Will God really hear my prayers?
Does God hear everybody’s prayers?
That’s certainly a question we all at one time or another wonder about and want to know with some assurance of soon as possible depending on what’s going on in our life at the time. The company you work for is getting ready to cut 500 jobs and you find out your job is among the ones to be cut. You don’t have much saved up and so you began to pray to God for help because you don’t know what you are going to do, and so you pray and ask God to help you. Does God hear that prayer? Here’s another situation. You just applied for a job that pays $100,000 a year. There are 20 other candidates you are competing with, and so you pray to God for that job. Does God answer that prayer? What has God actually said about prayers that He will hear?
Beloved, as I read through the word of God because that is always what the Lord Jesus Christ always refers to when He answers any questions when it concerns things about God, the Scriptures have much to say about prayers God will hear and prayers God will not hear. In the Gospel of John, chapter 9, tells the story of a blind man who had his sight restored by Jesus Christ. He had been blind from birth, and everybody knew it and so this was such an amazing miracle that had been done for him by the Lord that he is being questioned by the Jewish rulers as to how he had received his sight because they did not believe in who Jesus Christ really is. They believed Jesus Christ was a sinner, rather than God in human flesh among them.. and so the blind man, in defense of Jesus, makes this bold statement before these Jewish leaders who were questioning him,
“Now we know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, He hears him….( John 9:31)
What we can learn from this blind man who had his sight restored by Jesus Christ is this,.”God does not hear everybody’s prayer. Now as God, He sees and hears everything that goes on in heavens above and everywhere on the earth, so it is not that God didn’t physically hear the prayer of the person who will not honor Him as God,. but God is not moved to act on behave of those whose heart has no place in it for Him to sit as Lord over it. The people whose prayer God hears the blind man said are those who worship Him and do His will. Beloved, the Scriptures tell us this same truth over and over again throughout the Bible. Look at it in a few more places,
“For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him….(2 Chronicles 16:9)
“Come and hear, all you who fear God, And I will declare what He has done for my soul.
I cried to Him with my mouth, And He was extolled with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart,
The Lord will not hear.19 But certainly God has heard me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer.
Blessed be God, Who has not turned away my prayer, Nor His mercy from me! …(Psalms 66:16-20)
The Psalmist here is calling all those who fear God to come and hear what God has done in his life when he earnestly prayed to God from his heart. God answered his prayer and he’s full of such joy that he just wants to tell it to those he knows will be blessed by it. Those who fear God. I have a blog post titled, ” Does God Expect Me to Live in Fear of Him” that explains what God means when He says we are to fear Him. In (2 Chronicles 7:14), God tell us this,..
“ if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.….( 2 Chronicles 7:14 )
What we can see here also is that even if I profess to be a Christian, and harden my heart and just refuse to act in ways I know in my heart God would have me to act, God will not hear my prayers. In fact if it gets to that point God says this,
“One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, Even his prayer is an abomination..(Proverbs 28:9)
“if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. And whatever we ask we receive from Him,(why?),..because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment: … that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment……(1 John 3:20-23)
Beloved can you see right out of the Scripture, how you can know God will hear your prayers? Pause just a minute and think about what God says in the last part of that passage, because what we can plainly see is that God is moved by the relationship we have with His Son and our willingness to obey Him. This is how we can know God hears my prayer,..
“because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment: … that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment……(1 John 3:20-23)
So then it is believing on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and loving one another as He gave us commandment that gives us assurance that God will answer our prayers. I have written a Blog Post titled, “What Does it Mean to Believe in Jesus Christ’ that lays out according to the Scriptures, what that really means because it believing in Jesus Christ does not mean the same thing do everybody. Then God tells us one final thing about prayer to God if we are to expect God to answer our prayers. What we ask beloved, “has to be according to His will.
“Now this is the confidence that we have in Him,.. that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him…..(1 John 5:14-15)
God has a purpose for every individual life and God will permit certain things to happen good and bad in order to fulfill His sovereign will and purposes in each one of our lives, but does He hear everybody’s prayer? Absolutely not, and even for those who love God, sometimes God says no, and when He does that’s what’s best for that situation. Then sometimes He says yes, but He answers the prayer in His time, not on our timetable. He is perfect in all His ways and in all His dealings with us. The one prayer God will always answer that opens the door to heaven right into the very throne room of God for you is the prayer to ask His Son Jesus Christ into your life and trust Him alone to get you into heaven. That’s God’s will for every one of us. God actually said that.
“And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”…(John 6:40).