PREVIEW: What would you do if you worshipped a god who never heard your prayers? Or if you believed in no god at all? How sad, scary, and frustrating that would be! And yet billions of people on this planet live that way. But we have a God who hears us when we pray! How blessed are we that God has chosen us as his people, has given us the awesome privilege to come into his courts, and has invited us to pour out our hearts to him. And he hears us! But if we don’t take advantage of that privilege, as Phillips Brooks said, “it is an infinitely foolish thing.”
A Journey of Worship // Psalm 65:2-4
What would you do if you worshipped a god who never heard your prayers? Or if you believed in no god at all? How sad, scary, and frustrating that would be! And yet billions of people on this planet live that way.
Over the years, it has been my privilege to travel to many places and engage in missionary work, and one of the sobering things I witness wherever I go is a profound sadness and emptiness in the souls of people who don’t know our God.
In the former Soviet Union, I’ve talked with people who had been indoctrinated their entire lives with the communist propaganda that God didn’t exist. That Soviet system promised the Russian people everything, but in the end, it not only didn’t deliver, but it also robbed their souls of the joy, peace, and hope that comes only from being connected to the Creator. What I saw in their eyes was a bleak reminder of what happens to the human spirit when you take God out of the picture.
Russia isn’t the only place where that happens. I’ve witnessed desperate Hindus in Sri Lanka making sacrifices of food to their gods while their emaciated children played in a sewage-infested stream nearby. I’ve seen devout Catholics in Central America pouring out their hearts to icons and animists in Africa worshipping snakes, but none of them walked away from their respective religious rites with any sense that their prayers had been heard. And every day here in America, people worship their stuff, yet they crave more since, in reality, they are giving their worship to a god that cannot hear.
But we have a God who hears us when we pray! And like the psalmist said, how blessed we are that God has chosen us as his people, given us the awesome privilege to come into his courts, and invited us to pour out our hearts to him. And he hears us!
He hears our pleas for forgiveness—and answers: “When we were overwhelmed by sins, you forgave our transgressions.” (Psalm 65:3)
He hears our prayers for provision—and answers: “Blessed are those you choose and bring near to live in your courts! We are filled with the good things of your house, of your holy temple.” (Psalm 65:4)
He hears our request for intervention—and answers: “You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds, God our Savior, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas” (Psalm 65:5)
And even when we don’t ask, he still fuels this global ecosystem with what it requires to keep us alive: “You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly. The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so you have ordained it…You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance.” (Psalm 65:9,11)
How blessed we are—God hears us when we pray. As the Apostle John said, “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)
How blessed, indeed, that we are His, and He is ours!
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