GOD IS ALWAYS LISTENING

GOD IS ALWAYS LISTENING
PSALM  66:16-20: Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for me. I cried aloud to him, and he was extolled with my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened; he has given heed to the words of my prayer.
Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me.

There are a lot of people having a hard time by wrestling with the question whether God does exist or not. Most of the time they think that the existence of God cannot be proven scientifically, ergo God does not exist. It is hardly anybody out there thinking that the non-existence of God cannot be proven by either mathematical equations, therefore it is logical that will God does exist.

Many people they say that they don't believe in God especially in a personal and all the time intervening God but hardly anybody thinks, that when they say that the existence of God is not provable, their conviction is based on another belief and that belief is that God does not exist. It is a belief, as well, as they should be aware that the non-existence of God is also not provable, someone has to believe in it.

Nonetheless, most people who say that they don't believe in God, still they maintain that they do believe in a higher power or a kind of spiritual background of the material world, and many of these people vehemently oppose institutionalized religions in favor of the so-called spirituality, or as they just call it fate, karma or the universe in general.
Many adamant believers who believe in the very existence of a creator God and consequently that the universe was created, still feel or have a hard time to believe that God is listening to our prayers or to our cries, including the cries of the widows and the orphans and the poor.
Nonetheless, they pray without the feeling of the presence of God, without the feeling of having a contact with or an access to or a relationship with Heaven.

Again there are some who believe, that God is listening, people who think, that it is the least thing that God must do if he does exist to listen to our hearts to our conduct to our behavior, because that is the only logical inference, if we believe that God exists, that God listens.

However, among these believers hardly anybody thinks that although God is listening, God also answers our prayers, our wishes, our requests by communicating with us, by giving advice or counseling us or having a debate with us, as it is written in the Book of Exodus, chapter 33, that "the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend."
The ancient were also familiar with the so-called voice of God, in Hebrew the Bat Kol, which was usually a loud voice sounding from the opened Heaven, like the one at the space-time of the Baptism of Jesus, as it is written, that " Behold, a voice out of the heavens said, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' " or at the mountain of transfiguration, "... a bright cloud overshadowed them. Behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.' "
Again, many people, who experienced or at least they think, that God is able to talk to us, counseling us, advising us through the Scriptures, through the Holy Spirit, in our dreams, through visions, through the spiritual presence of Jesus, still many of these people can hardly imagine that the listening and always communicating God would ever directly intervene in our affairs or in the affairs of the material universe.
However, the Holy Scriptures, both Testaments witness on innumerable occasions the direct divine interventions in human affairs, as we call them miracles, supernatural events, appearances of angels or the angel of the Lord, as well.

In order to better understand the listening, answering and intervening nature of God, it is worth to look at the sojourn of Jesus in the desert. According to the gospel his journey to the desert happened right after his baptism when the voice from heaven declared him the son of God.
It is also worth to pause here for a second, because, as a matter of fact we are also the very children of God.
For Jesus it could have been the highlighted prime time of his mission, however it was not only the beginning of it, but the initial evaluation and an assessment event, to figure it out how to deal with multiple temptations.

Thus, his Baptism can not be considered as the final graduation, because that was the Easter resurrection.
According to the gospel of Matthew his desert sojourn culminated into the temptation battle, beginning with his hunger caused by his 40 day fasting including the nights of course, which must be pronounced because we know fasting practices like fasting during the day, but not fasting during the night. Jesus did fast during the nights as well and he got very, very hungry. If not, then there is no temptation to be fought.

He knew, in order to have bread among the desert stones he just had to ask bread from his father of Heaven.
As he taught his disciples, that " Which of you fathers, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? … If you ... know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

Jesus knew, that if he would have asked bread, he would have received it, even by turning the stones to bread. However, that was not the right thing to do. Practically, except of the Holy Spirit, there is nothing else truly appropriate to be asked in prayer from the Holy God of Heaven.
Because, first of all, God knows all our needs in advance, before voicing it, before even our birth. Beside that, to us the earthly bread and everything humans might need were provided by God in such an abundance on Earth, that it is comparable only to the Garden of Eden.

The only thing we lack is mercy in our own hearts toward each other, and we lack the will to share the abundant bread given by God in advance, even before asking.
If we choose the word of God over the earthly bread praying for the gift of the Holy Spirit, then the earthly bread will be given to us by the means of sharing.

As it is written we are alive only because God put his breath into us. That is why we can say God is always listening, but not from the outside, but from the inside, just as Jesus added, that  “But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”
God is always answering, without a pause, even in our dreams, answering from the same reason not from outside, but from inside, without a pause, by giving his breath.

God is always intervening, as Paul said that For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; “ as the framework of the laws in the universe and in our hearts rewards the God fearing and punishes the law breakers, without a pause.
As closer we get to God inside in our hearts, so more and more miracles happen.

May God enliven us, by filling our hearts with the holy spirit to bless the Lord,
AMEN