Why You Feel Like God Isn't Listening To Your Prayers
VideoTranscript
This is the video’s transcript, lightly formatted. Tap a time to jump to that moment.
As a Christian, you were taught to pray backwards. Not wrong, not exactly, just backwards. The direction was almost certainly off. In the last video, I promised that I would cover this topic. And I said that if your prayers ever felt like you were leaving voicemails for a God who never picks up the phone, this would be the video you definitely don't want to miss. As Christians, most of us are taught that prayer is like a message you put in a bottle and throw into the ocean. You hope and trust that it will get to a distant God and then you wait to see if he tosses anything back to you.
But here's the thing, that's the exact model Jesus actually warned his disciples away from. He didn't do this in one of his famous parables. He didn't drop a hint. He actually named it. He said that people who pray like that think that they're going to be heard by God because of how much they say. And he gave a word for it. We'll get to that word in a little bit.
Because you see, the New Testament says that you never actually prayed alone. From the first word that comes out of your mouth, Holy Spirit has hold of the other end. It's praying in you on your behalf and sometimes without using any words at all. Prayer isn't at all like a phone call. You don't pick up your spiritual cell phone, punch in God's number, and talk to God hoping he'll respond to your voicemail. Prayer is actually a conversation that was already going on inside of you from the moment you woke up this morning. And all you're doing is joining your voice to it.
Now, I don't know about you, but back when I was in the cult that I was raised in, I used to feel bad that my thoughts would sometimes wander when I was trying to pray to God. I used to think that that disqualified my prayer, like, well, I wasn't really paying attention, so why would God pay attention to me? But what's really going on changes all of that. What you say, how much you say, what's required. Do those tiny little prayers count? Or do you have to drone on and on in order to get a hearing from God? Not that there's anything wrong with long prayers.
I mean, look at some of Jesus prayers. He prayed all night. I mean, if you can pull that off, more power to you. God certainly doesn't mind listening to everything you have to say, but it's not required. And I'm going to prove that to you. For some people though, their prayer life isn't backwards. It's pretty much non-existent.
If that sounds like you, where you sit down and you want to pray, but there's just nothing there. You don't know what to say. Nothing comes to you. You don't feel anything. Well, stick around to the end because I've got something to tell you toward the end of this video that's meant only for you. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going show you how this works from Paul's exact words, then from a man who found it standing over a kitchen stove about 300 years ago.
And finally, from Jesus mouth himself on the worst night of his life when he was praying with a particular word. And it's a word you've heard me pray with at the end of almost every one of my videos on this channel. You're about to find out who's actually saying that word, and it's probably not who you think. But first, let me tell you how I was taught to pray in the cult that I was born and raised in. Because I think a lot of you, even if you were in a normal mainstream religion, probably learned it the same way. In the cult, prayer had a specific formula. You address God by what we were taught was his right name.
You had to open with the right formula and you had to close with the right formula. You thank, you ask, you beg, you close in Jesus' name. And if you were praying out loud in the church service, there was a performance to it. You had to have the right cadence. People expected it to be a certain length and it had to sound reverent enough. There were all kinds of qualifications to giving the right kind of prayer in front of the church. I remember being a teenager and praying to God before going to bed every night and realizing one time after I was done that I couldn't have told you a single thing that I had said in that prayer.
It was so by wrote. It was just a habit. There wasn't anything meaningful going on there. Finishing the prayer was the point of the prayer. It was a practice of performance, if you will. And here's the thing. The problem isn't the formula.
Not exactly. I mean, Jesus hands his disciples a formula when they ask him how to pray. He gives them a fixed prayer word for word. The problem isn't the formula so much as the picture underneath the formula. God is way over there and I'm way down here and prayer is a wire between us. If you're old enough to remember this long before the days of cell phones, as kids, we used to tie two cans together and speak into one and the other person would hold the can at their ear and listen to it. Prayer for a lot of Christians is like that.
You just hope that God's holding up the can to his ear when you happen to pray. In the more modern analogy of a phone call, you hope that the connection's good. You hope that you use the right words. You hope that you're holy enough so that the call goes through and you don't get a busy signal. You leave God tons of voicemails. And you hope that he's listening to at least a few of them. Here I am, God.
Just checking in again. Not sure if you got my last message. Thanks. Call me back in Jesus name. Amen. And often when nothing did come back, I did what everybody else does. I assumed that there was some problem with what I had asked for the way that I had asked for it or I didn't have enough faith or I didn't use right words.
I wasn't focused enough. So I'd try to pray longer and that just made me feel guilty for the times that I had short prayers. Then I'd feel guilty because my mind wandered in the middle and I didn't think that that should happen. Then after I left the cult, I mostly stopped praying altogether except once in a blue moon. if there was some kind of an emergency or something. Now, don't get me wrong, even in the days of the cult, God responded to my prayers in a very big way sometimes. And that tells me that he listens to everyone.
Even if your circumstances, your faith, or your situation aren't ideal and not really where he wants you to be. If you have real belief, he is listening to you. So, I want to get that out there. down. Now, keep in mind that none of that was because God was far away from me. It was because I was handed a picture of what prayer was supposed to be like, but the arrow was pointing in the wrong direction. Once I realized that and started pointing it in the correct direction, well, prayer stopped being a performance or something that I was worried about failing at, and it started being the most natural thing I do all day.
That's what I want for you by the end of this video. So let's look at where the arrow should be pointing. Where is God when you pray to him? What Jesus told his disciples the night before he died was this. The spirit of truth lives with you and will be with you. Paul's very direct about it in Romans chapter 8. If anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.
And two verses later, the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you. That's a pretty good single summary of the series that I did before this one. Christ in you, the hope of glory. The presence of God isn't so far away that you got to pick up your spiritual cell phone to talk to him. He's in the room with you. Now, am I saying that God isn't in heaven? No.
Jesus was very clear about that in the model prayer. He says, "Our Father in heaven." The scriptures are full of prayers rising like incense. It says, "The Father is in heaven and the spirit is in your heart." The problem isn't with thinking that God is in heaven. It's the idea that you have to close that distance with the right kind of prayer. But there is no distance to close.
He's right here with you all the time. Now, look at that compared to the voicemail model, and you start to see the problem. Why would you leave a voicemail for somebody who's sitting right there in the room with you? And look at what Romans 8 26 says. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. You see what Paul's saying there?
He's talking about himself, too. He says, "We do not know what we ought to pray for." Can you imagine the Apostle Paul not knowing what to pray for? But he says that which means you don't have to feel bad about knowing what to say either. If prayer is like leaving a voicemail, not knowing what to say would be disastrous because there wouldn't be any message left at all. But look at what Paul says there. First, he says, "The spirit helps us."
Now, in Greek, that word means to take hold alongside, to grab the other end of something being carried to help out. So, imagine that you're trying to carry a heavy box and somebody comes up and lifts the other end for you so you don't have to carry it alone. That'd be a real relief, right? The only other place in the New Testament where that word gets used is when Martha asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her in the kitchen. Holy Spirit doesn't take over your prayer and he doesn't wait until you're done or check to see if he get it right. He takes hold with you. Your prayer and his are both combined and his part is always perfect.
Let's go back to the box analogy. Imagine the box you're trying to lift is way too heavy for you, but a 6'5 bodybuilder steps up and grabs one end of the box. At that point, the vast majority of the weight is being carried by him, not you. Well, that's how Holy Spirit helps you when you pray. He's powerful and perfect and that helps you tremendously.
Then Paul says, "The spirit himself intercedes for us." That word intercedes, this is the only place in the New Testament where it appears. It's an intensified form of the ordinary word for intercede. and it's got a prefix on it that means on our behalf. Nobody before Paul is known to have used that form of the word which is interesting. And then the next verse, he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God. So look at what Paul is presenting here.
The spirit in you takes hold of your prayer with you and prays on your behalf. The prayers are always perfect and the spirit is always strong and knows exactly what to say. His prayers are also always directly in line with God's will for you. And the father hears that. Not just what you said alone, but what you said and the spirit said put together. Your words when you have them, because sometimes we don't know what to say at all. And like Paul said, that's when the spirit really shines on our behalf.
Your words ride along a prayer given by the Holy Spirit that was already perfect before you ever said a word. The bottom line is that you never pray alone ever. The spirit is always praying with you and his prayers are always perfect, powerful, and in accordance with the father's will. Once you understand that, it changes everything.
Now, I promised you the word. If you've heard my prayers at the end of my other videos, this word isn't at all unfamiliar to you. I always start my prayers with aba. Father, some of you have emailed me about my prayers, which I'm truly humbled by and appreciate. Thank you for that. The word aba is an Aramaic word, and Aramaic is the everyday language that Jesus would have spoken. That word, it's the term that a grown son used for his father.
It's intimate, but it's not childish. Sometimes people say that it means something like daddy, but it really doesn't. It's not a small child's word, but it's not a formal title either. It's an intimate family term. It's the word you would use for the man whose house you grew up in. That word only appears three times in the entire New Testament. Let's take a look at two of those now.
I'll save the third one for later because it's well, it's just incredible. We'll get to it. The first is in Galatians chapter 4. Because you are his sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts. The spirit who calls out, "Aba, father." So there it's the spirit calling out aba. God sends his spirit and the spirit from inside you cries out to the father using the same word that Jesus used for the father, the same family word.
That's Romans 8 in a nutshell. The prayer starts inside and it's God who starts it. The second place Aba gets used is in Romans 8:15 right before the intercession passage. The spirit you received brought about your adoption to sunship and by him we cry aba father. Notice that this time it's we who are crying out aba father but we're doing it by him by the spirit. So both you and the spirit are crying out aba father together. That's what Paul's word the takeh hold alongside verb is saying.
There are two voices saying the same word and the father hears both as one prayer. It's not a phone call. It's a duet and god is right there in the room with you hearing it immediately.
That's why I start all the prayers in these videos with aba father because that's what both we and the spirit are crying out together as one voice. So now you understand that the word Jesus used aba is the same word the spirit uses and it's the same word we use too. Once you've got that then you understand the heart of what this video is all about. Now, real quick, if this is landing for you or if this series is helping you, would you hit that subscribe button? Your subscribing genuinely helps this content reach other people who need to hear it. And let me know in the comments what prayer was for and what it was like in the church you grew up in. Trying to get things from God, staying on his good side, just a performance from the congregation, or was the meaning and purpose actually fully discussed and you understood it?
or was it just something that got done and you never really thought about it? And if you want the full version of all this that I couldn't possibly cover in one video, how to live from the indwelling Christ from the time the alarm goes off in the morning until you lay your head on the pillow at night. It's all in my book, The Broken Mirror: Rediscovering Our True Nature in Christ. Chapter 21, Divine in the Daily, walks through a full ordinary day of this. One kind reviewer called it very well written with insight, clarity, and wisdom. The link to the book is in the pin comment and the video description.
Now, stay with me because Jesus told us what kind of prayer he considered pagan, and it's the one most of us were taught to pray. That's coming. But first, let's step into the kitchen. If you've watched any of the videos from my previous series, then you know how I do things. First, I make the big claim and then I check it against somebody who lived a long time ago. So, you know, I'm not just following some modern trend here. Well, there was a lay brother named Nicholas Herman in the 17th century Paris.
You may have heard of him as brother Lawrence. He wasn't a theologian. He worked in the priaryy kitchen until when one of his legs gave out, he switched to repairing sandals. People used to come to that kitchen because brother Lawrence had a piece that they just couldn't explain. When he died, a priest who'd written down their conversations put them into a book called The Practice of the Presence of God. It's a book that both Catholics and Protestants have kept on the shelf for over 300 years now.
Here's what he told that priest about prayer. The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer. And in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.
Did you catch what he said there? I possess God. In the French of that time, that means to enjoy his company, holding him present. It doesn't mean he's claiming to own God. And also notice that he didn't stop kneeling at the altar. His kitchen wasn't a replacement for the chapel. What he's saying is that God's company persists in a loud kitchen, which again is only possible if God isn't some distant deity you need to make a phone call to, but is there in the room in the man in the very work itself.
Brother Lawrence didn't pray backwards. He just turned around and found the father standing right behind him. That's something all of us can do. and we should do. Now, let's look at what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6 in the sermon on the mount. He's about to give the model prayer. But before he does, he tells the people how not to pray.
When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. The pagan formula for prayer was to use a lot of words because they believed their gods were far away and busy and you had to convince them that you deserve their attention. Volume and repetition are what they believed would get that attention. If you leave enough voicemails, they may finally get irritated and respond because you were pestering them so much. The word Jesus uses there, babbling. It's a Greek word that isn't used anywhere else in the New Testament.
Scholars think that Matthew may have come up with the word to catch whatever Jesus said in Aramaic. They still argue today over whether it means stammering or empty talk. But regardless, the point is that Jesus was telling people not just to throw noise at God, hoping that doing that will get him to pay attention to you. Now, to be clear, Jesus isn't condemning persistence or even repetition. Remember, he told a parable about a widow that wore a judge down by constantly demanding justice from him. And in a few minutes, you'll see him pray the same sentence three times. What Jesus was condemning there was the words being used as a technique on a distant God.
We all repeat things to people we love, and that's no different with God whom we love dearly. But trying to use it as a signal booster for a phone call, that's not Christian. That's pagan. And then there's the part that really changes our entire prayer life. Jesus said that your father knows what you need before you ask him. Now, if your prayer model is the voicemail model, what's the point of making the phone call if God already knows what you need or what you're going to say? There wouldn't be any point.
But that's not the model. And prayer isn't information transfer. You're not handing God anything he doesn't already know. He's not waiting on your input or feedback so he can decide what he's going to do. The purpose of prayer isn't for God. It's for you. It's the meeting itself that matters.
That's why Jesus one verse earlier gives the instruction that only makes sense if there's no distance between you and God. When you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your father who is unseen. Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. There's no audience and this isn't a performance. It's just you and the father listening to the prayer. Paul says the spirit is already praying inside you. And notice the model prayer Jesus gives.
You ever thought about how short it is? It's only 57 words in Greek. It would take about 20 seconds to say out loud. According to Luke, when the disciples asked him, "Lord, teach us to pray," the prayer Jesus gave an answer there was even shorter still. Jesus Christ, the son of God, who prayed all night in the garden, when asked how to pray, gave a prayer that's less than 20 seconds long. If how long your prayers were are the point, then why would he do that? Well, because that's not the point.
The Father already knows what you need before you ask him. You're not composing a message. You're stepping into a conversation that never stops. A conversation between the spirit that prays for you constantly and the father that listens constantly. As often as you take the time to step into that conversation, you'll find yourself strengthened by the experience. That's the point. Now, for the third use of aba, this one is intensely powerful.
It's in Mark chapter 14. Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane. It's the worst night of his life. His friends have fallen asleep and the cross is only a few hours away. Jesus prays, "Aba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."
Mark tells us he went away and prayed the same thing again and again three times. It's the only time the gospels record Jesus using the word aba in his prayers. And that word from the garden just hours before the cross is the word Paul says the spirit puts in your mouth. And the spirit prays it too alongside you. So when you say aba father, you're not imitating Jesus prayer. You're standing inside of it. The most honest anxietyfilled prayer ever given.
Jesus was so anxious about it that Luke records he sweat blood. Now, I've been through some stuff in life, but nothing that produced so much anxiety that I sweat blood. God didn't grant Jesus what he asked for, though. The cup wasn't removed. But he did give Christ the strength he needed to fulfill his purpose. I can already hear the objections being furiously typed into the comments. So, let me address them first.
There's this. If the father already knows, why ask at all? The same Jesus who said, "Your father knows before you ask," also said one chapter later, "Ask and it will be given you." And Paul echoes that. Even though the spirit prays for us, Paul also says, "In every situation, by prayer and petition, present your request to God." It's not that you shouldn't ask. Asking is what any child does with the father that's in the room.
But when a child asks for something, it's not that the father doesn't already know what the child needs. Asking is part of a relationship. Your kid doesn't stop asking you for food once they realize you already know they're hungry. So keep asking, just stop briefing God.
Now, the second objection. This sounds mystical like that new age stuff where they tell people to go within. I get it and I've seen that teaching hurt people. So, let me be clear here. New age says to go within and you'll find yourself, your divine spark, your power. Paul says the one you find there is somebody else, the spirit of God, not you, praying to a father who is also not you, with words that you didn't write. You share in God's life.
That's scriptural. You aren't what new age says. You aren't God. And unlike what Mormonism teaches, you don't get promoted into being God or being like God. Prayer isn't self-discovery. It's discovering that God is right there in the room with you at all times. The last objection isn't really an objection so much as a wound.
What about unanswered prayers, you might ask? Well, for that, take a look at Jesus' prayer in the garden. He asked three times to have God remove the cup from him, but the answer was no. The son of God himself on his knees begging his father and the request was denied. But Jesus wasn't leaving a message for God that God was ignoring. He was there in the meeting with God. And notice that he says, "Not what I will, but what you will."
Hebrews says it outright. He was heard because of his reverent submission. God heard Jesus prayer. He just said no.
The prayer worked. Jesus was in communion with the father under the father's will. Jesus laid out his honest requests on the table and the relationship remained intact when God's answer came back negative. Paul's intercession passage sits inside a chapter that's all about suffering. groaning, creation, groaning, us groaning. And at the end of Romans chapter 8, Paul says that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God. We don't get all our requests granted, but not because God is ignoring your prayer.
The spirit is praying for the thing you actually need that you may not even know about. And the father is working the thing you can't see yet. Now, that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. You can't see what his will is for you yet. And it can hurt when you want something so bad that you really believe is what you need because you don't yet know that it's not. No, it doesn't make it not hurt, but it does make you not alone in your request because like I said, God is right there in the room with you. All right, so let's point the arrow in the right direction and see how this changes your average Tuesday.
That short desperate prayer you give in the parking lot before going into what you know will be a tense day on the job. Your father knew what you needed before you asked and you were just joining in on the conversation the spirit was already having with him on your behalf. Your mind wandering as you pray that doesn't disqualify you because the spirit never wanders and he kept praying as you got distracted. That's not an excuse to be passive when you pray. You still do the praying and you still pull your attention back when you realize that it's wandered. It's just that your effort alone wasn't the vital piece. Remember Paul's famous seemingly impossible command at 1 Thessalonians 5:17, pray without ceasing.
That word means constantly. The way any habit that we have is constant. Brother Lawrence showed what that looks like. Not you on your knees at the bedside in an hoursl long marathon of words, but a life lived where you recognize that God is always in the room with you. His presence is there no matter what you're doing. All it takes is a quick turn in his direction and you see him. No phone call needed at all.
You don't talk without ceasing. You live in the room without ceasing. And those emergency prayers, there's a reason those feel more real than the polished ones where you planned out what to say. It's because they are more real. You're not performing when you pray in an emergency. There's no formula, no words you thought out in advance. You just turn to God and spill your heart out before him.
It's not a lesser prayer. It's actually in the right direction. Only it took pressure to aim it correctly. Your goal this week is to pray on a normal Tuesday afternoon when there's no emergency like you pray in the hospital parking lot in front of the emergency room.
Now, I promised I'd have something to say for those who don't feel their prayer life is backwards but just dead. If you don't feel anything, if you sit down to pray and there's just nothing there, I want you to listen to Paul again. We do not know what we ought to pray for. He's not describing your failure in that verse. He's putting that as the starting condition of the Christian prayer. Feeling nothing doesn't mean God isn't in the room. The spirit prays with groans too deep for words.
Sometimes the prayer he's praying on your behalf doesn't reach your feelings at all. It goes from the spirit to the father and you never get the memo. Your job on the dead days isn't to try and create a feeling. It's just to be present in the room. Say the family words, "Aba, father," and hold the other end of that heavy box even when you have so little strength it doesn't feel like you're doing any lifting at all. That's okay. You don't have to.
The spirit is stronger than you could ever imagine. And he's going to carry that weight for you. All you have to do is show up and put your hands under the box. That's still praying because he's still praying. So, stop leaving voicemails for somebody who's sitting right next to you. Here's this week's practice for you. Just one small thing for you to carry.
I call this one start inside. Every time you pray this week, whether it's in the morning over a meal, in the parking lot, or right before that tough conversation you know you're going to have to have with your boss, don't start with a request. Don't use a formula. Say in your heart or out loud, whichever you prefer, "Aba, I know you're already in here." Then pray whatever you were going to pray and watch what happens. Doing it that way, that kills the voicemail before it ever starts. You can't say you're already in here and then talk as if God isn't listening to you or hope you might be or hope you might listen to it later.
It puts the spirit's words directly into your mouth. Aba, Jesus family word from the garden. And as I say in my book, it reminds your soul of its true address. When you do that, the asking will flow the way it's designed to. like a child in the room talking with his father who already knows exactly what the child needs and wants to hear you say it anyway. And I have one other thing to say about that because you know sometimes we might be nervous. We might think that God's so big and he's perfect and he knows everything and I just you know I don't know if I could talk to somebody like that.
But remember we are made in the image of God the IMO day. When there's a small child who wants to talk to you, what do we often do, we'll kneel so that that child can look us in the eyes. Now, a lot of us do that by nature. I do, but it's actually very well known in child psychology. It makes the child feel secure and heard. So, think about it. You being much bigger and wiser and more knowledgeable than that little child, you kneel down so they can look you in the eyes and talk to you comfortably and feel heard.
God is not too big for you. He kneels down to look you in the eyes so that he can hear everything that you say and you can see him listening and know that it matters. It doesn't matter that he already knows what you're going to say or what you need. He wants to hear you say it.
Now, the next video in this series is going to cover another practice that Christians were handed backwards. I'll cover why your Bible reading feels like homework. Most of us were taught to read as if we're going to take a test that we'll get graded on. In fact, in the years past in the cult that I was in, we literally did have to take a test and get graded on it. And that's just so wrong. And I'll explain why in the next video. And if this one helped you, send it to the person that told you over a cup of coffee and a sigh that they don't really pray anymore.
Not to nag them, just to let them know that the line was never dead and God wasn't ignoring their calls. They were just picking up the phone when he was right there in the room ready to listen. You know who I mean. Send this to him and let this be our prayer. Aba Father, you are already here with us before we ever opened our mouths to speak a word. Thank you that the spirit takes hold of our prayers when we don't have the words or the strength. And thank you that you already know what we need even when we don't.
You always hear our prayers perfectly. For that, we are forever grateful. Forgive us for all the years we left you messages rather than turning to see that you were right there with us all along in the room kneeling down ready to listen although you already knew what we needed. Teach us this week to turn around to start inside and to pray without performing. [snorts] Teach us to talk to you like children talking to their father rather than briefing you like we're some kind of strangers. And when your answer is no, keep us there in the room like you kept your son in the garden, giving us what we really need, even when we want something else. We love you.
We reflect you. We are yours. In Jesus' name, amen.
