God Listens

Do you ever wonder if God is really listening? 

I do. 

Maybe it's because we live in a world that doesn't really listen much any more. Either someone is listening just to respond, just to tell their own story in response to yours, or they aren't really listening at all. How often have you been talking only to have the person you thought you were talking to suddenly look up and say, "Whuh?" What did you say? I missed that. 

I dozed off. My mind drifted. I was thinking about something else. I was busy doing this other thing. 

It's hard for us to believe that anybody is really listening. Let alone God. 

God has so much to do. He has so much to take care of. How could He be listening to me when so many others are probably also praying right now? When so many others have bigger things to be praying about? When I'm not really anything at all and it doesn't really matter anyway?

We imagine that God's world must be so full of noise, so constantly bombarded by the sound of voices. Like being in a shopping mall or at a concert or in the subway station. So much noise. All the time. How could He ever hear our voice? 

My friend, I tell you - when you speak, yours is the only voice God hears. He doesn't hear it over the din of everyone else. He doesn't hear it with a hum in the background. He hears it as though you were standing face-to-face in a quiet room, just the two of you, and as though there is nothing else in all the world but the sound of your voice. 

His sensory perception is not like our sensory perception. 

Not only does He hear your voice, and your voice alone, but He's listening. He is not like the world - listening to respond or barely listening at all. He is not like the humans who have let you down, letting their mind wander or their thoughts drift. 

There is never going to be a moment in your life when God suddenly looks at you and says, "Whuh?" He knows every word you've said. Because He is listening. Truly listening. 

The psalmist knew this. He wrote about it in Psalm 4. 

Know that the Lord...hears when I call to Him. 

He hears. He's listening. When my voice speaks, it goes straight to Him. It cuts through everything else, through all the noise that I think I hear in the world, and He hears me. Like a mother who knows her child's cry through a crowded market, so the Lord recognizes your voice from far away and hearkens to it. 

He hears you. He's listening. 

Speak, child.