Exploring God’s Ability to Listen
Exploring God’s Ability to Listen.
“O the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God! What a deep wealth of wisdom and knowledge He has! How incomprehensible are His decisions, how unsearchable His judgments! How undiscoverable are His paths, how mysterious His ways, beyond finding out! Who has understood the mind of Yahweh? Who knows how the LORD thinks, or what His thoughts are? Can anyone discern the LORD’s intentions, His motivations? Who knows enough to give Him advice? Is there anyone qualified to be His counselor? Who has given Him so much that He needs to pay it back? Who could ever have a claim against Him? For everything was created by Him, everything lives through Him, and everything exists for Him; So to Him must be given the glory forever! Amen!” (Romans 11:33-36, also Isaiah 40:12-14).
WANTED: Adventurers who want to explore creation’s Final Frontier, the greatest Wonder of the World; must be extremely curious about the nature of God’s Being; motivated to know more about God than you know presently; inspired by the thrill of discovery; need to be challenged and changed in the process of exploration; have the courage to step into a safe unknown; able to invest considerable mental energy to pursue life inside God with a mustard seed of trust in Him; be comfortable with the certainty of endless exploring; have the patience to pursue the quest one step at a time for as long as it takes; must explore with the vision of C. S. Lewis in his Narnia tales, “Further Up and Further In!”
Contemporary Frontiers. What are the most compelling frontiers in our world that we could explore… Outer space with its 100 billion galaxies, each of them having 100 billion stars? Inner space where protons and electrons and all the subatomic particles seeming to be dancing in joy? The ocean floors across the earth, 80% of which are unexplored? Or perhaps land areas such as remote mountain ranges, untraveled deserts, impenetrable jungles and rainforests, the frozen tundra of the Arctic, isolated islands in the middle of nowhere, or virgin caverns and caves that are largely hidden from humanity? These are all worthy frontiers, but there is a final frontier that tops them all… God. And whatever might be discovered about the Person of God, it’s only the tip of the eternal iceberg.
Exploring God’s Ability to Listen:
“In my distress I called upon the Lord Yahweh, and to my God Elohim; From His palace in heaven He heard my voice, and my cry to Him reached His ears.” (Psalm18:6).
Jonah 2 – You Heard My Cry (I’m Worshiping You) || Bible in Song || Project of Love
Acute Hearing Ability. We trust that God hears our thoughtful prayers, even before we speak. “It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear.” (Isaiah 65:24). A common refrain in the Psalms is the firm belief that God would hear their prayers: “His ears are attentive;” “Does He who implanted the ear not hear?” “I have called aloud to the Lord with my voice, and He heard me.” “The Lord will hear when I call to Him;” “Blessed be the Lord, because He has heard my supplication.” “God surely listened.” And we have a standing promise from the Lord… “Call to me and I will answer.” (Jer. 33:3). Can we get our heads around the claim that God is able to fully listen to everyone in the world at the same time? That He has the ongoing ability to perfectly hear the words and perceive the thoughts of every person on planet earth? No, actually we cannot. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
God Hears Us Think. We trust that God hears our thoughtful prayers, even before we speak. “It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear.” (Isaiah 65:24). A common refrain in the Psalms is the firm belief that God would hear their prayers: “His ears are attentive;” “Does He who implanted the ear not hear?” “I have called aloud to the Lord with my voice, and He heard me.” “The Lord will hear when I call to Him;” “Blessed be the Lord, because He has heard my supplication.” “God surely listened.” And we have a standing promise from the Lord… “Call to me and I will answer.” (Jer. 33:3).
God Listens to the Heart. The Hebrew Bible is full of references to God’s ability to hear humans when they pray, when they seek to be heard by God. It is a matter of faith that God has the ability and desire to listen to us. Once again, we are outside of human understanding. The fact is that God’s hearing transcends words. Our prayers don’t have to be well-constructed as if by an English teacher. God first listens to the heart, then the words. He is able to listen to what is going on in the heart before He hears the thoughts of our mind. God’s radar is constantly in the “on” position, ready to listen to whatever we have to say or think, 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 is all ears at all times.
Ry Cooder – Jesus On The Mainline – Live 1977
“So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God knew them.” (Exodus 2:24-25).
Exodus 2:24-25 reveals a God of action. God heard, a Hebrew word that implies action; He remembered, a biblical concept that implies intervention; He saw, which involves acting upon what one has perceived; and He knew, a theme in Scripture that is experiential and active. God here is on the move for His Chosen People, with wisdom, purpose and compassion. The Hebrew understanding is that their word for hearing (sh’mah) involves more than opening the ear and taking a listen. Hearing is the opposite of something going in one ear and out the other. Hearing in the biblical sense implies action, giving heed, acting on what was heard, acting on whatever was understood. The fact that God “heard” means that He understood what was going on, and He was ready to spring into action. When the children of Israel groaned in Egypt, God heard/acted, He understood/intervened, He listened/took heed. Why? As Yahweh later told Moses on Sinai, when a person in distress “cries out to Me, I will hear him, for I am gracious.” (Exodus 22:27).
Donald Lawrence – He Heard My Cry {feat. Arnetta Murrill-Crooms} Lyrics (Lyric Video) – YouTube
A Spirit with Senses. When Scripture says that God heard, remembered, saw and knew, what is hard if not impossible to understand, is that as a Spirit God doesn’t have ears to hear, He doesn’t have a memory to remember, he doesn’t have eyes to see. But we humans have always had to give to God human traits in order to try to describe in our meager ways something outside our experience. God is so profoundly separate from creation, from human understanding, that we need to attribute human features to Him so we can relate to Him, so we can begin to understand His actions, His qualities and personality. Without this, how would we capture Him in our imagination, our faith? God’s actions, God’s words, need to be described in human terms, because that is all we know. The sharp eyesight of a formless Spirit without eyes is beyond our comprehension The acute hearing ability of a Spirit without ears is in another dimension from us. Nonetheless, as Scripture makes clear, our God is a personal God, He hears, remembers, sees, and knows intimately. That’s all true even if we don’t understand it. According to St. John, who is quoting Jesus, God is spirit (John 4:24). Since God is in the form, or rather the formlessness of a spirit, we assume He doesn’t have human features like a face, a mighty arm, or an outstretched hand, as it says in Scriptures.
“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).
Call Upon Him | Sandra McCracken (Official Live Video)
Wordless Prayers. Perhaps we assume through faith that God listens to us, that he hears our prayers when we are able to articulate them. But what about praying without words? When we are unable to put words together, or the times when words are simply not enough to communicate what is on our heart? Are wordless prayers a legitimate way to be heard by God? Sometimes our best prayers don’t have words. Sometimes our most heart-felt prayers to God are punctuated without language. And God lovingly listens to every nonverbal prayer. Yes, the Scripture is clear that God hears our groans and sighs, our tears and laughter, our growls and our heavy breathing. If all we can do is groan or cry, remember that God knows each of us at the heart level, He knows what we mean to say if we had the words. God hears our hearts.
- God Listens to Groans. “And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children, including the new bodies He has promised us.” (Romans 8:23).
In biblical terms, a groan and a sigh are interchangeable); a wordless sound uttered in pain, grief, or distress; a visceral sound full of deep emotion but without language; a personal expression of inner disturbance; the Greek word for groan is rooted in the word for ‘to give birth;’ a deep wordless prayer offered to God when in distress or difficulty. “Prayer is language used in relation to God. God speaks to us; our answers are our prayers. The answers are not always articulate. Silence, sighs, groaning – these also constitute responses.” (Eugene Peterson). So it’s okay to groan. It’s not sinful to sigh. We don’t need permission from anybody, no less God, to groan and sigh to God when the situation calls for it. So many of the psalmist’s prayers were composed amidst groans. The key is not to get stuck there, but to offer your groans to the Lord and ask Him for His presence in your distress, and to eventually turn your groaning into dancing. When only a groan or sigh will articulate to God what is on your heart, groan away. God listens and understands. Groaning can actually be a spiritual gift in which we are afforded a way to express our thoughts and feelings at the deepest level to a God who always stands ready to listen and respond. Along with all of creation, we also groan. We groan inwardly, and sometimes outwardly, as we wait for the redemption of the world. We are waiting, sometimes impatiently, for the time when we won’t have to suffer the consequences of a fallen world. We hope for the time when we will fully participate in the life of Christ within us. We groan that we might experience some of the fullness of our status as God’s children. We yearn for the time when sin will be eradicated, and pain, and suffering, and violence, and injustice. We long for the day when we won’t be challenged by temptation and spiritual warfare. We wait for the time when our world-weariness will turn into spiritual rest. O, to live in an untainted world, where sorrows cease, when mourning turns into dancing, when we joyfully sit at table with other believers at the wedding feast of the Lamb.
- God listens to Laughter. “It was like a dream come true when you freed us from our bondage and brought us back to Zion! We laughed and laughed and overflowed with gladness. We were left shouting for joy and singing your praise.”( 126:1-2).
God created us with the ability to laugh, and it is one of His greatest gifts, right there next to music. There will be those joyous times when we laugh our prayers to God. When we direct our prayerful laugh to God, He listens and it gladdens God’s heart. When He created us in His image, laughter was a part of the package deal, since we know God is a God of joy. If we couldn’t laugh, how could we express joy and gladness? How could we lighten our hearts along with God’s? Of course, there are many kinds of laughter, and some of them are downright devious. This was called the “laughter of fools” by the Preacher in Ecclesiastes 7:6, and could include the laughter of ridicule, of derision, of arrogance. But could we even call that laughter?
- God Listens to Exhales. “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” (Ps. 150:6).
When Creator God breathed His breath of life into the nostrils of Adam and Eve, man’s natural response was to exhale that breath back to God. To exhale was to acknowledge and accept God’s gift of life, and to participate in it. Sometimes our prayers are merely exhales of gratitude. Our breathing in and out reveals our desire to cooperate with God in the business of life. We have come a long way in our relationship with God when we are constantly aware of the gift of breath, and we breathe to the glory of God. The Lord listens to our heart when we breathe, and is glad when we breathe out with thanksgiving and joy. “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” (Job 33:4). The power of God’s exhale is profound and life-giving. He breathed His life at the creation of the world, and He has been breathing it out ever since. Since breath is another word for Spirit, we believers have all received the spiritual exhales of God as he renews our spirit. Mankind can speak with God via the exhale, and God can communicate with man through His exhale as well.
- God listens to Tears. “Those who sow their tears as seeds will reap a harvest with joyful shouts of glee. They may weep as they go out carrying their seed to sow, but they will return with joyful laughter and shouting with gladness as they bring back armloads of blessing and a harvest overflowing!”(Psalm 126:5-6, TPT).
Life blends together the bitter and the sweet. “Joy and woe are woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine,” said William Blake. And tears are a part of each. Tears will come in heartfelt repentance, as James said in 4:9, “Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.” But then with the miracle of forgiveness, tears may come soon after in the midst of rejoicing in God’s mercy. We weep with sorrow, we weep with joy. We grieve in tears, and we laugh with tears. Tears are one of the most expansive and articulate expressions provided to mankind. One minute Jesus tells His followers, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.” And the next minute He tells them, “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.” (Luke 6:21,25). Joy and woe are woven fine… Weeping has a distinctive voice, with a language all its own. Tears are an articulate expression of sorrow and grief, of repentance and guilt, of pain and suffering, of fear and distress, of joy and wonder. And fortunately, “Tears are a language that God understands.” (Robert Smith). Tears are easily understood by God as “liquid prayers.” (Rev. James Larson).
- God Listens to Shouts. “Make a joyful shout (ruwa) to God, all the peoples of the earth! Sing out loudly to the honor of His Name. Make His praise glorious! Say to God, ‘How awesome are your works! Through the greatness of your power, your enemies shall submit themselves to you. All the earth shall worship you and say praises to you! They shall sing praises to your Name!” ( 66:1-4).
Ruwa: a Hebrew word meaning… to mar or break; figuratively, to split the ears or break the eardrums with sound; the making of a loud noise at the top of one’s lungs; to shout joyfully and make a “joyful noise”; used by soldiers as a battle cry just before rushing into battle; used by worshipers as a victory cheer in honor of God; an exuberant cry of joy and adoration of the Lord; an expression of victory or triumph over an enemy; a spontaneous expression of praise and exultation; a boisterous celebration of God’s goodness and blessing. SHOUT! There are moments when fervently singing in worship that we become so filled with joy and thanksgiving that we feel like we are going to explode. What do we do then? When the ancient Jews felt like this, they were not embarrassed to do something in praise that most of us would never do: SHOUT! Look closely at the Psalms from beginning to end, and there was a lot of shouting going on. As the resident geniuses of praise, the Israelites were only too happy to include the option of shouting their praise, of making what the psalmists called a “joyful noise.”
- God Listens to Growls. Hebrew word hagah– an expansive word that can mean growl, murmur, moan, mutter, meditate; this word has been used in the moan of grief ( 16:7), the growl of a lion (Is. 31:4), the thoughtfulness of meditation (Ps. 1), or even the murmurs of a dove (Is. 38:14); this growling or murmuring can be in the context of pleasure, grief or anger. Nonverbal actions like this may be wordless, but that doesn’t mean they are meaningless. Many actions that don’t involve language do involve a deep response to God, and so are full of thought and feeling, and are thus profound and meaningful. Some things are better expressed without words. Some actions are worth a thousand words. Sometimes our prayers sound like growls as we prayerfully eat God’s Word. The Lord loves to listen to this kind of prayer offered to Him.
“The word meditate comes from the Hebrew word hagah, which is a bodily action. It involves murmuring and mumbling words, getting the feel of the meaning as the syllables are shaped by larynx and tongue and lips. Isaiah used this word for the sounds that a lion makes over its prey. A lion over its catch and a person over the Torah act similarly. They both growl quietly in pleasurable anticipation of taking in what will make them more themselves, that which will make them strong and lithe and swift. There is a certain kind of writing that invites this kind of reading, soft purrs and low growls as we chew on its meaty morsels. Such writing needs a special kind of reading – a dog-with-a-bone kind of reading.” (Eugene Peterson, Conversations, Ps. 118).
- God Listens to Body Language. “Ezra stood on the platform in full view of all the people. When they saw him open the Book, they all rose to their feet. Then Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people chanted, ‘Amen! Amen!’ as they lifted their hands. Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.” (Nehemiah 8:5-6).
When our body talks, God listens to what it has to say. Physical gestures can point to spiritual truth, or it could stimulate spiritual truth. Body movements often reflect the status of the heart. The posture of one’s body can be a sign that communicates a message to God, a prayer in the form of body language. Physical movement can also stimulate an emotion or thought, and the muscle memory used is often a spiritual muscle. Do you want to signal to God that you submit to Him, that you adore Him, that you want to give your whole life to Him? There are gestures that can communicate these positions of the heart that don’t need words. Down through Judeo-Christian history, body language is vital to spiritual life and expression. The body can speak clearly without words, especially when we demonstrate attitudes like these: lifting our hands in adoration; lie prostrate on the ground in humility; kneel on the floor in gratitude; offering a kiss of peace; tracing the sign of the Cross; dancing and twirling and jumping for joy; standing out of respect; walking on pilgrimage; sitting at the feet of a teacher; pouring expensive oil out of devotion; washing feet out of servanthood. Perhaps we could loosen up in our worship and be more comfortable as we let our bodies do the talking. God loves to listen to body language, because physical gestures can often be more profound than words.