon as Elizabeth heard the voice of Mary, the babe leaped up in her womb. Hallelujah. And she was filled with the Holy Ghost. Amen. And the Holy Ghost came on her and John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Ghost in his mother’s womb. Hallelujah. That might be why Jesus said he was the greatest prophet ever was. I don’t know. I have a lot of speculation about why Jesus said that, but that’s one good reason there. He was filled with the Holy Ghost. And when the babe leaped in her womb, then Elizabeth began to speak the word of God. And I want you to see what Elizabeth said to her. Verse 42, And she, being Elizabeth, spake out with a loud voice and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For lo, as soon as the voice of your salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. And here’s the key. Verse 45, And blessed is she that believed. Amen. For there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. Because Mary believed. And when you believe, there will be a performance. When you believe the word of God, it shall come to pass. So write it down. And revisit it. And read it. And declare it. And speak it. And declare it. And as you do, you will see that in the delay, while you’re waiting, your heart won’t get calloused over with unbelief. You’ll begin to believe and believe that when the word of the Lord comes, amen, you’ll be like Mary. You will believe instantly. And you will say, behold, here’s the handmaiden of the Lord. I’m all yours, Lord. I belong to you. I am sold out 100% to you. So whatever you want for my life, whatever you say, whatever is your will, I say yes, Lord. Amen? And Mary believed the word of the Lord. And now Zacharias is sitting over there in the corner. He’s got two women running around the house, leaping for joy, singing, dancing. You know, they’re doing the dance and they’re doing the dance. He’s sitting there thinking, I cannot believe this is happening to me. Amen. I can’t believe this. Amen. And Mary stayed right up until the time she wasn’t there for the birth. She went back home by that point. But she stayed there, and all that time, Zacharias could not speak a word. Can you imagine? He was thinking, when I finally get to talk, I’m going to say this and I’m going to say that. I got to remember to tell her this. I got to remember to tell her that. But you know, when the time came, he didn’t do none of that. When that baby came, when Elizabeth went into labor and she had that boy and her family came there and said, what is his name? Now, normally the father would name the child in the Jewish custom. The father would name the child. And of course, he couldn’t talk. So they said, what is his name? And Elizabeth said, why, his name is John. Because, see, that’s what the angel Gabriel said. And they said, well, why are you naming him John? Nobody in your family is named John. Don’t you want to name him after his daddy? Amen. Don’t you want to name him after your uncle or your grandfather? Amen. And at that point. God loosed the tongue of Zacharias and he said, his name is John. And he took off prophesying. He took off prophesying about what God was going to do in Israel. Amen. And when God answers your prayer, you’re going to leap for joy. You’re going to sing. You’re going to dance. You’re going to declare the glory of the Lord. So you need to know that as we celebrate Christmas, it’s a season of miracles. It’s a time of miracles. And God is saying to some of you today, your prayer is heard. Your prayer is heard. God wants you to know your prayer is heard. He still had to wait nine months for the baby to come. Amen? And because God says your prayer is heard, I can’t tell you the time that it will be for the manifestation. But if God says it’s heard and it’s done, if you don’t cast away your faith, if you don’t get an Ishmael in the middle of it all, If you don’t go off on your own trying to help God and making a mess of things, God will do it. He said, though it tarry, wait for it, for it shall come to pass. Amen. Come on, stand on your feet here this morning. Amen. God wants you to know that there’s a breakthrough anointing here. A breakthrough anointing is in this place. Amen? A breakthrough anointing. And if you have been struggling and there’s a prayer that maybe you’ve just sort of stopped praying it because you think it’s no point in praying that prayer anymore, let me preface what I’m about to say by this. Make sure that you are hearing the will of God. If we know that he hears us, we know that we have the thing that we have asked of him and desired of him. And we know that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. I mean, that’s pretty simple instructions. So first, let’s find out if it’s his will. And if we know it’s his will, we can pray and we can know that God hears us. And if he hears us, we know he’s working on it. He’s working on it. And sometimes he doesn’t let you see that behind the scenes. He’s orchestrating it until it’s ready and it comes to pass. And when it comes to pass, it usually does happen suddenly all at one time. Amen. I hope you’re being blessed by our message today. Don’t make your angel mad when God answers your prayers. Have you ever thought how frustrating it must be for God when we doubt his word and constantly demand reassurances and affirmations? And imagine how his ministering angels must feel when Christians repeatedly fall into doubt and unbelief. Zacharias learned this when he was visited by Gabriel with the good news of the coming birth of his son John. But instead of rejoicing, he was skeptical and asked for a sign, saying, How do I know this is true? Well, he got his sign when Gabriel zipped his lips for the next nine months, and he couldn’t speak his unbelief to Elizabeth, his wife, or anyone else. Then Gabriel visited Mary, a young virgin, with an even more impossible announcement of the birth of God’s Son. But she received his message with simple faith and said, Let it be unto me according to thy word. I believe your spiritual perception can be greatly influenced by this study of Zachariah’s stubborn unbelief versus Mary’s exemplary faith. Don’t let delays make you cynical. If you’ve been waiting a long time for answers to prayers, this message can instruct you how to rid your heart of unbelief and carry your promise to full term. Don’t Make Your Angel Mad When God Answers Your Prayers is available on CD for a love gift to the radio ministry of $10 or more. Request offer SK133. Our mailing address is Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203, or you may order online at soundoffaith.org, where you can order on MP3s. But to order by mail, send your minimum love gift of $10, request offer SK133, mail to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Until next time, this is Sharon Knott saying, Maranatha.
