The simple answer is yes, God hears your prayers. An ever-present, all-knowing God will hear every word from your mouth, thought in your mind and whisper of your heart.
But there are some things that might affect whether He answers.
Now, let us get one thing straight before we go on… God loves you. Not with a human love but a perfect, consuming, God love. And because of this, sometimes God’s answer is not what we expect. Sometimes it is silence.
Firstly, remember that our way to God is through Jesus. When we follow Jesus, we become children of God and we begin to understand His ways.
It may well be that the answer He is giving you in His silence is that you first need to follow Jesus… Jesus ALWAYS hears the prayer to ask Him into our heart but it must be sincere – ‘You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart’ Jeremiah 29:13 (NIV).
There are other times when God does not seem to hear our prayers but He may be saying no or not yet. He does hear you and the Bible says in Psalm 119:68 that He is good and what He does is good. So trust Him and His timing. Remember, He has promised to never leave or abandon you. God is a perfect Father and will always do what is best, even if it does not feel that way to us at the time.
I have three little kids. My two boys go to school and sometimes they are really rubbish at getting their uniform on. I may have asked them 5 times to put their socks on and one of them, minus his socks, will come to me delighted with a Lego model he made during the five minutes I had been asking him to put his socks on, wanting me to marvel at the wonder of his creation. Instead, he gets told (by a frustrated me) that I am not looking at it until he has put his socks on! I heard his request to look at the Lego but it would have only encouraged bad behaviour for me to have given him a ‘well done’ for it in that moment! Later, once his socks are on, I look and listen and congratulate him on what he has made.
I think God is similar in how He deals with us.
Sometimes there are things we keep doing in our lives like bad behaviours, things we know are not good for us, that God wants us to stop. He knows that this is destructive for us and so if He answers our prayers, we may think that God is OK with our bad behaviours and just carry on with them. No one is perfect, and God deeply loves us no matter what we do, but sin is a barrier to God and often affects our prayers (Proverbs 28:9). The good news is that if we simply focus on getting closer to Jesus, He will help us get rid of the sin in our lives.
So, yes, God does hear our prayers. It may be that the answer He is giving is for you not to give up praying, it may be to stop certain sins in your life, it may be a silence that calls you closer in order to learn the sound of His still small voice. But He hears.
If you feel like your prayers are hitting the ceiling, be quiet with God instead and know that God is near (Philippians 4:5).
The question now is, do you hear Him?
– Bethan
Bethan Lawler is the National Prayer Coordinator at Youth for Christ. Prayer is a subject she is incredibly passionate about and she loves to find ways to inspire others to connect with Jesus. She lives in Birmingham with her husband, Adam, and their three young children. She also enjoys walks in the forest, curry and singing… but not all at the same time.