Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #7 Prayer #5 Listening Ear

Prayer

Listening Ear

God has given us His Word. In it we can find guidance and examples of communications with the Most High. In it we can see how God is willing to be with those who are willing to follow Him. God showed us the way how we can master ourselves but also how we can come up to Him in times when we are not able to do it on our own. God Himself took care that we have at our disposal one of the most powerful tools. God is willing to give us His Ears and allows us to have access and talk to Him who spoke into existence the heavens and the earth.

Jehovah God His eyes are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry (Psalm 34:15). But our ears should also be open to the Words of God and be willing to listen to His instructions.

The Scriptures teach us that God wants us to bring our requests to Him, and we can be confident that He cares and will answer our prayer according to His good purpose and will. In the book of books we can find already very soon in the existence of men that they began to call upon the name of the Creator, whom they considered as their Only One God. In the history of God’s people we find a wrestling Jacob, a Daniel with many questions, who prayed three times a day, and a David who with all his heart called upon his God. On the mountains we can find Moses, Elias (Eliahu or Elijah), Jeshua; in the dungeon Paul and Silas or Saint Silvanus. We find many examples of people who had multitudes of commands, and myriads of promises.

Though we do agree there are also plenty of stories in the Bible of God being silent.
Job experienced His silence. So did Abraham as he planned to sacrifice Isaac. The Bible doesn’t record God talking to Joseph, eleventh son of Jacob, in prison, nor John the Baptist before his beheading. There are more examples of God’s silence than we may be comfortable exploring.
To say that God did not hear them nor did want to answer them would be not doing justice to what happened. The idea that God is not hearing us when we talk to him can be very unsettling. And if we are not careful, we will allow the wrong ideas (evil) to begin to put false thoughts in our minds regarding God’s love for us, God’s ability to answer our prayers, or even God’s existence.

We are told about sacrifices and activities in the temple. We even find that God gave instructions for the places of worship. This teaches us the sacred importance and necessity of prayer. God has made prayer and worship prominent in his Word; therefore we may be sure that it should also play an important role in our life for God.

Job calling upon God, the Most High creator of heaven and earth.

Those characters described in the Bible thought it important to speak to their Greatest Master. They had the desire to be in contact with the Creator of all things and were trusting that He was going to answer them.

We don’t know when the answer will come and He is never obligated to answer our prayer in the way we want it answered. It happened in history that men of God also became anxious. David for example wanted to hear from God straight away. He wanted to hear God’s voice speaking in the midst of his anxiety. He wanted God to reach down and deliver him from his distress there and then. Though when you follow what happened and look how God has everything in control, we can see that David like so many others did not wanted to hear other things than what he had in his head. He was not hearing what he wanted to hear, and he pleaded, “O Lord, how long?”

“My soul is also sore vexed, but Thou, O LORD, how long?” (Psalms 6:3 KJ21)

In verse 8 of the same 6th Psalm, while David is in the midst of his prayer to God, he declares,

“Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping.”

David considers his situation as though it is already resolved. In faith, he commands his enemies to leave him because God has heard his prayer. He does not have an answer from God yet, he does not know how God will deliver him yet, but he begins to operate as though he is already delivered. As Albert Barnes writes in his commentary,

“Already David sees his enemies scattered, and his own cause triumphant; and in this exulting feeling he addresses his foes, and commands them to leave him.”

There we can see David had taken the right attitude for prayer and for believe in God. In verse 9 David gives notice that Jehovah has heard his supplication and was confident that God was going to receive his prayer. There we see, having the right attitude in prayer, David is no longer pleading and wondering if God is hearing his prayers. He is affirming that God has heard his prayers. Charles Spurgeon wrote in his Treasury of David,

“This Psalm is readily divided into two parts. First, there is the Psalmist‘s plea in his great distress, reaching from the first to the end of the seventh verse. Then you have, from the eighth to the end, quite a different theme. The Psalmist has changed his note. He leaves the minor key, and betakes himself to sublimer strains. He tunes his note to the high key of confidence, and declares that God hath heard his prayer, and hath delivered him out of all his troubles.”

David the son of Jesse, the man after God’s own heart, had come ‘with his heart and soul’ to God and as a man of prayer had found faith in it. The prayer had awakened him and come to trust in his beloved God, like we also should give ourselves to God, trying to capture His attention, but allowing everything in His Hands.

Preceding article: Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #6 Prayer #4 Attitude

To be continued with: Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #8 Prayer #6 Communication and manifestation

Dutch version / Nederlandse versie: Vertrouwen, Geloof, Roepen en Toeschrijving aan Jehovah #7 Gebed #5 Luisterend Oor