Daughter in Waiting Ministry

I love talking to a friend or a loved one who knows me well. I enjoy talking to these individuals because our conversations flow seamlessly. They leave me with zero room to question if I’m understood. I get the occasional smile, the frequent nods, and the direct eye contact. Mid-conversation, I already know we’re on the same page. They get me and I get them. Communication can’t get more seamless than that. Or so I thought. Until I became friends with the invisible God. 

Before we ask ourselves if God hears our prayers, we should ask ourselves if we believe that God is our friend, let alone, a friend who knows us well.

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
John 15:15 (NIV)

The start of the conversation with God is the easy part. We’ve received our salvation and we’re on fire for Him. He’s even now called us friends! What much more could we ask for? Then, the harder parts come. The parts that now require us to walk by faith and trust Him. As our Friend, He asks us to walk with Him (Psalm 23, Colossians 2:6), to fellowship with Him (1 Corinthians 1:9), because He sits at the right hand of The Father and intercedes on our behalf (Romans 8:34). Jesus is a great Friend who knows us well. So, why is it hard for us to believe that God hears our prayers when He already considers us His friends? Is it the lack of eye contact or occasional social cues letting us know we’ve been heard? Is it the fact that certain prayers have been repeated for weeks, months, maybe even years? What is it that makes us want something, anything, to confirm to us that when we’ve prayed to God, He’s indeed heard us? Well, it’s unbelief and according to scripture, a lack of faith in God is what keeps us from trusting that He’s heard us. God told us this Himself in The Parable of the Persistent Widow in Luke 18:

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Luke 18:1-8 (ESV)

Truthfully, God hears my prayers, but unbelief has me thinking that I need more confirmation than His word. Unbelief places my human expectations on an eternal God. When unbelief creeps into my conversations with God, I come to Him with my own set of ideas on what these conversations should sound like, be like, and even how long they should last for. When unbelief builds, I expect God to answer me in a certain way at a certain time. When I bring my human experience into the presence of the eternal God, I naturally ask myself, does God hear my prayers? Foolishly, I let unbelief make me feel like He doesn’t. Don’t do what I’ve done. Don’t give room for unbelief to build. First, acknowledge that He has the best interest for you as a Friend (John 15:13). 

It may not be easy or comfortable to communicate with an invisible God, but it’s important to know that He hears you. The persistent widow parable shows us how unlike God is to the unjust judge. Unlike the unjust judge who is unholy, mean, impatient, easily irritated, and has no regard for the widow, God values communication with us. God says, come, I always want to hear from you (James 4:8, Isaiah 1:18). In this parable, our Friend invites us to pray to God without ceasing. He contrasts Himself with the unjust judge to show us how deeply He desires for us to be in His presence. The bible is filled with scripture asking us to pray, because God wants to hear what troubles us, what excites us, what motivates us, what calms us, what stresses us, and every other aspect of our lives. Not because He doesn’t know what we’re going through for God is omniscient (Psalm 139, 1 Samuel 2:3). He invites us to pray because prayer is one of the ways – arguably the most important way – God has chosen to communicate and fellowship with us.
 
Through our Friend, we have the ability to come into the presence of God and have conversations with Him whenever we want to. To bring all of ourselves and our hearts to Him. If only we’d realize sooner that the God who leaves the ninety-nine to chase after the one – yes, you – doesn’t end His invitation for fellowship at our salvation. God wants us to communicate with Him daily and that’s all that prayer is. Does God hear you? Yes, because He wants to have conversations with you. When we remove our human expectations in our conversations with God, we see that the seamless nature of our conversations with Him only comes when we stop leaning on our own standards. How do we remove these expectations? We release the unbelief that God doesn’t hear our prayers by letting go of this:

• The time we think God will take to answer our prayers. These conversations might take five years or ten. Some, a few minutes. I know how challenging it is to wait for months or years for God to answer prayers. But, when I let go of my standards, I’m free to know that God makes everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11). If I trust my Friend, I trust that when it’s His will to answer my prayer, respond to a particular conversation, He will answer it in its time.
• The expectations of what His answer will be and how He’ll answer us. His answer might be a yes, a no, a maybe, or something we can’t foresee, but are we listening? As humans, we have our verbal cues in conversation but our eternal God has His and to accept them, faith is required. God speaks to His creation in many ways. In Romans 1, He tells us He speaks through nature and everything around us. In Job 33, He tells us He can speak through dreams and visions. In Numbers 22, He tells us He speaks through animals. In Luke 1, He tells us He speaks through angels. In 2 Peter 1, He tells us He speaks through prophecy. In John 16, He tells us He speaks through His Spirit. We can see that God’s responses to our prayers can come in an abundance of ways we might not anticipate. Maybe we’re thinking that God doesn’t hear our prayers when the answers He’s given us aren’t being accepted by us. If that’s the case, let us pray that He gives us the awareness to receive these answers in the way He chooses to send them to us. 
• Thinking that God wants us to know the answer to a certain prayer. Job and Habakkuk are two biblical figures that questioned God in prayer. One (Job) was given a list of reasons from God as to why He couldn’t receive the answer to His prayer. According to God, Job couldn’t handle the answer to his “why” as Job did not have the understanding to comprehend God’s ways and His creation. The other (Habakkuk) wasn’t given the answer he was hoping for regarding his complaint to God. But, in both cases, God communicated with them. It may not have been the answers they were looking for to their prayers, but God still joined their conversations. Are we perceiving a ‘no’ from God or a ‘not yet’ from God as Him not hearing us? The bible says one day we will know as we are fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). Until that day comes, the answers to some of our prayers may not be revealed to us or it may be a no, I won’t give you the answer. But, that doesn’t change the truth that God hears our prayers and that He has our best interest at heart (Jeremiah 29:11).
• Hindrances that have the ability to affect our prayers, our conversations, with God. The bible says that unforgiveness can be such a hindrance to our conversations with God, that He wants us to resolve it with Him and/or another before going on to voice our other requests (Matthew 6:12, Ephesians 4:32). This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t hear our prayers. It means that in the midst of our bigger, and what we deem more important, conversations with Him, He has a side-conversation that He wants us to speak with Him about first. 
• Thinking that our prayers are the only ones He doesn’t hear. There are dozens of biblical examples of people questioning if God hears them (Psalm 22). Though there’s comfort in knowing that this question is natural, it’s driven by our unbelief. God is glorified by our faith not our doubts. Even if this question is natural and it’s comforting to know that we’re not the only ones who have asked this, God calls us to trust that He will never forsake us and always wishes to hear from us. So much so, He made it easy for us to pray to Him and feel heard. In Romans 8:26, He tells us that His Spirit prays for us. God’s Spirit searches our hearts so that when we don’t have the words to pray, or we don’t know what to pray, He’s able to pray for us when we need Him to.

Not only does God want to hear from us, He’s made sure that whenever we pray to Him, He’s available to hear us. He hears our prayers and values them so much, His angels collect them on our behalf (Revelation 5:8, Revelation 8:3-5). Let’s not let our expectations convince us otherwise, our circumstances convince us otherwise, and any silences convince us otherwise. Let’s not let anything outside of God’s word convince us otherwise, because God’s word says: pray and do so without ceasing. So, let’s follow our Friend as He’s asked us to. Let’s continue to pray, boldly, fervently, and without ceasing, because God hears us. 

Sincerely,

Anne

Scripture to meditate on this week

“The LORD is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous.”
Proverbs 15:29 (ESV)