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by Katie Erickson

Last week I wrote about how to pray. But does God really hear us when we pray? Or is it all just a pointless exercise?

The question behind this question is that we first need to believe that God exists. If we don’t believe that God exists, then we wouldn’t pray in the first place, and we wouldn’t care whether God hears prayers. But, if God exists, and we do have a prayer conversation with Him, then how do we know that He hears us?

One way we can know this is if God answers us, as I wrote about last week. Prayer is not just us talking AT God, but it’s us talking WITH God. It is a two-way conversation between us and Him, so we need to listen for His answer as well as telling Him our requests. God may not answer our specific questions right away, but when we allow ourselves to hear Him, then we know He is listening.

We see in the Bible that God tells us He is listening. Psalm 34:15 says, “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry.” In 1 Chronicles 5:20, we’re told that God answered the people’s prayers because they trusted in Him. We too need to trust that God at least hears our prayers if we are expecting an answer from Him.

We also see evidence in the Bible of God listening to people. Look at the story of Jonah - go read the whole thing, it’s only 4 chapters. Toward the end of the story, Jonah has told the people of Nineveh about God’s impending judgment, and the king responded by telling the people, “Let everyone call urgently on God” (3:8). A couple verses later, it says, “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened” (3:10). God heard the prayers of the people, even though they were not necessarily believers in Him before. They trusted that He must exist, because of Jonah’s proclamation, and therefore called out to God, and God heard them. Just after that, in chapter 4, Jonah and God have conversation about the outcome of that and Jonah’s feelings. While God may not have given Jonah the answer he was looking for, God did hear Jonah’s prayers.

But that story happened a long time ago. What about today? Does God really hear my prayers today? I fully believe that He does. There have been many times that I know God has heard and answered my prayers - sometimes in the way I would like, and other times in a way that isn’t what I want at first. If you believe that God exists, believe that He is the God who cares about us and wants to hear from us.

Next week we’ll look at how we know if our prayer was answered, so be sure to check back next week for that!