Zechariah’s Name: Zechariah’s name comes from two Hebrew words meaning ‘God remembers’. It means more than just to call to memory, it a covenant word meaning to mark in order to recognise. God remembers His covenant with you. He has marked you and will never forget you. Scripture contains many references to God remembering - in fact, he never forgets anything or anyone, except that is your sin when you have repented and confessed it. Three things that God remembers:
His people: His delays are not denials and His silence does not mean forgetfulness. In Luke 1 is the first time that God speaks to anyone in the nation of Israel after a period of 400 years of absolute silence; in that time there was no prophecy, no vision, no dream, no angelic visitation, and no voice from heaven - nothing. At least ten generations had passed between Malachi and Zechariah but after 400 years, God remembered His people and brought forth a word regarding their deliverance.
His promises: Our God is a covenant keeping, promise keeping God and therefore, don’t let the passage of time faze you. No matter how long it takes, God will remember His promise to you and He will fulfill it. He watches over his word to perform it and therefore if God has given you a word, you hold on to it. The trouble with most of us, is that we hold on for a little while – and when we don’t see the manifestation of the word, we assume that God has forgotten; we jettison the word in favour of ‘realities’. The fulfillment of the promise in Zechariah’s life in Luke 1: 16-17 dated back 400 years from a promise made through Malachi.
Your prayers: Every prayer that you have ever prayed stands before God as a memorial. Therefore, if you prayed according to His will, you can rest assured that He has heard you and that He will answer in due season. In God’s agenda and eternal plan, there is an appointed time for the answering of your prayers. Zechariah and Elizabeth were childless and they were very old, probably in their seventies or older and probably had been praying about 50 years before this angelic visitation. From Zechariah’s response, you can tell that they had stopped praying about this matter a long time ago. They must have concluded that God had no intention of giving them a child. But God came to them and told them that He remembered their prayers. God heard and answered a fifty-year-old prayer. For how long have you been praying?