Is God listening?

That's the title of today's encouragement from the Our Daily Bread Devotional.

I'm Elisa Morgan.

When I served on my church's congregational care team, one of my duties was to pray over the request

penciled on pew cards during the services, for an aunt's health, for a couple's finances,

for a grandson's discovery of God. Rarely did I hear the results of these prayers. Most were

anonymous, and I had no way of knowing

how God had responded. I confess that at times I wondered, was he really listening? Was anything

happening as a result of my prayers? Over our lifetimes, most of his question, does God hear me?

I remember my own Hannah-like pleas for a child that went unanswered for years, and there were my pleas that my father find faith, yet he died

without any apparent confession. Etched across the millennia, are myriad instances of God's ear bending to listen.

To Israel's groans under slavery, to Moses on Mount Sinai, to Joshua at Gilgal, to Hannah's

prayers for a child, to David crying out for deliverance from Saul.

1 John chapter 5 verse 14, crescendos.

If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. The word for hears means to pay attention and to respond on the basis of having heard. As we go to God today, may we have the

confidence of his listening ears spanning the history of his people. He hears our pleas.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from 1 John chapter 5 verses 13 through 15.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence we have in approaching 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.

That's pray.

Father, thank you that you are a hearing, God, that when we speak, you listen, that you carry

our request close to your heart.

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