- Hear
Psalm 17. 6
I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God:
Incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech.
The promises of God to hear our prayer are numerous in Scripture; the commands to pray are also plentiful. We pray because God commands it and because God promises to hear it. Believing in a God who promises to hear our prayers makes all the difference in the world for our faith, our regular lives, and for our eternity. There are two kinds of people who believe in a prayer hearing God: 1) those who believe God hears our prayers because they have heard the Gospel and believe in the goodness and mercy of God in Christ Jesus and therefore have a personal relationship with a merciful God who hears and cares; 2) those who think God hears prayer when they do it right or do it rite, who treat God like a superstition that responds to the proper ritual or to a “holy man.”
God is a prayer hearing God who wants me to talk to him (and listen) because He desires an ever-increasing intimacy with me developed through communication. God hears because of His Son, Jesus Christ, who has interceded for us and brought us to the Father as forgiven children, whom He loves and cares deeply about. God hears our prayers simply because He is a prayer hearing God; that is His nature, for God is Love. The childlike believer who knows God loves him just talks to Him, naturally praying about the things of life, and doesn’t wonder if God hears: he knows. The compassion of God consists in this that He hears when we call.
Our pleadings, as the pleas of the Psalmists, are not manipulations but confident requests made in quiet response to a God who promises to hear.