God Sees and Hears
Once a month I write a letter to the wonderful Prayer for Prodigals community I am part of. Often those letters, though specific to those who love a prodigal, apply to any or all of us in the challenging circumstances of life.
Dear Lover of Prodigals,
I’ve spent a little time working on my book for you--When You Love a Prodigal: Grace for the Wilderness. I am pulling together a chapter on Promise—a look at the promises God gives in His names, assuring us of who He is and what He’s like.
I was especially grateful for the reminder that our God sees and hears. He sees what is happening with our prodigals and with us. And He hears their cries and our prayers.
Please be encouraged with these reminders of His attention to our needs, that God sees and hears.
He Sees
Sometimes we wonder where God is. Is He off taking care of wars in the Middle East, or earthquakes in China or floods in Bangladesh? Does He even see me—or this one I love and pray for?
That’s how Hagar must have felt. A slave to Sarai, now pregnant with Abram’s child, she is resented by Sarai. So she flees to the desert, where an angel of the Lord tells her to return to Sarai and assures her that she will have a son who will be the father of multitudes.
Hagar responds: "You are the God who sees me…. I have now seen the One who sees me."
And that same God, though He has all the cares of the world, cares for us. He is El Roi, the God who sees. He sees our heart for our prodigals, the pain they cause us, the despair that overwhelms us, the fear that grips us.
And He sees our loved ones. He knows where they are, what they are doing, the pain they feel—and the future He has for them. Though they are out of our sight, they are never out of His sight!
He Hears
Our willingness to pray assumes that someone is listening. But sometimes we wonder. Our prayers seem to “hit the ceiling.” We beg, beseech, cajole, bargain, and yet too often we feel like we have not been heard. We don’t see the answers we desire.
But our God is a God who hears us!
In Psalm 34:17 we learn of Yahweh shmo: “The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.”
We can be assured that, as we cry out to God for our loved ones, He hears.
But there is more.
John tells us that our God is AkouO. He is listening and He is hearing: ‘This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” (1 John 5:14,15)
Literally, this means that God is hearing us—it is present tense. He is always in midst of hearing our prayers.
Is it God’s desire that these prodigals come to Him? We know that it is. So we can come to Him with confidence that He hears our petitions, our cries. He longs for fellowship with these dear ones more than we do. And He is, in His perfect ways and times, lovingly drawing them to Himself.
We are so blessed. Our God sees us and our loved ones—He sees it all. And He listens for our voices. We can be assured that His eyes are on us and His ears are listening.
With gratitude for a seeing, hearing God,JudyWhat about you? When have you known that God sees and hears?
c2016 Judy Douglass
If you would like to request prayer for a prodigal loved one, or be a part of our wonderful praying community, respond in comments or write to me at PrayerforProdigals at gmaildotcom.