Does God Hear My Prayers?

Good morning. It’s good to see all of you today. Those of you joining us in person, those of you streaming in online, and our friends that are joining us in Algonac.

We’re so glad that you’re here. If I haven’t had a chance to meet you, my name’s Tim. I get the privilege of being the lead pastor.

And in fact, if you are here in person, right after the service through those doors, I’ll be out in that west lobby. And if you wouldn’t mind coming up, introducing yourself, I’d love to meet you, find out what led you here today, and just thank you for joining us for worship. As we are in a sermon series called, Asking for a Friend.

Or another way you could say this sermon series, you could say this, these are the questions that I want to ask my pastor, but I don’t want them to know that it’s me asking the pastor. So we’ve been going over some pretty tough topics. In fact, Pastor Ben kicked this off at the beginning of the month with this whole idea of, can I lose my salvation? And if you weren’t here and you haven’t watched that sermon, make sure that you go back and do that.

You might be here because you joined us last week for the very first time for our outdoor service. So we want to welcome you and thank you for coming back this week. It is a little bit different this week, is it not? Thank God for air conditioning.

We can all say that. Some of you, you may have skipped last Sunday because you saw the weather report and it was really, really hot last Sunday. Would anybody be willing to admit that there were some people at the first service? All right.

You can confess later today. Okay. We’ve got communion.

So we know. So we’ll just pray for the next, our final outdoor service in September that we’re looking forward to as well. And then we’re going to finish this all up at the end of the month, this sermon series with why do Christians disagree so much? And wouldn’t you know that no one in our church disagrees? This is for other churches and other people.

No, it’s a really important topic. So make sure that you come. Those of you that are in Algonac, you’re going to be looking at something different next week as well.

So our topic for today is prayer and prayer is a very interesting topic because there are tons of scriptures. I mean, from beginning to end Genesis to revelation, there’s just a whole lot of texts that you can use on this topic of prayer. There’s been hundreds and thousands of books written about prayer, seminar after seminar.

And there’s all of these different views when it comes to prayer. And so I’m going to take all of that and I’m going to feed it to you in a 25 minute time slot. How does that sound this morning? So here we go.

Buckle your seatbelts. Does God hear my prayers? No one, everyone agrees that God hears our prayers? So then we’re good. We can just have communion, get out of here.

Or is the question too easy? Are there layers under this that maybe we need to do a little soul searching this morning? And you can imagine being in the position that I’m in and over the years, some of the things that I’ve heard from people when it comes to this very subject, more importantly, it’s kind of viewed in this context of, does God hear me? Does God know or care about me? And so when it comes to prayer, I’ve heard these things from people. Well, I prayed Tim and God didn’t answer my prayer. There was no sign, nothing.

So I just stopped. I didn’t see any value in praying. Or I’ve heard this so many times.

I just don’t believe God answers prayer. Sure. I believe that he exists.

I’m not sure exactly which form, but he’s out there and he set things in motion here on this earth. And we as humans have kind of screwed it up, but I don’t really think he gets involved in our daily lives because if he did, why would there be so much pain and suffering in the world? Why would there be accidents? Why would things happen to innocent people? I just don’t really think prayer is effective. How about this one? I have way too much sin in my life to even approach the throne of God.

There is no way that God wants to hear my prayers. If you knew my past, Tim, or you knew the sins that I was committing right now, give me a week or a month or a year. Let me go clean myself up.

Let me get these things, these vices out of my life. And then maybe God would be willing to listen to me. Maybe I could be holy enough or worthy enough for him to hear my prayers.

And all of that is just kind of wrapped into this whole idea. Does God actually care about me? Or have I created this idea in my head that I have to be a certain way or do certain things before God will see me or care about me? And so what we do as a church here is we go right to the scriptures and we let the scriptures speak to us because in prayer, we talk to God, we speak to God, but God speaks to us through his word. And so Psalm 34 says this, and it’s really cool because 1 Peter, Peter, when he was writing his letter, he actually quotes Psalm 34.

This is what it says, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. Seems pretty simple enough. So his ears are open to our prayers.

So when we pray, he can hear it. Not only can he hear our prayers, he can see us. He knows everything about us.

And some of you, I know what you’re doing already. You’re looking at this passage. You’re saying, wait, wait, wait, but there’s a word that you’re missing.

There’s a word that you’re not pointing out. There’s a, there’s kind of a stipulation when it comes to prayer. And what is the word that’s popping out to you in this text? Think of that.

Righteousness. And so people will say, well, you missed this, Tim, because I have to be righteous before God sees me, or I have to be righteous before God will hear my prayers. So what is righteousness? What does this mean? And what does it take to be considered righteous by God? And I’m going to start this message by giving you the gospel.

You need to hear this. The Bible is very specific, very clear on this matter. You and I can do nothing to earn our salvation.

There is nothing that we bring to the table. What God did was he looked down on the earth, and he saw that mankind screwed it up. And it started with Adam and Eve, and it carries on into our fallen human hearts to this day.

We sin all day, all the time, in our thoughts, in our words, in our deeds, and even in our actions. God knew that we would do that. God knew that we would be in the situation that we have gotten ourselves into.

And he is the one that sent his one and only son to this earth to be born of a virgin, to live a sinless life, to ultimately go to the cross so that your sins and my sins could be placed upon him. The sins that we committed today, the sins we’ll commit tomorrow, and the sins that we will continue to commit in one act through one unbelievable divine person, he hung on the cross and all of those things, that reality was placed upon him. And at the right time, he is the one that echoed these words to his father.

He said, it is finished. The Bible tells us that when we were dead in our sins, Christ died for us. I mean, we weren’t even born yet, and he’s dying for us.

Or another way, if you want a more graphic way to really comprehend this, we are a corpse, a dead corpse. A corpse cannot do anything on its own. It is only by the power of God that he produces that faith in our hearts, in our lives.

And so when God the Father looks at us, he sees us, but he sees us through the lens of Jesus. And because he sees Jesus in the price that he paid for us, we are now righteous before God. This is why the Bible talks about cleansing us of all of our sins and purifying us from all unrighteousness.

Do you see who’s at work in all of this? It’s not you, and it’s not me. In fact, the Bible backs this up because it says the righteous is given through faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe. So our part is responding to the faith that the Holy Spirit produces in our lives.

Paul, the guy who wrote Romans, says it again when he writes this letter to the church in Philippi. He said, not having a righteousness of my own. Okay, very crystal clear.

I don’t create this. That comes from the law. So I can’t just obey the rules, and I can’t just live this life that I think I’m supposed to live and somehow earn God’s favor or approval.

It only comes through faith and what Jesus has done for me. And there is great freedom in living under that reality. Now, this is actually a topic I’m very passionate about.

Sometimes I get a little stirred up when it comes to prayer, just so you know. Because there are times when prayer is misunderstood, and then there are times when prayer is abused. Sometimes it’s by well-meaning Christians, and other times it’s by pastors, evangelists, people that claim to be from God or of God, and yet that’s the furthest thing from the truth.

And what happens is people will cherry-pick Bible verses, and they will pull them out of context, which is why one of the things we love doing here is going through books of the Bible and not skipping any verses or any single word, because you’re getting the full context of what’s taking place. And so I’m going to give you an example of a couple of verses that this happens all the time. John 14, you can cherry-pick this verse where Jesus says, whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that my Father may be glorified in the Son.

If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. Really? So all I have to do is ask you any question that I have, and you’re going to meet my demand. So God now is a genie in the bottle.

He’s an ATM. He’s there for my needs. And so maybe you’re in a situation where you’ve gotten yourself in trouble, and you don’t know how to get out, and as long as you attach to your prayer in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, God now is forced.

You’re forcing God’s hand. He now has to act on your behalf. Here’s another one over in Matthew.

Jesus said, ask whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, and then look at what it says at the end, if you have faith. And so I’ve seen people abuse this one. Well, the reason that you don’t have your deliverance, the reason that you don’t have your healing is because you don’t have enough faith.

Wait a second. Who gets to measure how much faith you have or don’t have? Is there like a faith meter now that you can get on Amazon, and you’re like, okay, this guy here? Well, the reason you’re not getting healed, the reason that you’re not seeing breakthrough is because your faith is weak. So you need to go and try harder, and pray harder, or do all of these religious things that we think we’re supposed to do in order to get God’s attention.

And that’s not the case at all. And I want to be crystal clear with you guys this morning what we believe as a church, because this is when prayer becomes all about what you do. If you just name it and claim it, God’s going to answer your prayer.

We do not believe that as a church. Otherwise, we’d be out there naming and claiming everything. I want to name and claim the Corvette that’s in our parking lot right now.

I don’t know whose Corvette it is, but it ain’t your Corvette anymore, because the Lord just told me it’s my Corvette, so just leave the keys up on the altar before you leave church today, and you can have my beautiful blue Impala, okay? Both GM products, both get you to where you’re going. But again, the abuse that comes in with some of these ideas, you need to get sin completely out of your life. And sadly, I’ve heard this.

I’ve heard people say this or believe this, and it’s such garbage. It really is. You and I, I want you to hear this.

We sin all day, every day. Sometimes we sin, and we don’t even know we’re sinning. Most of the time, we know when we’re sinning when it comes to the sin of what they call commission.

Oftentimes, we don’t even know the sin of omission, when we don’t do the good that we ought to do, because we’re constantly distracted by the things of this world. Some people would tell you, you need to sow a seed of faith, and so here you are, and you got to be the farmer, and you got to be out there plowing, and based on what, you know, you do, then God instantly, automatically then owes you back. And this one is often used when it comes to financial terms, and so I’m going to make this donation to the church, or to this non-profit, or I’m going to give this to the Lord, but he now is forced to give me something back financially.

We call these prosperity churches, and the whole focus of the congregation is on that very thing. Or how about this one, when you have someone that’s battling illness, or a disease, or maybe even somebody that’s struggling with mental health, and thanks be to God, there’s been so much advancement on this, and so much more that’s coming out about our minds, and telling somebody that’s struggling, whether it’s mentally, or physically, or emotionally, you just need to pray harder and longer. Think of that for a moment.

I grew up in a church where we were in church all the time, and we had altar calls. I mean, we even had padded things at the altar, because we would spend so much time there. We wanted to be comfortable, and I’m thankful for all the people in my childhood that would lay hands on me, and pray over me.

The problem was the idea that we had to stay there until we felt like God had healed us, or when we felt, this one was worse, when we were sorry enough for our sins, and after we felt like we prayed hard enough, or we felt forgiven enough, then we were allowed to go back to our seats. And that idea is contrary to what the scriptures say. When you confess your sins, He is faithful.

He is just. He forgives you of your sins, and He cleanses you from all unrighteousness, and it’s instantaneous. That’s the power of the cross.

That’s the power of the gospel. I remember one time we had an evangelist come through our church, and you know, whenever you have an evangelist, they got like, they have like their top five sermons, right? They just go around the country, and they preach their top five sermons, so they’re great communicators. And one in particular, I still remember this.

I was like 16 years old, and he came in to talk about prayer, and he was talking about his grandma. And I don’t know why everyone always talks about grandma. Why isn’t they always like grandma? And he was saying, my grandmother was such a prayer warrior.

She would have scars on her knees from being down and praying before the Lord, and she would lock herself in her closet, and she would just pray for hours and hours and hours. So much so that when she came out of that closet, she would have sores on her tongue. Now, you got to understand 16-year-old Tim, which is still 47-year-old Tim, which questions everyone and everything.

Because I’m like, that doesn’t make any sense. First of all, it’s really weird that your grandma locks herself in a closet. Number two, is that what we have to do to get God’s attention? Do I have to wear my knees out? Do I have to clock in, have a time clock around my, or stopwatch around my neck? Do I really have to have sores on my tongue? And God’s so busy up in the cosmos, in the heavens, that after I tarry, or after I do all of these gymnastic spiritual things, then all of a sudden, God will go, oh, there’s Timmy.

Oh, he’s got my attention now because he clocked in six hours. Oh, now I’m going to care about him and love him and answer his prayer. Do you see how dangerous this can be? Do you see how frustrating it can be, especially for those that are going through a situation in real time in their life? This is what the Bible actually says we’re to do when it comes to prayer.

First John, this is the confidence, the boldness that you and I can have when we approach God. That if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him.

So when we pray according to the will of God, God, I need you to speak into this situation. God, my marriage is falling apart. It doesn’t matter how many seminars or books or YouTube videos I watch, I need divine intervention.

I need you to come in and help me in this situation. See, oftentimes when I meet with people and sometimes people will come in and they just need to get stuff off their chest. They need to confess things, which is what we’re here to do.

If you need to do that or finding other people, a good, a solid brother or Christian in the Lord that can handle something to that magnitude, that’ll walk that with you, that’s going to hear that and be able to pray into that situation with you. And so often what people will say to me is after we’re done having that discussion and I pray over them, they’ll say, oh man, I just wish I could pray like you. Do you know why I can pray the way that I pray? Anybody know? They said it at the nine.

Come on. It’s because I pray. Because I have the best job in the world.

I get paid to pray. You just got to pray. That’s it.

There’s no magical formula. There’s no hidden, you know, step one through 12 kind of a thing. It’s just offering up what it is that you know is already burdening your heart.

And God compels us to pray. He wants us to pray. He invites us to bring our requests before him.

And isn’t it amazing that he already knows what we’re dealing with. He already knows the struggles that we have and he invites us as his children to come and to sit at his feet and to spend that time handing those things over to him. James put it this way.

If you’re in trouble, pray. If you’re having hardships, go before the Lord. Hey, if you’re happy, sing songs of praise.

If anyone among you is sick, let him call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And isn’t it so cool that our God was into essential oils way before the world blew up and became obsessed with essential oils? And not that there’s anything special in these oils, okay? That there’s a physical thing that helps people connect and understand that you’re bringing that prayer request before the Lord. James goes on to say that prayer that’s offered in faith, the faith that God has given you will make the sick person well.

The Lord will raise them up. The Lord will begin to do his work in their life and whatever that healing is for them on a physical level. Then he goes on to say if they have sinned, they will be forgiven.

So what kind of healing is that? Spiritual healing. At the end of the day, which one’s more important? Physical healing or spiritual healing? We’re all in agreement on that? The most important thing that God could give us, he’s already given us through his son, Jesus Christ. Now I know it can get frustrating.

I know sometimes it just becomes so overwhelming when you’re battling an illness, you’re battling a disease, you’re trying to figure out like God, where is your purpose and plan in the struggle that whether you’re going through it or a family member’s going through it. And so often it can just, it just really becomes overwhelming. And God encourages us, keep coming together, keep giving it to him, keep watching as he is at work and he is the one that’s weaving his perfect plan for your life in his time and in his way.

Because here’s what else James tells us. He says that we are to confess our sins to each other. And everyone says, imagine if I just said for the next 10 seconds, I want you to turn to your neighbor and confess the three worst sins that you committed this week on the count of three, one, two, don’t do it.

I don’t want to hear it. You don’t want to hear the stuff I’ve struggled with. But yet scripture offers this as the remedy to being healed.

Why? Because the devil is a liar and the devil wants nothing more than to drag you down and to destroy you and your marriage and your family, your career, everything about you. He is angry. He is livid.

And he loves it when we keep our sins to ourselves. He loves it when we have these things that nobody else knows about other than God. And what ends up happening is we give the devil a foothold and that thing begins to breed and it begins to grow and lie after lie and circumstance after circumstance, addiction after addiction, whatever the case may be.

And yet God gives us a way out. He puts us in a church family, in a community. He gives us pastors and church workers to come alongside you and say, wait, wait, wait, you don’t have to keep that secret anymore.

You don’t have to battle that thing in your life by yourself. You can go to someone and you can confess it and they will keep it confidential and they will look you in the eyes and they will pronounce forgiveness over you because of the finished work of Jesus on the cross. That is the proper biblically functioning community.

Did you know that? Otherwise we can just show up every Sunday morning, put our mask on. How are you? I’m fine. How are you? Fine.

And we all can pretend like we’re in the Truman show. That’s the option we have. No.

God’s called us and compelled us and give us this ability to be able to carry each other’s burdens, to pray for each other so that our souls would be healed. And it isn’t interesting that again, the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. The reason your prayer is powerful and effective is because of Jesus and what he’s done for us.

Now, this last one in this section of James, in this context, because he’s going back and forth between physical healing and spiritual healing, physical healing and spiritual healing. In this last part, he’s talking about those that have wandered from the faith, what Pastor Ben talked about at the beginning of the month. Those that maybe were raised in the church or profess faith in Jesus and now they’ve kind of gone their own way and kind of pushed God out of the picture and maybe they have families of their own.

I know some of you, you have grown children and they frustrate the living daylights out of you and they’re raising their grandkids and they’re not really committed to church and you’re on your knees and you’re doing what you’re supposed to do and handing them over to God even as adults and praying that God puts other people in their life. That something breaks through in their heart, that there’s a return to church and there’s a return to faith in Jesus. See, yesterday we gathered here for a funeral of a member that’s been here a long time.

His name’s Harold Day. Many of you know him. We were able to honor him and to talk about his life and one of the blessings that we were able to do as part of this funeral service is that he and his wife had actually done a testimony video and so it was kind of cool to be able to show the video and hear him and see him once again professing his faith in Jesus.

What a gift for those that were assembled. What a gift to his family, amen? This is why when we ask you to do video testimony videos you should always say yes, okay? Never knowing these things can be used. But what I appreciated about the video is what Harold shared that for the first part of his life he didn’t go to church.

He didn’t recognize God. It wasn’t until later on when he was through his career because he was so focused on work that the Holy Spirit came to him and began to prompt him and it was his wife who has been praying over him and she began to invite him to different churches and so they were trying to figure out where they were going to go and so they were in and out of churches and eventually God led him here to Shepherd’s Gate and there was three ways that God moved in Harold’s life. One, it was the Holy Spirit.

Two, it was his wife that prayed for him and three, it was you my dear brothers and sisters, a community of faith as he shared in the video that when he came here and all of these people embraced him and the people that embraced him went from being his friends to literally being family and we got to celebrate that he now sees Jesus face to face. I mean isn’t that what this is about? Isn’t that what we want for all of our loved ones? So let’s never give up praying and pouring our hearts out and asking God to move on behalf of those that have fallen away or don’t know Jesus. Amen? Now a couple other things that are really cool in scripture.

Not only does he put people in our lives to pray over us and we gather here in worship and lift our prayers to the Lord each and every week, God tells us there’s some other people that are praying for us. In Romans it says this, Christ Jesus is the one who died, who was raised from the dead and if you’re wondering where he’s at, here’s his location. He’s at the right hand of God.

He’s in a physical body in physical form. He raised from the dead. He appeared to people in a physical body, in a physical form.

He’s at the right hand of God and lo and behold what is he doing? He’s praying for us. Jesus is praying for you. Jesus is praying for your kids.

He’s praying for your grandkids. He’s thinking about you night and day. He’s giving prayers to God the Father on your behalf and not only is he praying for you, Jesus said these words to his disciples, I’m going to ask the Father and he’s going to give you another helper who’s going to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him.

You know him, the Holy Spirit, for he dwells with you and will be in you. The power of the resurrection, the power of the Holy Spirit dwells inside the heart of every single believer. Did you know that? So you not only have one person of the Trinity praying for you, you have two people in the Trinity that are praying for you day in and day out.

I find such great comfort in that. I find that to be so humbling that God loves us so much and cares about us so much that he didn’t just set things in motion and then forget about it or he didn’t just set things in motion and then one day he comes back and he’ll solve everything. No, he is part of our daily lives, constantly working in and through us.

And let me just be honest with you, we don’t talk about the Holy Spirit enough, do we? Sometimes he’s the one that’s always kind of pushed to the side. Sometimes people get nervous talking about the Holy Spirit and you think of the songs that we even sang today, you think about the way that we are asking the Holy Spirit to fall upon us, the Holy Spirit to move us, the Holy Spirit to give us counsel and wisdom and guidance in our lives each and every day. I had one member of ours, he told me that he grew up in a church and it was so crazy because they never talked about the Holy Spirit.

He goes, I’m so glad to be here because you guys talk about the Holy Spirit. In fact, every time the pastor got up, it was like this, this is how he translated, the pastor would be like, well, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy, and it’s like, what are we afraid of? The Holy Spirit is a gift. The Holy Spirit is the one who’s constantly drawing us to the foot of the cross to look up and to see that we are forgiven, redeemed children of God, even in our fallen and sinful state.

Now, again, when it comes to prayer, it can be overwhelming. It can be intimidating. Sometimes there’s people that will claim things about prayer that aren’t actually true or claim that they have reached certain statuses before God and so somehow their prayers are more effective than yours or mine by the way that they pray or by whatever means that they’ve come to where they think that they’ve arrived in this area of prayer.

And one of my favorite Bible verses in Romans kind of just levels the whole playing field. I want you to hear this. It tells us that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness, that we’re all fallen, sinful human beings.

For we do not know what to pray for as we should. Can I just read that to you again? For we do not know what to pray for as we should. That includes pastors.

That includes people that have been in the church their entire lives. We need the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us and he’s interceding in a way that we don’t even understand.

He’s the one that has the ability to search our hearts and our minds and he’s interceding for us according to the will of God. I love that. That means my prayer.

I can stand up here and give you a 20-minute prayer as just as powerful and as effective as if I brought a five-year-old up here and the five-year-old prayed for five seconds. Do you realize that? Because it’s not in me and it’s not in him. It’s the Holy Spirit and the power of God that is working in both of those areas.

So I want you to hear this. I really want you to understand this especially if you’re new here to Shepherds Gate. God sees and knows every single one of your thoughts and words over and over again.

He tells us that in scripture. A bird doesn’t even fall to the sky and die. A sparrow without the will of God.

Without him knowing about it. He knows the hairs on your head. All the scriptures that talk about these things.

He never stops caring and working on your behalf. I hope that you just saw that in the scriptures. They’re interceding for you.

They’re cheering you on. They’re petitioning God on your behalf. And that he is the one and these last two are the two most difficult just so you know as you walk in your Christian faith.

He is the one that will answer your prayers according to his perfect will. I’m going to say it again. He will answer your prayers but it’s going to be according to his will because his ways are higher than yours.

His thoughts are higher than yours. He knows what’s actually best for you. And the very last one and this is the hardest one because we’re Americans and we don’t want to wait.

We’re Americans and you know I got a prayer app on my phone. I submitted it. I should have my prayer answered immediately.

We don’t. We got this western mindset. So often we forget that God’s in this for the long game.

He knows our beginning from our end. All the days that have been ordained for us on this earth have already been decided by God. Let that sink in for a moment.

He knows everything about you. He’s madly in love with you. He knows exactly what he’s doing in your life.

And the hardest thing to do is to wait. And you know what makes it even harder is when you have a family member that’s going through something and parents you know this because you wear this deep down in your soul because you want nothing more than to take that pain and that agony from that kid and you’re like God just give it to me. I’ll battle it for him.

Why does my kid have to suffer? And you know what we have to do? We pray and we wait. We pray for God’s divine healing to be upon that person and we wait. We pray for God to work through the medical professionals that he has blessed us with and the technology that we have access to and we wait.

And if God’s ultimate plan is to take that person home because that’s when they receive their ultimate healing then we say God you are good and you are gracious and we trust that you know what you are doing. And so we humbly submit to your plan for our lives and for those around us. Amen.