God Listens to His People
I’m convinced the reason many Christians don’t pray much is because they don’t think it works. For various reasons we come to the conclusion that God isn’t listening when we pray. The Bible tells us how we can be sure that God hears us when we pray.
“The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.” Exodus 2:23-25
God heard their cries and He remembered the covenant He’d made with Abraham and Abraham’s descendents. The remembering mentioned here is not about God’s memory but about God’s integrity. He would never forget His people. And because He’d made a covenant with Abraham He would most certainly honor that covenant. That’s why He listened and that’s why He determined to act on their behalf and deliver them from their bondage.
God has made a covenant with us who have believed on His Son. The Bible refers to it as “the blood of the covenant”, meaning that the surety of this covenant between God and us is the blood His Son shed upon the cross. It was “over His Son’s dead body” that God entered into covenant with us. That is powerfully significant! God’s covenant with us is not based on our goodness or our works but it is based on Christ’s goodness and His work for us on the cross. For God to violate this covenant would be to insult the shed blood of His own Son that made the way for us sinners to enter into a covenant relationship with our God. And we can be sure God will never do that!
This gives us confidence when we pray. I believe we have the privilege, yea, the responsibility to remind God of His covenant with us and boldly ask for His help and intervention in our lives. “Lord, You are our God and we are Your people and You have promised to hear us. Hear us Lord and move on our behalf! We hold You to Your covenant, in Jesus’ name.” I believe God is pleased and honored when we boldly remind Him that we are His covenantal people. Two such bold statements in scripture have been coming forth from my lips as I seek God to bring His transforming presence to our church and our region.
The first is, “It is time for you to act, LORD; your law is being broken” Psalm 119:126. Here the Psalmist is bold to call upon the Lord to take action and do something! He does this because of the disrespect the people have for His word. I have felt great liberty to pray the same.
The second is, “Rise up, LORD! May your enemies be scattered” Numbers 10:35. Here Moses boldly asks the Lord to rise up and put His enemies to flight. My heart cries out also that God would rise up and scatter His enemies even Satan and his demons. I often ask the Lord to push back the powers of darkness and pour out His Spirit for His own name’s sake.
There are many other examples in scripture where the people of God boldly laid hold of Him by faith and asked that He remember His people and remember His promises and act on their behalf. May we remember that through the Lord Jesus Christ we are the people of God and God is pleased and honored when we remind Him of this and pray with bold faith that He would move on our behalf and for the sake of the gospel. Cry out to Him people of God. He is listening.
Pastor Dan
|