The Father Who Hears His Children

God hears every prayer his children bring to him through Christ and answers according to his wise purposes, which frees believers to pray boldly and to keep praying when the answer is no or has yet to come.

How Much More Will the Father Give

Jesus grounded prayer in the character of the one who hears it: “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:11–13).^[10] Preaching that passage, Chris observed that the infrequency of our prayers, and the lack of passion and boldness in them, tell a different story from the one we profess, because the head can call God Father while the heart remains unconvinced.^[10]

Chris has named the suspicion underneath: “One of the greatest unspoken obstacles to prayer is that we cynically fear God won't answer.” He described it as believing a lie, that God finds our requests silly and small and listens with a kind of amused condescension.^[11] The Father of Luke 11 welcomes his children the way a parent welcomes a small child with a stuck zipper, who brings the problem without embarrassment and fully expects help, and Chris has held up that child as the picture of how believers are free to pray.^[11]

Impudence at Midnight

Jesus told of a man who knocked on his friend's door at midnight to borrow bread for a guest, and the friend inside, with his children already in bed, finally got up, “yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs” (Luke 11:8). Chris drew the lesson plainly: “There is a place for boldness. There's a place for shameless persistence in our prayers.” He pressed the comparison the parable invites, since if persistence can get a grumpy neighbor out of bed in the middle of the night, it will surely move a Father in heaven who loves to give.^[10]

The Psalms repeat the plea for God to hear more than a hundred times, and Chris has read that repetition as God's kindness to hearts that half-believe, which need the promise of a hearing again and again.^[10] He has also admitted how universal the struggle is: “I've never met a single Christian who feels like they pray as much as they ought to.”^[5]

When the Answer Is No

Jesus promised his disciples, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13), and every Christian who prays long enough meets requests that seem to go unanswered. Paul met them too. Three times he pleaded with the Lord to take away his thorn in the flesh, and the Lord answered, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:8–9).^[4] Chris spoke to people carrying the same disappointment: “So let's be clear, friends. You're not the only one who has not had their prayers answered in a way that Jesus seems to promise.”^[4]

God refused Paul's request without rebuking the way he prayed, and Chris explained why: the thorn stayed because it served God's purposes better than its removal would have.^[4] That answer spares a disappointed Christian the endless search through his own heart for the flaw that must have blocked his prayer. Chris has urged the church to pray in line with what God is doing: “Do your best to pray for particulars with the agenda in mind. And understand that if you ask for the agenda to be accomplished, it will be. Your best understandings of how that agenda might be accomplished are another matter.”^[4] Preaching on Robert Murray M'Cheyne, Chris said that God is always inclined to hear his people and always responds in some way, whether quickly or over decades, whether with yes or with no.^[2]

Crying Out in the Dark

Psalm 88 records a man who prays through darkness, hears nothing, prays again, and ends the psalm without relief. Chris has said that its place in Scripture carries its own message: “by its inclusion in the Bible, it shows us that the cries and the questions and the confusion are okay. Grappling with God in prayer is always better than resignation and silence. Even when our prayers are cries of frustration.”^[9] He heard faith underneath the psalmist's complaint: “You don't keep talking if you don't think someone's listening. Even though there is no answer, he keeps crying out. He keeps expecting. I don't hear from You. I don't sense Your presence. I don't know that You're there, but I'm going to keep crying out because there's some sort of glimmer of faith and hope here that even though I don't hear, I know you listen.”^[9]

Prayer as Submission

Prayer brings a person's whole self under God, which is one reason it comes hard. Chris has described it as “this sort of functional, practical way that we submit our bodies and our minds and our time to God,”^[6] and he has applied that down to the restless body in the pew, saying we submit to God our fidgets and our wandering minds along with the moment itself.^[8] Jesus prayed that way in Gethsemane, where he asked for the cup to pass and then yielded, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

Helps for a Wandering Heart

Chris has confessed where his own prayers go astray: “You want to know when my prayers just kind of drift off? I just start circling around the same idea and I'm trying not to, but 10, 15 minutes later I'm still circling. It's usually when my Bible is not open as I'm praying, when the Scriptures aren't in front of me guiding me.”^[12] The prayers already written in Scripture, the Psalms above all, give a wandering heart words to follow. Praying with others helps in a similar way, since corporate prayer lets believers share burdens and learn from one another while putting a date and a time on the calendar, and Chris has pointed out that many Christians remembered for their prayer grew up where prayer was an ordinary part of life.^[7]

Paul tells the church, “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7). Chris has compared persistent worry to a check-engine light, a signal that the prayer life needs attention, and he has told the church that daily time spent growing in prayer tends to produce a large prayer life and a small worry life.^[1]

The Son Who Was Heard

The prayers of God's children rest on the prayers of his Son, who “in the days of his flesh… offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence” (Hebrews 5:7). The Father answered that prayer on the third morning, and the risen Christ “always lives to make intercession” for those who draw near to God through him (Hebrews 7:25), so that every believer who prays, however haltingly, is heard in the name of the Son the Father has never refused.