This is the confidence we have…if we ask …he hears us. – 1 John 5:14
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To Christians it is not surprising that God hears and answers our prayers but I was recently thinking about this passage from the perspective of an unbeliever, the average Joe who thinks there may be a “big guy upstairs” or the intellectual who “knows” religion is just for the ignorant masses. Imagine how our belief in prayer appears to them.
“So you actually believe that when you, this little speck of carbon and water on a small planet in an immense universe, when you speak, all heaven stops and listens?!”
Sounds preposterous doesn’t it? We don’t just hope He will hear us. We are confident of it – no doubt about it. Why? Because we are His children.
“So, now you not only think this far off immeasurable Force takes an interest in your puny life but that somehow you are related to Him – His child no less?”
Sounds crazy, insane, delusions of grandeur and it would be if it were something we made up. But it was His idea to listen to us. It was His idea to encourage us to approach Him with our concerns. It was His idea to adopt us. It was His idea to reach out to us. We could never have known about Him or communicated with Him if He had not made it possible. It was all His idea.
So we must be pretty special, right? No, and this is what makes it all sane and sensible. This is true not because we are so wonderful but because He is so marvelous. His wondrous love reached out to His creation when there was nothing worthy in us. It is all because of Who He is. What a marvelous God! What a glorious grace! What an incomparable Savior!
We can know Him! We can speak with Him! He is concerned about our lives, our successes, our hurts and losses. He cares. We are confident of it.
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Ephesians 3:12
In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
Hebrews 4:16
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
1 Peter 5:7 (NLT)
Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.