My God Will Hear Me (Part 1)
By Andrew Murray
"Therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you…. Blessed are all they that wait for Him…. He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when He shall hear it, He will answer thee" (Isaiah 30:18-19).
"The Lord will hear when I call unto Him" (Psalm 4:3).
The power of prayer rests in the faith that God hears it. It is this faith that gives a man courage to pray. It is this faith that gives him power to prevail with God. The moment I am assured that God hears me too, I feel drawn to pray and to persevere in prayer. I feel strong to claim and to take in faith the answer God gives. One great reason of lack of prayer is the want of the living, joyous assurance: "My God will hear me!" If God’s servants got a vision of the living God waiting to grant their request, and to bestow all the heavenly gifts of the Spirit they are in need of for themselves or those they are serving, how everything would be set aside to make time and room for this one only power that can ensure heavenly blessing – the prayer of faith!
When a man can and does say in living faith, "My God will hear me!" surely nothing can keep him from prayer. He knows that what he cannot do or get done on earth, can and will be done for him from heaven. Let each one of us bow in stillness before God, and wait on Him to reveal Himself as the prayer-hearing God.
1. "My God will hear me." What a blessed certainty! We have God’s Word for it in numberless promises. We have thousands of witnesses to the fact that they have found it true. We have had experience of it in our lives. We have had the Son of God come from heaven with the message that if we ask, the Father will give. We have had Himself praying on earth, and being heard. And we have Him in heaven now, sitting at the right hand of God and making intercession for us. God delights to hear prayer. He has allowed His people a thousand times over to be tried, that they might be compelled to cry to Him, and learn to know Him as the Hearer of Prayer.
Let us confess with shame how little we have believed this wondrous truth, in the sense of receiving it into our heart and allowing it to possess and control our whole being. Beseech God to reveal Himself to you. Bow in silence each time before you pray to worship this God, to wait till there rests on you some right sense of His nearness and readiness to answer. So will you begin to pray with the words, "My God will hear me!"
2. "My God will hear me." Think of God in His infinite majesty, His altogether incomprehensible glory, His unapproachable holiness, sitting on a throne of grace, waiting to be gracious, inviting, encouraging you to pray with His promise: "Call upon Me, and I will answer thee" (Jeremiah 33:3).
Think of yourself in your nothingness and helplessness as a creature; in your wretchedness and transgressions as a sinner; in your feebleness and unworthiness as a saint. But think of how you are not left to yourself, and what you can accomplish. God has united you with Christ; in Him and His Name you have your confidence. On the throne Christ prays with you and for you; on the footstool of the throne you pray with Him and in Him. His worth, and the Father’s delight in hearing Him are the measure of your confidence, your assurance of being heard. Think of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God’s own Son, sent into your heart to cry, "Abba, Father" and to be in you a Spirit of supplication when you know not what to pray as you ought (Romans 8:26-27).
Think, in all your insignificance and unworthiness, of your being as acceptable as Christ Himself. Think in all your ignorance and feebleness, of the Spirit making intercession according to God within you and cry out, "What wondrous grace! Through Christ I have access to the Father, by the Spirit. I can, I do believe it!"
3. "My God will hear me." There are difficulties that cannot but at times arise and perplex even the honest heart. There is the question as to God’s sovereign, all-wise, all-disposing will. Were it not better to leave all to His disposal who knows what is best and loves to give us the very best? There is the question as to the need of persevering prayer and long waiting for the answer. If God be Infinite Lord, and delights more to give than we are to receive, where is the need for pleading and wrestling, the urgency and the long delay of which Scripture and experience speak? What of the multitude of apparently vain and unanswered prayers? To think of all this tries our faith and makes us hesitate as we say, "My God will hear me!"
As little as we can comprehend God can we comprehend this, one of the most blessed of His attributes – that He hears prayer. God hears because we pray in His Son, and because the Holy Spirit prays in us. The Holy Spirit can enable us to believe and rejoice in it, even where every question is not yet answered. He will do this as we lay our questionings in God’s bosom, trust His faithfulness, and give ourselves humbly to obey His command to pray without ceasing.
– Abridged from The Ministry of Intercession by Andrew Murray.