What Does God Think When You Pray?

As a Pastor, I am called on to pray quite often. Whenever a prayer is in order (meal time, sickness, tragedy) somehow, everyone turns to me to pray, as if I have some special connection with God. While prayer is my ‘business’ so to speak, it should be the common outgrowth of every life that has been given to Jesus Christ. Prayer is our life-line to God. I find that many Christians feel inadequate when it comes to prayer. That is sad, because it is a reflection of their walk with God. I was reading in Jeremiah and stumbled upon an instance where the remnant leaders asked Jeremiah to pray to the Lord YOUR God for us.

Jeremiah 42:1-6 (ESV) Then all the commanders of the forces, and Johanan the son of Kareah and Jezaniah the son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest, came near and said to Jeremiah the prophet, “Let our plea for mercy come before you, and pray to the Lord your God for us, for all this remnant— because we are left with but a few, as your eyes see us— that the Lord your God may show us the way we should go, and the thing that we should do.” Jeremiah the prophet said to them, “I have heard you. Behold, I will pray to the Lord your God according to your request, and whatever the Lord answers you I will tell you. I will keep nothing back from you.” Then they said to Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act according to all the word with which the Lord your God sends you to us. Whether it is good or bad, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, that it may be well with us when we obey the voice of the Lord our God.”

These Jewish leaders believed that Jeremiah had a better relationship with his God than they did with theirs. In fact, the way the text reads, you wonder if they even had a relationship with any God. Jeremiah took their request seriously, even though I suspect he knew they were not serious about obeying whatever God told him.

What is curious to me is the 10 days it took for God to respond to Jeremiah’s prayer. Did he tell Jeremiah “I’ll get back to you”? Or was Jeremiah used to waiting upon the Lord. Ten days wouldn’t work in our fast-paced society. I wonder how the leaders reacted to the delay. Did they send a messenger everyday asking “Any word yet?”. Did they grow impatient and think that Jeremiah had lost his ‘pull’ with God? I don’t know. Some suggest the delay was to show that they could survive in Israel, because they were thinking of leaving and going elsewhere.

Jeremiah 42:7-17 (ESV) At the end of ten days the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. Then he summoned Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces who were with him, and all the people from the least to the greatest, and said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your plea for mercy before him: If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up; for I relent of the disaster that I did to you. Do not fear the king of Babylon, of whom you are afraid. Do not fear him, declares the Lord, for I am with you, to save you and to deliver you from his hand. I will grant you mercy, that he may have mercy on you and let you remain in your own land. But if you say, ‘We will not remain in this land,’ disobeying the voice of the Lord your God and saying, ‘No, we will go to the land of Egypt, where we shall not see war or hear the sound of the trumpet or be hungry for bread, and we will dwell there,’ then hear the word of the Lord, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: If you set your faces to enter Egypt and go to live there, then the sword that you fear shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine of which you are afraid shall follow close after you to Egypt, and there you shall die. All the men who set their faces to go to Egypt to live there shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. They shall have no remnant or survivor from the disaster that I will bring upon them.

But Azariah and Johanan got mad at Jeremiah and yelled: “You are telling a lie. The Lord our God did not send you to say, ‘Do not go to Egypt to live there,’ ³ but Baruch the son of Neriah has set you against us, to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans, that they may kill us or take us into exile in Babylon.” They clearly had already made up their minds about what they were going to do. That is the really strange part. God knew they weren’t serious about finding out what God wanted them to do. He knew they had already made up their minds. Jeremiah called them hypocrites.

Jeremiah 42:19-22 (NKJV) The Lord has said concerning you, O remnant of Judah, 'Do not go to Egypt!' Know certainly that I have admonished you this day. For you were hypocrites in your hearts when you sent me to the Lord your God, saying, 'Pray for us to the Lord our God, and according to all that the Lord your God says, so declare to us and we will do it.' And I have this day declared it to you, but you have not obeyed the voice of the Lord your God, or anything which He has sent you by me. Now therefore, know certainly that you shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence in the place where you desire to go to dwell."

How many times do we pray to God, asking for something, some indication of His will, but deep down inside we have already decided what we will do.

Does God shake His head at us, and mutter “you hypocrite!”? Does He give us an answer knowing we won’t do it?

Too many Christians, I believe, use prayer as a ‘last resort’. It’s something that they do when they are faced with some difficulty, some disease, some loss. Most of the time they don’t pray, they don’t abide, they don’t commune with the Creator God, the one who lives in them through Jesus Christ. IS it any wonder God is not excited about answering our prayers when we come to Him as a last resort? It’s as if prayer is a magic talisman we waive when the evil spirits gather around our lives.

Jesus Christ lived the type of prayer-life that God demands of His people-a life that begins and ends in prayer. It is a life of total dependency upon God, a life spent in prayer. His prayer to the disciples concerned God’s will, forgiveness of daily sins, and provision for daily food. We are to depend on God for His daily direction, protection and provision. Jeremiah was forced to go to Egypt with these sorry leaders. The wrath of God followed them, and according to God’s promise, they all perished. Jeremiah as well. He tried to get them to repent, to follow God, but these verses indicate the sad state of their lives:

Jeremiah 44:15-17 (ESV) Then all the men who knew that their wives had made offerings to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no disaster.

The truth is that we live our lives the way we want to, Christian or not. We either humble ourselves before Almighty God-doing His will, or we live our life the way we think is best, and call on God when we think it’s out of control. Next time you pray to God, perhaps you should ask yourself, “Am I being obedient to God and His Word?” James said that the prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much. We are all sinners, but when we follow Christ, we have His righteousness. And because we have Christ, we can come boldly before the throne!

What does God think when He hears your prayers?