God Hears Our Prayers

I’ve learned over the years not to trust my memory when I have a thought or idea before drifting off to sleep at night. What seems so clear at that moment is completely forgotten by morning if I don’t write it down.

Thankfully, my husband, Brad, has also learned not to trust his memory.

Not long before my father died, Brad had a dream. In the dream, they were having a conversation, and my dad gave Brad the reference to a verse of Scripture.

So as not to forget the Scripture reference, Brad grabbed a piece of paper from the nightstand next to the bed and wrote down the Bible reference before falling back asleep. In the morning, he didn’t even remember about the dream until he saw his scribbled note— 2 Chronicles 6:40.

He opened his Bible and read, “O my God, may your eyes be open and your ears attentive to all the prayers made to you in this place.”

That dream brought such encouragement to us. At the time, we had a Bible study and prayer meeting in our home on Wednesday evenings, and it reassured us that God was attentive to those prayers as well as to our personal and family prayers.

How important it is for us to pray, yet how easy it is to neglect prayer. My passion for prayer was recently renewed after listening to an audio version of Purpose in Prayer by E.M. Bounds. In that book, Bounds quotes Spurgeon.

How very few of us have ever spent a whole night in prayer, and yet what gifts we might have had for such asking! We little know what a night of prayer would do for us—its effect we can scarcely calculate. One night alone in prayer might make us new men—changed from poverty of soul to spiritual wealth—from trembling to triumph! We have an example of it in the life of Jacob. Previously the crafty shuffler—always bargaining and calculating, unlovely in almost every respect—yet one night in prayer turned the supplanter into a prevailing prince and robed him with celestial grandeur! From that night he lives on the sacred page as one of the nobility of Heaven. Could not we, at least now and then, in these weary earthbound years, hedge about a single night for such enriching traffic with the skies?

What? Have we no sacred ambition? Are we deaf to the yearnings of Divine love? Yet, my Brothers and Sisters, for wealth and for science, men will cheerfully quit their warm couches! Cannot we do it now and then for the love of God and the good of souls? Where is our zeal, our gratitude, our sincerity? I am ashamed while I thus upbraid both myself and you. May we often tarry at Jabbok, and cry with Jacob, as he grasped the Angel— “With You all night I mean to stay, And wrestle till the break of day.” Surely, Brothers and Sisters, if we have given whole days to folly, we can afford a space for heavenly wisdom! Time was when we gave whole nights to chambering and wantonness, to dancing and the world’s revelry—we did not tire, then— we were chiding the sun that he rose so soon, and wishing the hours would lag awhile that we might delight in wilder merriment, and perhaps deeper sin. Oh, why should we weary in heavenly employments? Why do we grow weary when asked to watch with our Lord? Up, sluggish Heart, Jesus calls you! Rise and go forth to meet the heavenly Friend in the place where He manifests Himself! – Charles Spurgeon, March 1, 1868. (www.spurgeongems.org/sermon/chs798.pdf)

What a challenge from Spurgeon. Let’s not grow weary friends! I challenge you as I challenge myself.

Ask and it will be given to you;

Seek and you will find;

Knock and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7)

Keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking. We are invited to come boldly to the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16).

How wonderful that we can have an audience with the God of the universe.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective (James 5:16).