Does God really listen to our prayers? Does he really hear us when we cry out to him?

Sometimes we pray for a long time about big things, like a health issue or a prodigal child or a difficult work situation, and things don’t get better. We wonder if God’s been paying attention.

I prayed for my wife regarding a life-threatening disease for 27 long years. We prayed and prayed, but her condition only worsened. Why aren’t you answering, God? How could it be true that you have “heard my voice and my pleas for mercy” (Psalm 116:1)? It doesn’t feel like you have “attended to the voice of my prayer” (Psalm 66:19).

Perhaps my faith wasn’t strong enough. Maybe I wasn’t good enough. Such questions assaulted me like a tribunal of vicious accusers. They wore me down, leaving me doubting and discouraged.

Persist in Prayer

“How many of us can say we’ve prayed single-mindedly for something huge we were looking to God for?” Tweet Share on Facebook
I continued to look to God’s word for encouragement. There was certainly no shortage of it. For example, Jesus told the people “a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). This was the story of the persistent widow who only received an answer because she kept coming and asking — she refused to give up. Jesus then asked, “And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?” (Luke 18:7).

Is that the sort of persistence in prayer that’s required? Many of us who have prayed for years for the same thing have sometimes lost heart amid the ups and downs of waiting for God. And then we’ve wondered how God could possibly answer our inconsistent prayers. This is how the accuser can use God’s word to discourage us.

Faith in Prayer

Jesus is also clear that faith in prayer is vital. He’s bold in his promises about what will happen when we pray in faith. Jesus said,

“If you have faith and do not doubt . . . if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” (Matthew 21:21–22)
How many of us can say we’ve prayed that single-mindedly — without doubting — for something huge we were looking to God for? If we had, this passage tells us that we’d have seen the answer and been left rejoicing rather than discouraged due to our doubts and double-mindedness (James 1:6–8). Many of us likely feel like we’re lacking that kind of faith.

Never Good Enough

So what do we do when important passages like these leave us struggling with self-recrimination rather than encouraged amid lengthy battles in prayer? Will God only answer our prayers when we measure up to such impossible standards like praying day and night or having faith to move mountains? Such teachings might leave us thinking that we’re just not good enough.

But perhaps that’s exactly what Jesus wants us to realize. Perhaps the liberation we long for from that tribunal of accusers is that very admission: We are not good enough! Our prayers aren’t good enough. And there is nothing in our life with God for which we are good enough!

Boast in Your Weakness

Yes, God certainly looks for faith. Yes, we must persist. Yes, earnestly seek God to believe and endure. But even as we do, we recognize that we’ll always be deficient in faith and deficient in persistence on this side of heaven. Yet, this should not hinder us from embracing the reality that when “this poor man cried . . . the Lord heard him” (Psalm 34:6).

“Because Jesus has earned his Father’s ear, we can rest assured that God hears our every prayer.” Tweet Share on Facebook
We need God’s help to endure in faithful prayer when things are not going well. The most confident and steadfast saints put no trust in the level of faith they attain, but only trust that Jesus himself is “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). They know that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). Prayerful saints trust Jesus to be our “advocate with the Father,” who covers our sinful inconsistency and unbelief with the very blood he shed for us (1 John 2:1–2).

Jesus Fills What We Lack

This gives us boldness as we persist in crying out to God, even though we know that our prayers are never good enough. God more than makes up for our inadequacies when our trust rests first in the person of Jesus, rather than first in our own disposition in prayer. Yes, the disposition matters. But the decisive factor is God’s riches of mercy and grace to meet us in our need.

And speaking of God’s mercy, God certainly did answer all those prayers for my wife, when in his perfect timing, she finally received a kidney transplant in 2015. We are daily grateful for God’s gift of life to us!

We aren’t good enough, but Jesus is. And because he has earned his Father’s ear, we can rest assured that God hears our every prayer.

By Ken Peters. Source: desiringGod.org

Ken Peters is a husband and father of three, and has been a pastor at Gateway Church in Winnipeg, Canada for twenty-five years.

I spend the majority of my investment helping people to live with an awakened and powerful heart. Unfortunately our busy and overloaded lives cause us to neglect the life of our spiritual hearts. We get so lost in “getting by” that we fail to keep in mind the most important aspect of life–the inner life of the heart.

Quite often when people come to me for help, their heart is either deeply immersed in their personal woundedness or highly shut down emotionally. Both arenas can come as a result of neglecting the life of the heart.

But I don’t want to overcomplicate it. Sometimes the most important things for our hearts are very simple, yet incredibly foundational. All it takes is a willingness to incorporate some healthy habits every day and you can cultivate a heart life that is conditioned to go the long haul.

Here are some simple habits you can implement to cultivate a spiritual heart that is awake and healthy. Practice them every day and you can be sure that over the long haul you will set yourself up for greater victory in life.

1. Feel
I know we are not supposed to let our feelings run our lives, but we’ve allowed this way of thinking to keep us from feeling at all. Over the years, too many believers downplay emotions as all evil, when we forget, we are designed to connect and experience from the heart. We are made to feel, not just compute.

So it’s important that we allow ourselves to feel the gamut of emotions that we need to process for spiritual and emotional health. It’s ok to rejoice and to mourn. It’s healthy to grieve and to celebrate. Anger is not always evil. We need to process when we are upset. Take time every single day laugh and celebrate. Be open to crying or connecting to pain.

Stop shutting down, stuffing down or living an unemotional life. It’s ok to feel. Your heart was made to connect and experience.

2. Let Go
There are many burdens and issues we carry in our hearts that we were not meant to carry. Every single day, we need to cast our cares upon God and enter into His rest. Casting your cares doesn’t lead you into denial, it just releases the pressure of it all upon God’s ability to work in our situations. Healthy people know how to release their cares, concerns and frustrations to God.

3. Forgive
Some of the healthiest people I know have cultivated the ability to forgive constantly. They don’t allow resentment or being offended lay around too long. They keep toxicity out of their life because they know to not keep accounts on people and overlook offenses that rise up in relationships.

I am astounded that people who have walked with God for decades forget that we need to forgive people every single day. Our forgiveness muscles need to continually grow as we release and let go of hurt and offenses that come our way all day long. The more we hold on to those bitter roots, the more contamination will build up in our hearts.

4. Say Thanks
I think it’s the best practice in the world to let your first thought and last thought of the day be gratitude. If you cultivate a heart of gratitude, then your focus throughout the day will be on all that you have, not on what you do not have. Your thoughts will hover around what is awesome about your life, not allowing discontentment to steal your joy. Every single day and all day long, take frequent stops to express gratitude in all areas of your life.

5. Rehearse Who You Are and Where You Are Headed
Every day, I spend time talking to myself. It’s a habit I have cultivate for decades and in many ways it has preserved my sanity in the toughest of storms. Sometimes all you got is you and God. So you need to be able to leverage your words to comfort, encourage and strengthen yourself.

We need to declare out loud who God says that we are, otherwise we will spend most of the day serving who we are not. We also need to use our words to declare where we are headed.

There is so much pressure on people’s hearts to go somewhere in life. We overwhelm ourselves with the need to achieve or manifest success, when in reality, life is a journey. You have each and every day to practice and rehearse who God says you are and where you are headed. Using our words every day to encourage and strengthen our identity and destiny can be the most fruitful daily habits for your heart.

6. Get Still
Most of our stresses and times of overwhelm come out of the lack of peace in our hearts. It’s important that every day, we set our compass for stillness; not just to pray, but to set the atmosphere in our hearts for peace. Stillness trains our hearts to lean into that peace all day long, so that we are not taken out by the busyness and pressure of modern living.

7. Face Your Fears and Stretch
Every day you need to do something that moves you out of your comfort zone. Millions of people are looking for great breakthrough without being inconveniences or made to feel uncomfortable. There is no blessing in the comfort zone. No breakthrough lives in the world of comfort. Everything you are looking for is outside the boat. The water is waiting for you to walk on it. You just have to face your fear and step out there.

To exercise the muscles of your spiritual heart, you need to learn to be stretched, every day. The moment I realized that I will always be challenged, always be growing and always facing new challenges is the moment I hit a stronger place, because I open myself to new challenges continually.

Practice these habits every day and see what begins to change in your life. Your heart will thank you for it.

Source: Mark Dejesus