Does God Hear Us When We Pray?

Papa Can You Hear Me?

In speaking with a friend of mine I received a fresh revelation. It was one of those moments where the words coming out of my own mouth were in fact teaching me something I never knew before.  Do you know what I mean?  She was talking about prayer. She had prayed for something, but in fact the opposite happened.  I believe it left her questioning herself, not God.  We get like that, where we have to reason things out for ourselves, to make it neat and tidy. Something like this happens and we explain it away with thing like; I was too presumptuous in thinking I could change God’s mind; He doesn’t have to listen to me; my problem was not big enough.  The scenarios of responses could fill a book and more.  As I listened, God spoke…His Word spoke is more accurate.

John told us that we can be confident in approaching God, “¹⁴ This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. ¹⁵ And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” (1John 5:14-15)  If we believe that He doesn’t hear us we have already allowed doubt to enter and we know that the double minded man will not get anything from God (James 1:8).  We also know that our prayers are effective.  Did James not write to us about the end results of prayer?  He said they “avail much” (James 5:16).

All this is well and good, but perhaps you remain uncertain about praying. Maybe you are right now making a thousand excuses and reasons why God doesn’t answer.  You remain unconvinced that He hears you.  You may think that He hears others but surely not you. Listen to one who did not walk with Jesus initially, but in fact persecuted all who stood for Him. Paul the apostle wrote in his letter to the Romans that “²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.” (Rom 8:26-27)  Friends, Holy Spirit Himself prays in us…He sometimes fills our mouth with words to pray and sometimes it is too deep for words. God hears and searches out those prayers and answers them all.  So be confident when you pray, for God hears you.