Does God Hear All Prayer?

Richard Hollerman

Question:

Does God hear all of our prayers?

Answer:

We all take great delight in the many encouragements or even commands to call on God and seek His help. God says that when we pray to Him, He will answer and will come to our help. Let us rejoice in this!

Think of the many Biblical passages that assure us that God will hear and come to our aid. For instance, God says, “Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3). Is this a statement that we can trust?

The psalmist assures us: “Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!” He then says, “Be gracious to me and hear my prayer” (Psalm 4:1b). We then read, “The LORD hears when I call to Him” (v. 3b). Or consider this: “The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth” (Psalm 145:18). Yes, we can trust that God will hear our prayers and answer us!

There are many passages that tell us about God’s desire or willingness to hear us and to answer our prayers. This is good news to the one who wonders whether God does hear us and come to our aid. If we encounter trouble of some sort, we can be assured that the Lord hears us and wants to help. But we need to ask.

However, are there any conditions in regarding prayer? Indeed, there are. We must not close our eyes to the many other passages that speak about prayer and acceptable prayer. Let’s notice a few of these promises so that we might have a fuller view of this great privilege.

Let’s notice the words of the blind (but healed) man, spoken to the Pharisees. He said, “We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him” (John 9:31). Although this was a very fallible healed man, we can see that this principle is true. God hears the “God-fearing” man who does the will of God. The converse would also be true: God does not hear or answer the disobedient man or the man who has no fear of the Lord. Let’s keep this in mind.

We read this in Proverbs 15:29: “The LORD is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous.” God refuses to hear the sinner but He does respond to the prayer of the obedient. The psalmist speaks of the person who refuses to hear God in Psalm 1:24. There, God says, “They will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but they shall not find me” (v. 28). In this case, God does not hear or answer the prayer of the disobedient one!

We again read the assurance of prayer in Psalm 145:18-19: “The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him; He will also hear their cry and will save them.” Notice that God does hear and answer the one who calls on Him “in truth” but this would exclude the one who calls in falsehood! He will hear the cry of the one who calls for help from the Lord and will “save” him. But the reverse is also true: God will refuse to hear and answer the one whose heart is not true to Him.

Notice now another passage—this one at 1 Peter 3:12: “The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous, and His eyes attend to their prayer, but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil.” Again we see that God hears the “righteous” one but he refuses to ear the one who practices evil (or sin). This is God’s promise—both for the one who faithfully obeys and also for the one who does evil.

We should also compare this with Psalm 34:16-18. Once again, in this passage, we see that the righteous cry and the Lord will hear and answer. However, the Lord does not hear those who practice evil. Maybe we can now see that God assures us that our prayers will be heard and answered—only if we are faithful to Him and do His will. Otherwise, He will not hear and heed our requests.

Even in the New Testament, Jesus our Lord says that we may approach God in prayer and call Him “Father.” This is great encouragement! But this is contingent on our willingness to forgive the one who seeks our forgiveness (see Matthew 6:9-15). God is our Father if we belong to Him and have experienced the new birth of the Spirit, but He is not the Father of the one who has rejected the birth of water and the Spirit (John 3:3-7). This also is a fact that we need to remember in regard to prayer.

We hope that this clarifies the matter of prayer and God’s willingness to hear and answer prayer. Let’s remember the conditions of true and acceptable prayer. But let’s not claim a promise that is not meant for us. God does answer prayer—but He does not answer all prayer.