FAITH & PRAYER while hearing God Mar 15, 2012

  While meeting at our friends’ home this week, the discussion came up about having the ability to hear God speak directly to us.  One of the questions posed was, "Does everyone have the ability to hear from God"?  And a follow up question was, "What about when you pray but don't hear God answer?”

After getting home that night and continuing into the next morning, I thought about experiences where God had spoken to someone and yet it was many years later before His Word came to pass.  In fact, it seems that this is a very common way that God dealt with some of our great heroes of the faith (ie. Abraham and Moses).  Most of the time when we discuss the issue of not hearing God answer our prayers, we usually refer to those scriptures that pertain to asking amiss (James 4:3), or doubting when we ask (James 1:6-7),  but what pricked my interest in the previous night’s discussion were the testimonies of God having spoken to someone yet that person experiencing a deafening silence on the matter thereafter.  I myself have and have had those same experiences.  However, is it always that it's a case of asking amiss, or doubting.  Or can there be something else going on here?
While reflecting on these questions, I began to remember that there is sometimes a process that connects our walk of faith with a previous Word from the Lord.  For example, when Abraham heard that he would be the father of many nations, many years passed before the fulfillment of that promise.  Yet, we know that he asked the Lord many times to bring the promise to fruition, but then became impatient and took matters into his own hands by conceiving Ishmael who was not the son of promise.  Much like us, I’m sure Abraham questioned his faith because he did not see God act immediately.   However, while he waited on the promised seed, he walked through many other life experiences that built his faith and honed his character.  Then, at the right time for him, the promise was fulfilled and his prayers were answered.
What I have come to observe, even in the biblical stories, is that God's specific Word to an individual brings that person to a point of exercising their faith, like the experience of Abraham.  Maybe God gets tired of our whining and complaining and so He is silent.  Or maybe He knows that we aren't ready to accept an answer because it won't be what we think it should.  Or maybe He's just trying to build some character traits in us so that we can handle the answer when it comes.
So, hearing silence may not always be caused by the usual reasons that we so readily examine (asking amiss, doubting),  but it may be that waiting on the answer is a purposeful faith building exercise.    It gives us a chance to allow our character to be molded and fashioned while looking in hope towards God’s promise.  If my prayers always brought instant results, then I'm fairly sure that my character would change little.  But it's the contending with the fact that I believe that I distinctly heard the Lord's voice that causes me to exercise faith while I wait on an answer.
In the movie A Few Good Men, there is a famous line that says, "You can't handle the truth.”  Well, I think there is a lot of truth to that statement in how God may have to deal with us from time to time.  I know for myself there have been occasions where I've had to wait for some promise to come to pass because I couldn't have handled the answer at the time.  I thank God that He is always merciful to me and does not answer my prayer so quickly that it would damage my faith.   I am thankful that He will speak to me and then give me some time, maybe even years, until He knows that my faith can accept His answer.
Is there some promise that God has made through His Word that you are waiting to see fulfilled?

P.S.
I remember some years ago researching in the Bible all the occurrences of faith.  I found over 600 times that the word faith was used and, after a rather lengthy study, found that in every case the word faith is in the context of God having spoken about some matter.  Now, I know that we throw that word faith around very loosely today, but I believe that the biblical meaning of the word faith carries with it the fact that God has spoken.  An example of non biblical faith is when someone might say, "I have faith that it will be nice weather for our picnic tomorrow.”  But that's not biblical faith.  The examples we have in the Scriptures of true biblical faith is when we see that God has spoken about something and man relies and acts upon that spoken word.  So the question then becomes, can we have biblical faith without hearing God?  Well the answer would obviously be NO.  Without His Word, we wouldn't have anything to apply our faith towards.

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