My cousin posted this timely article to her FB Page; it is exactly the reminding encouragement & spiritual boost, I needed to hear this Sunday 😘
Anna is highlighted in the Scripture passage of Luke 2:36-38.
The Reminder: There isn't just one kind of prayer. There's authority prayer, for what's under your jurisdiction. Warfare prayer, against spiritual forces. And prophetic intercession … the Anna kind - for a person with free will, where you stand faithfully before God for years while honoring the choice Elohim, Himself, refuses to override (the choice of mankind's free will); Elohim waits for the turning towards Him to begin the healing, restorative work needed for a whole healing in lives that have been damaged. Nothing is beyond repair when hurting people turn towards Elohim for restoration, a healing touch from Yeshua, and power-infused, life-changing experience, from the Ruach HaKo'desh.
Spiritual Boost: You are exactly where you need to be, difficult as it may seem. As frustrating as it may look. Hardships always result in blessings. And love never fails. A mother's prayers are heard - and often answered in ways the natural eye cannot see: sometimes, the parent goes to their eternal rest without seeing the prayers answered. Free will … & God's timing, not ours. An unsaved spouse is covered & sanctified by the saved spouse; Elohim hears the prayerful pleas & often answers in ways the natural eye cannot see & many times, an unequal yoke is meant for a humbling of both hearts, for the benefit of His glory to shine forth.
There is no gain without pain.
If not for the rain, sunshine would be taken for granted.
God is good all the time … and all the time, God is good. Amen!
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ANNA'S SIXTY
~By Ruth Callahan
We preach Hannah, who prayed for one year and got her son. We preach Abraham, who waited twenty-five. Nobody preaches Anna.
She's four verses in the Christmas story, and most sermons walk right past her to get to the shepherds. A widow. A prophetess.
Scripture says she served God in the temple night and day with fasting and prayer — and that she was eighty-four years old before she finally saw the promise she had waited her whole life for.
Do the math on that. Decades of interceding before the answer ever walked through the doors.
I found her the year I'd decided I was a failure.
I'd been praying for my son for a long time by then — longer than I like to count. And I'd started to believe the silence meant something about me. That if I were more faithful, prayed with more power, had less doubt, God would have answered by now. I looked around my church at the women whose children still sat beside them on Sunday and felt like the least faithful mother in the building.
Then a book I'd been given put Anna in front of me — really in front of me — and asked a question that turned the whole thing over. What if the length of your waiting isn't the measure of your failure? What if some of us aren't failing at all — we're Annas, called to a long watch, and nobody ever trained us for it?
Because here's what it taught me. There isn't just one kind of prayer. There's authority prayer, for what's under your jurisdiction. Warfare prayer, against spiritual forces. And prophetic intercession — the Anna kind — for a person with free will, where you stand faithfully before God for years while honoring the choice He Himself refuses to override.
I'd been praying like my son was still under my roof, commanding an outcome over a grown man who has his own will. It wasn't weak faith. It was the wrong weapon for a battle I was never taught to fight. Anna knew the right one. So did Daniel, who fasted twenty-one days while a war he couldn't see raged in the heavens. So did Paul, who asked three times and got a holy no and kept going.
There's a name for what they had. Intercessory longevity — the strength to keep praying faithfully when the battle is measured in years, not weeks. It's not the booby prize for mothers whose prayers "didn't work." It's the highest form of the thing. Anna didn't waste sixty years. She spent them holding a promise before the throne until it was time.
I don't know when my son's story turns. That's between him and God, and I've stopped pretending the timeline was ever mine to set. But I've stopped grading myself on it. His choices are his — not the final mark on my worth as his mother. And I've stopped believing the silence means I've been forgotten. A prayer can disappear into quiet and still be moving, kept before God, reaching a child in the places a mother's arms can't.
If you've been praying for years and started to think the length of the wait is proof of your failure — it isn't. You might just be an Anna the church forgot to prepare.
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