(8.) The Gospel Story of Tobit: Our God Who Answers Before We Ask
(8.) The Gospel Story of Tobit: Our God Who Answers Before We Ask.
“My son, may the God who dwells in heaven prosper your journey and protect you on the way, and may He bring you back to me safe and sound. May God’s angel journey with you and accompany you for safety, my son.” (Tobit 5:17).
The Story Continues. After Tobit’s deeply grief-stricken prayers were offered to God (chapter 3), and after Tobit’s wise fatherly counsel for his son (chapter 4), Tobit prepares in earnest for his son’s two-day journey to Media to locate an old investment and marry the most eligible woman in their lineage. Tobias desperately desires a traveling companion for Tobias to wisely guide him and bring him home safely and successfully. Out of nowhere a young man appears and offers his services for the journey, a mysterious man named Azariah (“Yahweh helps“), and Tobit is quite taken with him. The reader knows that this young man is actually the archangel Raphael in disguise, and that God has sent Raphael in answer to Tobias’ future prayer. We have already been told that Raphael is on a mission to heal Tobias’ blindness, arrange a marriage for Tobias to Sarah, and bind the demon of lust who is harassing Tobias’ future bride. When Raphael first meets Tobit and listens to his despair of ever being able to see again, Raphael encourages Tobit by assuring him that his healing will come soon. Raphael is not yet willing to reveal his true angelic nature, but maintains the misperception until his mission has been successfully completed later in the story. Before Raphael and Tobias depart on their journey, Tobit, ironically, blessed Azariah by saying, “God bless you, brother!” Tobit was completely unaware of the fact that this traveling companion is actually an angel who doesn’t need his blessing! Then Tobit prayed a blessing over Tobias with the words, “My son, may the God of heaven prosper your journey and protect you on the way, and may He bring you back to me safe and sound. May God’s angel journey with you and accompany you for safety, my son.” And then to top it all off, Tobit encouraged his worried wife, the mother of his son Tobias, by saying, “Do not be concerned, for he shall return in good health, and your eyes will see him again. For a good angel will go with him, his journey will be successful, and he will return unharmed and happy.” Yes, we read this correctly… God answered Tobias’ request for an angel before he even asked for that angel. God was ahead of the action, knew what the request was going to be, and fulfilled the request before Tobit even requested it!
“Before they call, I will answer; before they are finished speaking, I will have already heard.” (Isaiah 65:24).
God Answers Before We Ask. Since our all-knowing Lord experiences the past, present and future simultaneously, He is able to remain behind the scenes and ahead of the action whenever He wants. He is outside of our earthly time constraints, so God can answer a prayer before it’s prayed. He can see our burden before we feel them. He can know our thoughts before we even think them. He is aware of our needs before we even know of them. God can look backward in time and act, He can look forward in time, and He can stay in one moment for as long as He wants. He is able to look into the past and answer a prayer that is still in our future. God answered Tobit’s prayer for an angel before Tobit even asked it! An anonymous African missionary tried to describe it this way… “We can only drift with the flow of the River of Time. We can’t swim upstream in this river nor can we swim downstream. But God is not stuck in this river. He is instead up on the riverbanks. When he hears a prayer, He can walk upstream, back in time, and stir the water enough to change what happens so the prayer is answered. Then He can walk downstream and see how that change affected other events. He can move immediately back or forward in time.”
“Lord, you know everything there is to know about me. You perceive every movement of my heart and soul, and you understand my every thought before it even enters my mind. You are so intimately aware of me, Lord. You read my heart like an open book, and you know all the words I’m about to speak before I even start a sentence! You know every step I will take before my journey even begins.” (King David, Psalm 139:1-4, TPT).
God Reads our Mind before We Think Our Thoughts. Let’s talk about the hearing ability of God, who is a spirit and doesn’t actually have ears. The Hebrew Bible is full of references to God’s ability to hear humans before they speak, and whenever they pray. It is a matter of faith that God has the ability and desire to listen to us even before we speak. This is obviously an eternal mystery outside of human understanding. “With the Lord, a day is like a thousand hears, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8). The fact is that God’s hearing transcends space and time. Our prayers don’t have to be carefully constructed as if from an English professor, and in fact don’t have to be constructed at all in order for God to hear us. God is able to listen to the heart outside of time or inside for that matter. He is able to go back in time and listen to what is going on in the heart before He hears the thoughts of our mind. God’s eternal radar is constantly in the “on” position, ready to listen to whatever we have to say in the past, present or future, with or without words. God’s fingers, in other words, is constantly on the pulse of the heart. God’s ears are always open, even if He doesn’t actually have ears. God doesn’t have to anticipate our needs or prayers, for He is in the moment during which He is able to fulfill our needs before we know of them. Let’s not forget the overlooked words Jesus spoke just before His famous Lord’s Prayer”
“Your Father already knows what you need before you ask Him.” (Matthew 6:8).