Hearing and Listening

     God doesn’t listen to everyone. It’s interesting to me that people think He does. Such an idea can only come from a lack of Scriptural knowledge and a desire to make God out to be some kind of sugardaddy in the heavens.

     Does that offend? Maybe it should. I think it’s time for our culture to stop being politically correct and be truthful,  especially when it comes to issues of faith. Sometimes it seems that we have made tolerance the greatest Christian virtue.  It’s as though we think the God we serve sits up in Heaven winking at every sin that passes by on this whirling globe of iniquity and can do nothing but mercifully answer the prayers humans shoot up to Him for health and long life.

    Some of us think that even as long as we pray to a god, the real God will somehow hear and answer by proxy.  The whole idea, it doesn’t matter who you believe in, only that you believe in something, is absolute drivel.

    Now I do believe that God does hear every prayer that goes up  from the mouths of humans. But there is a grand bit of difference between His hearing and His listening. You don’t have to look very far in Scripture to find this truth.

    God said these words to the prophet Jeremiah when the children of Israel had sinned grievously against Him. “Do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them, because I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their distress.” Jeremiah 11:14 NIV

    Peter warned the men of his day that there was a condition of heart which would stop their prayers dead cold. “Husbands in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.” I Peter 3:7

    More examples could be given but in this short space let me just say that God is not listening to some of us even though He is hearing all of us.  It is because of our lifestyles.

   I thought long and hard about how to begin speaking about  the reinvention of my prayer life. I decided to do it any justice at all I had to go back to the beginning. So next post I will tell you where I came from and how God got me to where I am today. At least we will make a start!