The Always GodSample

THE GOD WHO HEARS

All of us wonder at times, Does God really hear me? If so, what about all my unanswered prayers?

I’m reminded of the scene of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane the night he was betrayed.

Jesus asked his best friends to pray with him that evening, but they kept falling asleep. What lay ahead for Jesus was weighing heavily on him emotionally and spiritually. He was sweating drops of blood as he prayed, asking God to show him a different route to take than the cross (Matthew 26:36–46).

But there was no other way.

Jesus taught us an important lesson in the garden. He taught us to pray for God’s will to be done instead of our own. Only someone with a deep trust in God can pray this prayer and actually mean it.

When we trust God like that and pray like that, his silence doesn’t scare us.

We know he hears us.

He always hears us.

We just have to learn to wait and keep our trust in him.

I choose to trust. Like Jesus in the garden, I want God’s will, not mine.

If you embrace the kind of radical surrender Jesus did—telling God, “I want what you want more than what I want”—can you imagine the kind of freedom and peace you will have? Picture a confused new driver with only a learner’s permit trying to weave through fast-moving traffic and having no idea if he’s even going in the right direction. Imagine him stopping, scooting over into the passenger’s seat, and giving the steering wheel to a professional driver with a finely tuned GPS. Whew! The pressure is now off, and the tension is a thing of the past. That could be you if you’d just let God drive. “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

Do you ever feel as though your prayers don’t make it past the ceiling? What truth can you lean on when that happens? How can you know that God is actually listening to your prayers?