Didn't God Hear You?

By: Lauren Thomas

My third pregnancy was riddled with scary complications. These complications filled me with almost constant worry that I was losing my baby. I would often cry out to God for healing. Audibly. 

 

Driving one day with my 4- and 1-year-old in the backseat, I prayed aloud, “God, heal my body and help my baby.” I’ll never forget the response I heard from the backseat. A small and curious voice asked me, “Mommy, why did you pray that again? You already prayed that before. God already heard you, didn’t He?”

 

I was dumbstruck. These were profound words from a 4-year-old. In that moment I knew they were the faith-filled words God wanted me to hear. “Yes, honey, He did hear me.”

 

First John 5:14-15 (ESV) reads:

14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.

 

God hears us when we pray. This should give us confidence, right? Yet my prayers for healing often lacked confidence. They sounded more like anxious incantations. Maybe if I said them often enough or in the right way, they would work, and I would be healed. (Not that I consciously believed this, but if only you could have observed my prayer life…)

 

My baby was born by emergency c-section at just 24 weeks gestation. And while he was fighting for his life in the NICU, a prayer warrior at my church told me to thank God for my baby’s healing. My initial thought was sarcastic: funny, my baby isn’t healed. My next thought was much more sanctified: Maybe thanking God is just what God wants me to do. Something in my brain clicked. If God has already heard me, then I need to start thanking Him for how He will respond. 

 

So, I began to thank God for the things I had already asked Him for, like Paul tells us to do in Philippians 4:6-7 (ESV):

6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 

Something happens within us when we add gratitude to our prayers: we are given the peace of God! That peace transforms us. It helps us in the waiting. It changes our prayers from faithless, anxious repetitions of desperation to confident, faith-filled prayers. Jesus did encourage persistence in prayer (see Luke 18:1-8), but there is a difference between persistent prayers and repetitive prayers. God wants us to confidently approach Him with our needs and thank Him for His response. 

 

God does hear us when we pray. He hears us however we pray. But when we offer our prayers with thanksgiving, extraordinary peace is offered to us. That peace allows us to believe that He does hear us, and that He will respond.

 

Reflection/Discussion:

So, dear sister, how does this change things for you? What anxious prayers could you replace with confident prayers and thanksgiving? How might a change in your prayers bring about a change in you while God is taking care of your situation?