“My God will hear me !”   

Psalm 4:3    “ The Lord will hear when I call to him.”

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason,  Sunday June 8, 2003

The power of prayer rests in the faith that God hears it.

It is this faith that gives man the courage to pray. It is this faith that will cause him to persevere in prayer.

Why is it that some people do not pray as they should?  Well, one of the reasons is that they have no confidence that God hears them when they do. If they really believed that God heard them when they prayed…they would pray more than they do.

God promises us that he hears us when we pray.  Our text for today is Psalm 4:3 and this is one of those places where God clearly states that he hears us.  In Isaiah 30:19 we find another promise:  “How gracious will he be when you cry for help. As soon as he hears he will answer you.”  We know people who will bear witness for us that they have found the promises of God to hear us when we pray to be true.

An example is Josh McDowell.

While Josh McDowell was attending seminary in California, his father went Home to be with the Lord. His mother had died years earlier, but Josh was not sure of her salvation. He became depressed, thinking that she might be lost. Was she a Christian or not? The thought obsessed him. "Lord," he prayed, "somehow give me the answer so I can get back to normal. I've just got to know."

It seemed like an impossible request.

Two days later, Josh drove out to the ocean. He walked to the end of a pier to be alone. There sat an old woman in a lawn chair, fishing. "Where's your home originally?" she asked.

"Michigan -- Union City," Josh replied. "Nobody's heard of it. I tell people it's a suburb of --" "Battle Creek," interrupted the woman. "I had a cousin from there.  Did you know the McDowell family?" 

Stunned, Josh responded, "Yes, I'm Josh McDowell!" 

"I can't believe it," said the woman. "I'm a cousin to your mother." 

"Do you remember anything at all about my mother's spiritual life?" asked Josh.

"Why sure -- your mom and I were just girls -- teenagers -- when a tent revival came to town. It was the fourth night -- we both went forward to accept Christ." 

"Praise God!" shouted Josh, startling the surrounding fishermen.      God hears and answers our prayers in so many creative ways.  For example, take the incident in the life of  “James Gilmour, a missionary to Mongolia, [who] was once asked to treat some wounded soldiers. Although he was not a doctor, he did have some knowledge of first aid, so he felt he could not refuse the request. He dressed the wounds of two of the men, but a third had a badly broken thigh bone. The missionary had no idea what to do for such an injury. Kneeling beside the man, he asked the Lord for help. He didn't know how God would answer his prayers, but he was confident that his need would be supplied. He couldn't find any books on physiology in the primitive hospital, and no doctor arrived. To complicate matters, a crowd of beggars came to him asking for money. He was deeply concerned about his patient, yet his heart went out to those ragged paupers.  Hurriedly he gave them a small gift, plus a few kind words of spiritual admonition. 

A moment later he stared in amazement at one weary beggar who had remained behind. The half-starved fellow was little more than a living skeleton. The missionary suddenly realized that the Lord had brought him a walking lesson in anatomy!

He asked the elderly man if he might examine him. After carefully tracing the femur bone with his fingers to learn how to treat the soldier's broken leg, he returned to the patient and was able to set the fracture. Years afterward, Gilmour often related how God had provided him with a strange yet sufficient response to his earnest prayer. When we raise our petitions, we too can be certain that the Lord will help us...”   Our Daily Bread. 

We can be certain that God hears us when we pray.

 Our personal experience testifies to that fact.  We have all experienced it in our own lives. We prayed and God heard our prayer. The answer to our request was a special blessing from the Lord.  

Jesus came to earth from heaven with the message that if we ask, the Father will give us what we ask for. Again, another promise from God’s Son that God hears us when we pray. He is seated right now at the right hand of the Father in Heaven praying for us. The continuous testimony of the Word of God is that God hears our prayers.

There are times when he allows us to be tested and tried so that we might be compelled to cry to Him and to learn to know Him as the Hearer of Prayer. He does hear us when we pray.

God’s grace is the blessing offered in “My God will hear me.”

Think of God:  God in His infinite majesty, His inexpressible glory, His unapproachable holiness, seated on the throne of grace is waiting to be gracious to us, inviting us to pray. “Call upon me and I will answer you.” Psalm 91:15.

Think now of yourself:  Think of your nothingness, of your helplessness, of your sinfulness and your unworthiness before God and then praise God for the glory of the grace that allows you to say boldly your prayers for yourself and for others….knowing that “My God will hear me!”

God does not leave you to yourself.

He has invited you to Christ. And in Christ and His name, you have confidence that on the throne He prays for you. He prays with you .  You pray with Him and in Him and He hears you.

If you have received Christ as your personal savior, you have also received the Holy Spirit (when you believed). He is the Spirit of God’s own Son…sent into your heart to cry “Abba, Father”. He is in you a Spirit of Supplication when you do not know how to pray as you should. Because of Jesus Christ, in all your unworthiness you are as acceptable to God as Christ is Himself.  

When I pray, He will hear me. 

There is a solemn responsibility in all of this:  God has promised to hear and to answer our prayer. Therefore, why would we not pray? There are people we know and situations of life that trouble us, our families and our friends. We often complain that the problems we face are almost overwhelming, as if there is not help for them. But God has promised to hear and to answer our prayer and to meet our needs. 

That places a great responsibility on us who know Christ Jesus. That responsibility is to pray. Access to God in prayer is intended by God to lead us to become intercessors for others. In answer to prayer, the needs others have can be met, the Holy Spirit can be poured out, believers can be established, people can be won to Christ, the kingdom of darkness can be conquered and the glory of God can be revealed. 

How does all of this work out in real life?  If you remember, last week I suggested that we consider Elijah of whom it is said, “Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain…” James 5:17-18. 

Elijah was a man of great spiritual power and was used by God to bring His people back to faith in Him. His story is found in 1 Kings 17-19.

He confronts Ahab, King of Israel and tells him that there will be no rain nor dew for the next few years, except at my word. And then God tells him to leave and go to the ravine of Kerith. The ravens will bring him bread and meat twice a day and he is to drink from the brook in the ravine.

There are often consequences to our acts of obedience to God’s leading. In Elijah’s case it is not long until the brook he is drinking from begins to dry up, because there had been no rain. God met that need by giving him new instructions. He was to go to Warpath of Simon because God had commanded a widow there to feed him. Elijah goes to Warpath and finds a widow gathering sticks by the town gate. He asked her for a drink and a piece of bread. She told him that she was going to take the little flour and oil she had left, fix a meal for herself and her son and then prepare to die. It was all they had.  Elijah asked her to make him a little cake first and then promised that the flour and oil would not fail to provide for them as long as the famine lasted. And it did!

After a  long time, in the third year of the drought, God spoke to Elijah again. He was to go and present himself to Ahab again for God was going to send rain on the land. So  Elijah went to Ahab. (1 Kings 18:1). The people of Israel are summoned to Mt. Carmel which is located near the Mediterranean Sea coast about in line with the bottom of the Sea of Galilee. 

It is there on Mt. Carmel that Elijah has his famous encounter with the prophets of Baal. The issue becomes whoever answers prayer by fire is God…either Baal or God. Two bulls are selected. The prophets of Baal offer theirs first. From morning until about three in the afternoon they rant and rave, cut themselves and cry out to Baal…but there is no fire from heaven to burn the offering.

He gathered the people and repaired the altar of the Lord. He arranged the bull on the altar and had them put water on the offering. Three times he had them pour the contents of four jars of water on the offering. And then he prayed:

“O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you O, Lord, are God and that you are turning their hearts back again.” (1 Kings 18:36ff) Just 60 words in our English text. The prophets of Baal had carried on for hours for nothing. And Elijah calls out to God and in the time it takes to say those 60 words finds that God heard him. 

Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the soil and the water in the trench!  

Elijah goes to Ahab after the false prophets of Baal are all killed and tells him that rain is coming. 

Elijah then goes to the top of Mount Carmel and prays.  He asks his servant to go see what is happening. There is nothing, his servant says. He sends him back seven times and on the seventh time the servant tells him that he sees a cloud like a man’s hand rising up out of the sea. Elijah then goes to Ahab and tells him to get off the mountain because heavy rain is coming.

What a testimony to the fact that God hears when we pray! 

What a victory over the forces of darkness!

And Elijah is a man just like us! Right? Right. And because he was a man just like us…that is not the end of the story.

Elijah runs down the mountain ahead of the King Ahab in the special power of the Holy Spirit. He runs all the way down to Jezreel; running right into the middle of the spiritual darkness polluting the land…for it is the home of Jezebel. Jezebel is the queen who sponsored the prophets of Baal. When she hears of the events on the mountain and the deaths of her prophets, she sends a messenger to Elijah…by this time tomorrow you are a dead man. (1 Kings 19:2)

The man who prayed and the rains ceased for three and a half years, who prayed again and the rains returned; the man who won the great spiritual victory on the mountain is now confronted by Jezebel’s threat. And he becomes afraid. He runs away…running for his life!  If he were not a man just like us…it would be an incomprehensible response. But his humanity is showing here. He is afraid. He fails to call upon the Lord for help in the face of this threat to his life and he runs. 

Trace his flight from the threat of death if you will. He is in the northern part of Israel at Mount Carmel and he begins to flee south. He goes all the way to Mount Horeb ( or Mount Sinai – where Moses met God). He runs almost 60 to 70 miles. He left his servant in Beer-sheba and went out into  the desert. There he lay down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough…” he said to the Lord. It was there that the Angel of the Lord (pre-incarnate Son of God) fed him after he slept. From there he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Mt. Horeb, the Mountain of  God. Then he went into a cave for the night.

God came to him and asked him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  Can you identify with that? God’s man is in the wrong place because he did not pray when he should have done so. God would have heard him and would have provided for him…but instead he did what we do…he ran away…afraid.

He excused his conduct by telling God: “I have been very jealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword, I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

God told him to go stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord was going to pass by. And a great wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there came a gentle whisper. At that Elijah went outside the cave and stood there.

And the whispered voice asked him the same question:  “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 

God hears us…and He speaks to us and provides for us even when we are in the wrong place.

It is obvious that Elijah of all people should never have run away. He should have prayed and stood his ground in faith that God would provide for him.  God does not condemn him; He simply challenges Elijah and the fact that he ran when he should have trusted God.

But notice this…God heard him when he prayed. God met him when he needed God. God did not condemn him…He simply sent him on his way with a new charge to keep.

Elijah was a man just like us.  He prayed…and God heard and answered his prayer.  God will hear us when we pray. He promises to do so. That is a great privilege we have as the sons of God. It is also our great responsibility…to pray!  Lets just do it and see what God will do.

---Dennis Gleason