In prayer, I saw an image of bowls in Heaven filled with the prayers of God’s people. Because the prayers were aligned with God’s will, they gave off the fragrance of incense. 

Scripture tells us about those bowls. It describes the Lamb of God approaching the bowls, “And when he took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they held gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of God’s people” (Revelation 5:8). Each of the twenty-four elders held a bowl filled with our prayers. They were offered to the Lamb.

The prayers we utter according to God’s will are not lost in some spiritual ether land. Each prayer we pray according to God’s will has been captured. Those bowls are filled with prayers that have uttered across time from Genesis until the present. The number of those prayers is beyond measure.

Nothing is late when it comes to the answers for our prayers if they have been prayed according to God’s will. Some answers to our prayers have been assigned for a later time and will be answered long after some of us leave this Earth. Other prayers are a fulfillment of what others have prayed long ago from unknown moments in history. When an answer finally comes to those prayers, we just happened to be at a place on God’s timeline when those prayers were destined to be answered. Some of our prayers will be answered in eternity when we all believers are finally gathered together and the fullness of Jesus Christ is displayed on Earth as it is in Heaven.

The most important qualifier of whether our prayers will be placed in Heaven’s bowls is crafting our prayers according to the will of God. Knowing God’s will is our most important understanding as we create our prayers. When we do not know the specifics of what to pray we can still pray with authority if what we pray reflects the heart of God. Once we know His heart, our prayers are qualified to enter the bowls of Heaven. After we have prayed, we are called to rest knowing God will answer our prayers either in this life or the life to come, all according to His will.