When God Stops Listening

Psalm 66

“I don’t hear you.  I’m not listening.”  Occasionally a parent might say something like that to a disobedient child, especially when that child starts to throw a tantrum, wanting their own way.  Until that child decides he is going to obey his parents, stop acting willfully, and raising a ruckus, the parent is not going to respond to their wishes.  Yes, the parent does hear their child.  They haven’t become deaf.  But they don’t “hear” them, in the sense that they don’t respond back.  Not until the child decides to obey.  In our psalm reading for this week, we will look at a time when the Lord will not hear us, what circumstances will cause that, and what we can do to avoid this from happening.

When a person accepts the Lord Jesus as their personal Savior, and becomes a Christian, God has promised them that He will always hear their prayers (vs. 19).   To have the assurance that God will hear our prayers we must have a right relationship with Jesus Christ, by trusting Him as our Savior.  We are then His child.  It doesn’t matter what time of day it is or where we are, when we are His child, God hears us and is listening.  We can bring our prayers to Him earnestly, with full confidence that the Lord will hear our prayers.

What happens to cause God to stop hearing us?  Just like that parent who stops hearing the disobedient child, when we are disobedient to God, He “stops hearing” us (vs. 18).  As believers and children of God, we must not live in ungodliness, even after salvation.  We must repent of all known sin, and avoid continuing in it.  We hinder our prayers if we refuse to repent of known sin.  God still loves us, but stops “listening” until we are ready to give up our rebellion.  He does not find worship acceptable from believers who cling unrepentantly to sin.  God blesses obedience, not stubbornness.

The psalmist also brings us some other truths from the Lord in his psalm.  One is found in verses 10 - 12.  Hot fire refines gold and silver.  The precious metals go through the extreme heat, which brings out the impurities, which are removed, leaving only the pure precious metal.  In the same way, the Lord uses trials to refine our character.  He allows us to go through times of testing to toughen our spiritual muscles and endurance.  God teaches us to rely on Him, and purifies us to be holy, so we can become more like Christ.  We can rely on God for strength and perseverance.  He is refining us to be the best gold and silver.

Jesus brings us through difficult, sometimes terrible times in our life, bringing us to a place of abundance, if we turn to Him (vs. 12).  We often make promises to God, that if He gets us out of the problem we’re in, we will do something for Him (vs. 13 - 15).  More often than not, though, we renege on those promises.  Our psalmist here had gone through some difficult times, and had made just such promises to the Lord.  However, now that he is on the other side of the problem, he intends on keeping his vows.  We should be careful when we make promises to God, and not make them lightly.  If we promise Him something, then when the time comes to keep those promises, if it is at all within our power, we need to be sure and fulfill them, otherwise not make those promises and vows to begin with.

One final message the psalmist makes throughout his psalm, is that of wanting everyone to know what God has done for him.  Towards the beginning of the psalm he calls everyone to “come and see” (vs. 5).  Look and see all that God has done for His people.  Then towards the end of the psalm he wants everyone to “come and hear”, as he tells of all of God’s marvelous works towards him.  We are not to keep quiet about what God has done for us.  We are to share our witness and testimony to others, and to proclaim God’s message of salvation to everyone.