2 Chronicles 7:12 (NIV) “I have heard your prayer … .”
Have you ever wondered what God looks like? Does He look like us? Does He have physical features that we would recognize? Or is He strictly a spirit being with no appearance that we have ever seen this side of heaven? Does it matter one way or the other? No. But because of our finite wisdom and knowledge, we tend to wonder about such things. I find it rather normal. We humans tend to want to see, know and understand who or what we are dealing with in any given situation … is that not true? It is for me at least.
How many people see God as a Heavenly version of the father that has been displayed before them on this earth. In a vast majority of cases, that would be a good thing, but in millions of other cases that would be a very bad thing. God is unlike any other. Nothing on this earth could ever compare to Him. No matter how hard we try to emulate God and think, say and do what He would think, say and do, we fall miserably short of our goal because we are terminally imperfect. God is the only perfect entity, which is why He is the prototype, so to speak. The example that should be followed.
Having said all that, what does it mean to us when we read the words “I have heard your prayer …”? If God is ethereal and therefore not of this earth, then how does He hear us? What does He use to hear us? Maybe He does have ears? I am going to make a radical right turn here … why do we care? So many of us, and I can tend to be one of them, over think certain things. Rather than focusing on the fact that He hears us, I want to know how He hears us. I am telling you now, the confirmation in scripture that your Heavenly Father actually hears you when you pray to Him is infinitely more important than how He hears you.
How many of you understand that there is a significant difference between listening and hearing. We can listen to someone all day long and not truly hear anything they have said. It is like the reverse of giving someone “lip service”. Instead of telling people what we believe they want to hear, we pretend to listen to every word that is being said without hearing ANYTHING they have said. What a comfort to find that our Heavenly Father can be trusted to HEAR our prayers and not just listen to them.
In the movie, BRUCE ALMIGHTY, God, played by Morgan Freeman, takes a vacation, giving all His powers to Bruce (Jim Carrey). In one scene, Bruce is on his computer and he starts receiving hundreds, even thousands of prayer requests almost instantaneously. He can’t answer them all individually, because he has determined that it would be too time consuming, so he decides to just give an affirmative answer to all the prayer requests. This of course does not work out so well. Isn’t it a good thing that God not only hears us as an individual, but takes the time to say either ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ from time to time when He knows to rubber stamp our request will lead to negative consequences. We truly do not know what is good for us and normally want the easy way into or out of a given situation. However, it is in the waiting that some of our most important lessons are learned … as long as WE have decided to hear and not just listen.
WALK WITH THE KING TODAY AND BE A BLESSING!!
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