My Response to Prayer
Have you ever been in a meeting and you’re the one that walks out with all (or great percent) of all the action items. Everyone else on the team talks about all the things that need to happen and yet you’re the one that ends up with all the things to do?
I think we experience the same thing everytime we go to God in prayer...
We tell God all that is going on in our world, we express to him all the things we think ought to be done, we give him ideas about how they ought to be done, but then of course leave the spiritual ‘faith’ caveat, “but, God you know better than I do so you do things however you think is best...”
Then we say “amen” and walk out of the throne room of God and into our days. We have left God with all the ‘to-do’s” and we go about looking for all His answers.
God delights to answer our prayers, however he is more interested in the fact that we are in a relationship with him – and we come to him in prayer and enter into a dialog with him.
It is in prayer that God begins to change our lives. In prayer he can transform the way I think, In the quietness of prayer he begins to challenge my values. In the intimate relationship of prayer God begins to shape the way I live my life, the things I say and do. He made us to bear his image and it is in prayer that He gains our attention to influence and shape our lives and wills. He wants to reveal himself to the rest of creation by the ways I live and the things I do. He knows we don’t really know how to live rightly, especially live looking like Him.
If I am truely God’s servant, and He is my God, shouldn’t I expect to leave my prayer time with some things to do. If I know I have truly been with God and heard his voice in the midst of my prayer time, I have spent time learning from him then I can expect to do something that he has for me that day do to.
When we come to God in Prayer – do we expect Him to speak up and say something? God does speak today.
Often, I wonder if we even expect to hear from God when we pray. We may know intellectually that this is a conversation with God, but it often turns into a monologue
In the passage of Isa 28:23-29 it starts out
“Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say.”
The NASB says “hear my voice and listen to my words”
“Listen to me, give me your closest attention” Msg
This verse appears somewhat repetitive, It is like what a parent would say to their child. God is using repetition here to make a point that he wants us to hear what he is saying.
To translate the original Hebrew would say something like:
Give your ear and hear my voice, harken and hear my speech.
“You hear the sound of my voice, take in the words that I am saying”
The verbs “listen” and “pay attention” are in a ‘causal’ form, meaning intend to do this, take this seriously.
Listen – is referring to an attitude or perspective
Hear – is referring to an ability and posture
God speaks to us, are we in a attitude and posture to hear him?
The question is “do I listen?” “do we hear him? Can we distinguish his voice from my own, my mind, my friends, parent, the book I just read, what I learned in school, even a demon – Do I know when God is speaking and when it is all these other voices.
We can (and should) expect to hear God speak in our prayer time – it is to be a dialog
Jesus said –
John 10:27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
God delights for us to pray to Him, but he also desires to hear His voice.
How do I hear God’s voice:
The Holy Spirit will speak to your heart and mind.
Maybe it is a thought that you know is not from you.
John 14:26-27
26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 2
The Holy Spirit will always confirm Truth – it will line up with scripture.
Peace in your heart
John 14:27
27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
Confirm through God’s Word
1 Tim 4:5
because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
There are many times we want to hear from God – we want direction, we want answers, we want things to change, but do we pray to hear from him so we know his heart, his perspective, do I want to hear so I can do his will – or to get the Godly “ok” on my plans.
There are times we pray about the same things and don’t hear a response. Times I pray for something over and over, but my ear is postured only for one response, an answer that makes sense to me, times I prayed to go in one direction and he has said stay, or I want things to stay the way they are and he says go in this direction – not what I expected to hear.
Prayer prepares me to change the way I think & know God. - Seasons change,
“24 When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually?
Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil?”
Prayer can help us break the soil, but the soil that needs broken may be my own heart. I can plow thankfulness, harrow admiration, levelling confession in my heart. – preparing my own heart to hear from Him.
I can just keep asking for the same things over and over and He says it is time to do something different – how do I know unless I learn to hear his voice.
When I come to him in prayer – do I come as a learner?
25 When he has leveled the surface,
does he not sow caraway and scatter cummin?
Does he not plant wheat in its place,
barley in its plot,
and spelt in its field?
26 His God instructs him
and teaches him the right way.
I often think I know best how things should go in my life instead of learning his ways from him.
One of the ways I can know that it is truely God speaking in my prayer time is because the Holy Spirit is confirming these thoughts with God’s Word. And there have been many times I have asked God to confirm what I think he has just said by giving me a verse that I can look to
John 14:26
“The Holy Spirit...will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”
God’s Ways are very different from yours and mine – but unless I am in a postion to hear his voice, and willing to come as a learner I will miss what God wants to do in my life.
Isa 55:8-9
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the Lord .
9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
26 His God instructs him
and teaches him the right way.
God instructs = informs us of what / how / why (his heart and values)
God teaches = he shows us practically – what / how to do something.
How much of our prayer time is devoted to learning from God, letting God inform us / practically showing us how to live.
God wants to show us how to live. He made us to bear his image and we do not know how to do that unless He shows us. The proof of that is our sin – we confess the ways that we didn’t live as he would live if He were living in our skin – which is what He made us to do.
When we pray, we can learn practically how to live and apply his truth. He says...
27 Caraway is not threshed with a sledge,
nor is a cartwheel rolled over cummin;
caraway is beaten out with a rod,
and cummin with a stick.
28 Grain must be ground to make bread;
so one does not go on threshing it forever.
Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it,
his horses do not grind it.
There are many times we think we know how to work at our jobs, love our spouse, raise our kids, buy houses. We think we know how to pick out movies to watch, who to work out with,
But how often do we involve God in the decisions of our life,
He knows where to plant what, when to plant it. He knows how to harvest, some things have to be harvested with a stick and other with a rod, some is smashed and some is ground.
Pretty specific, pretty practical. God knows the right way to do everything, how often do we think we know the right way to do things.
We can’t faithfully respond to God until we have heard from him, learned from him, taught by him.
We deal with all kinds of situations in life
We need to learn when to do things, what to do, how to do it.
The challenge is there is risk involved. Somethings I don’t want to do, so I don’t want to learn and I don’t want to listen.
When we come to God in prayer, we come to listen, learn and then to do the things he tells us to do.
We don’t always want to respond to him. We have our own ideas, agendas, desires, ideas which often carry more importance than what God says.
When we do this – we stop responding to God – we stop learning and listening to God then we think “God no longer speaks” we think...
Jer 42:1-6
42 Then all the army officers, including Johanan son of Kareah and Jezaniaha son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest approached 2 Jeremiah the prophet and said to him, "Please hear our petition and pray to the Lord your God for this entire remnant. For as you now see, though we were once many, now only a few are left. 3 Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do."
4 "I have heard you," replied Jeremiah the prophet. "I will certainly pray to the Lord your God as you have requested; I will tell you everything the Lord says and will keep nothing back from you."
5 Then they said to Jeremiah, "May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act in accordance with everything the Lord your God sends you to tell us. 6 Whether it is favorable or unfavorable, we will obey the Lord our God, to whom we are sending you, so that it will go well with us, for we will obey the Lord our God."
Jer 43:1-3
43 When Jeremiah finished telling the people all the words of the Lord their God — everything the Lord had sent him to tell them — 2 Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah and all the arrogant men said to Jeremiah, "You are lying! The Lord our God has not sent you to say, 'You must not go to Egypt to settle there.' 3 But Baruch son of Neriah is inciting you against us to hand us over to the Babylonians,a so they may kill us or carry us into exile to Babylon."
There is a risk in hearing from God,,,
We know that when God speaks
- We must obey him
- Tell God we will not obey him
Oswald Chamber said
I put God in a “humiliating position of having treated me as a child of his while all the time I’ve been ignoring Him.
“the real delight of Hearing from Him is tempered with the shame of having been so long in hearing Him.
We Pray to:
- Hear
- Learn
- Live
How should I respond to him in Prayer?
- 1. Listen to Him – have an attitude that desires to hear from God
- 2. Learn from Him – willing to set aside the things I think I know to learn how God would want me respond
- 3. Do what He says – stretch your faith / participate with him