How do we know God's listening?

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 "Know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself; the LORD will hear when I call to him."  Psalm 4:3 NIV

I have been discouraged lately because I feel my prayers do not go farther than the ceiling.  There are moments when I sit here at work, bow my head to pray and feel like my prayers don't go farther than the ceiling.  I've tried dimming the lights, lighting candles, playing worship music, standing, sitting, kneeling, walking laps around the firetrucks, sitting in total silence and journaling my prayers.  I still feel like I'm talking to myself.  There are times when I feel moments of incredible peace, where I can feel chills run through my body and feel the overwhelming sense of God in the place.  Those moments quickly fade and lately, I've felt a continual sense of nausea instead.

I've been one of those "touchy feely" Christians for a long time.  I use phrases like "I feel God is leading me here" or "I can sense God is saying that" or "I felt God tell me this."  However, I'm questioning the validity of following my feelings when it comes to prayer.  Lately, I haven't had one of those emotionally reassuring prayer times where God's presence is tangible.  I haven't felt the heaviness of God's hand on my shoulder or the surge of the Holy Spirit's power in my heart.  I noticed that when I stopped feeling those things, I stopped praying.  That's bad.  Somehow I have determined that if I cannot feel those positive sensations, I think that God isn't listening.  Yet the scripture above says that God hears the godly when they call out to Him.  And I know that the Scriptures also say that because of Jesus, we can comfortably call ourselves godly and approach the throne.  I can reach two conclusions: I either lose confidence in the Bible because my emotional experience is lacking or I can lose confidence in my feelings because they are misleading me.  So I've lost all confidence in my feelings.  I've determined there must be regulation of my feelings, a sense of logic and direction upon which I can determine if my feelings are generated by the Holy Spirit and righteous inclinations or by my own selfish ambition or oppressive spiritual forces of darkness.  

After reflection and thought, I am confident that the regulatory truth that determines if the motives of my heart are godly must be the Bible.  If I cannot feel or perceive something and the Scriptures teach me that the something I cannot feel indeed exists, the Scriptures ought to hold more weight.  If I feel that I am doing something righteous but the Scriptures tell me my behavior is sin, I should obey the Scriptures and not my own personal desires.  Ultimately, the Bible must be the "be all and end all" in terms of morality and truth.  Though recently I do not feel like God hears me when I speak to Him, the Bible tells me that he has set apart the godly for himself and hears us when we call.  The truth of the Scriptures must reign supreme over my personal sensation that I am talking to myself.

I wish I could have the confidence of David, the writer of Psalm 4.  David spoke to God, called out to Him and knew that God would answer Him.  There is no optimistic hope that God might hear His call.  The verse doesn't say, "I think God has set me apart, I hope He hears my prayer."  David is entirely confident that God hears him when he prays.  And this was before the Holy Spirit came to live in the hearts of believers (for more than a moment) and before Jesus became our sin so we can become God's righteousness.  David has an impressive level of comfort in the truth that His God loved him and heard his cries.  Even with the knowledge of Christ crucified and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, my confidence wavers based upon my emotional experience.

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In what have I placed my confidence?  My feelings?  The sensation that God is with me?  Or the truth that the Bible is valid and that it tells me that God hears me when I pray?  It's got to be the Bible, it's got to be the mind-boggling, overwhelming, powerful truth that the God of the Universe pays attention to me.  I feel so small in the presence of such a large God that I think He must hear me the way I hear the buzz of a fly.  Yet the Bible says He set believers apart and that He hears us when we call to Him.  If I follow my feelings, God has abandoned me.  If I believe the truth of the Scriptures, God hears every word that I speak to Him.  I have to believe the Bible over my feelings because my feelings tell me lies and the Scriptures tell me truth.  

Where does my emotionally based theology originate?  I think there are three major forces at work that contribute to my inaccurate gauge of God's presence: (1.) worship settings, (2.) my flesh, and (3.) Satan and spiritual force of darkness.

1. I notice that a good portion of the evangelical church's worship services and teachings are designed to evoke a certain level of emotionalism.  Often songs and services manipulate the fragility of human emotion to create a somewhat artificial experience of God's presence.  Lights, songs, fog on the stage, a dark room, a cool video, and a powerful teaching can make even the most ardent of atheists believe they might have left earth for an hour.  I am not saying that these things are intrinsically bad and that we should not utilize them.  I see their purpose and I think they are fantastic tools to create an aesthetically pleasing atmosphere.  I do think, however, that the unintentional consequence is that we can begin to think God's presence is the same as our emotional reaction to the "cool" elements that characterize our worship services. I know I make that connection.  Perhaps I am digressing a bit here, but I think that we may be creating a false expectation of our personal prayer times.  Simply put, it's not nearly as cool and emotional  in our devotional time as it is when we are at church or a conference.
2. I know that my flesh plays a major role in my emotional perspective.  I worship God and pray selfishly sometimes.  I want to feel God and I want to know He still loves me.  I do not think there is anything wrong with enjoying God's presence, but so many of our worship experiences are designed to get us to feel God's love and feel God's presence.  We want to feel the love of God explode (Kim Walker, anyone?) in our lives.  I think my flesh, our flesh, can tempt us to make reading the Bible and worship about our own experience.  How many times have we said or heard others say, "The worship didn't really do anything for me."  It's crazy to think that we might feel that the worship is about us.  It shouldn't do anything for us because the worship is not about us.  I've so closed tied emotions to experiencing God that absence of emotion in my faith suggests that God isn't involved.  That's dangerous.
3. Satan and spiritual forces of darkness are always warring against us, telling us lies and ensuring that our relationship with God is based upon anything but the Scriptures.  He knows the Bible is truth and that prayer conforms our hearts to God's image so he'll do anything to ensure we don't read the Bible and that we don't pray.

God is the ultimate source of all things good.  Any type of pleasantry is rooted in the benevolence of God.  Even the ability to feel is a blessing extended by God, granted when He created humanity in His perfect image.  The fluidity of human emotion, our ability to vacillate and experience all the sensations between bliss and rage, is a reflection of our infinitely emotional and compassionate Creator God.  Yet it is a sin to pursue the positivity that accompanies knowing God.  When we elevate feelings of peace and pursue an evangelical version of the Buddhist nirvana rather than seeking the actual Source of all love and goodness, we have created an idol of emotional experience.  We must obey the Scriptures, worship God and seek first His Kingdom despite our feelings.  If we question whether our prayers are heard or if obedience is fruitful for our spirits because we do not emotionally identify with the spoken prayer or the Scriptures at hand, we will see how the heart is truly deceitful above all things.  We do not obey the Scriptures or pray because we feel that doing so is a novel idea or because we think it is good for us.  These are selfish ambitions.  Rather we obey the Scripture because the Author and Finisher of our Faith, the penman of divine truths, has told us to because it glorifies His Name.  When our obedience and our worship is even partly motivated by our own desire for personal emotional balance or "doing something good" for ourselves, we are not fully submitted to God.  When we examine our motives in the absolute pure light of God's jealous demand for our undivided worship, we recognize that sin has cursed us more deeply than we ever understood.  How much more thankful we are for Christ when we see that we cannot worship God without thinking of ourselves!

 The key points here?

• Our faith cannot be based upon our feelings or experiences, but on the truth of the Scriptures.
• Our feelings and experiences can enhance our faith, but they can also be misleading and destructive.
• All of our feelings ought to be examined and held to the light of God's truth.
• Any feelings that steer us away from God instead of towards Him must be confronted and dealt with.
• Pursuing good feelings instead of pursuing a good God is a bad idea.

I've been writing about this for more than two hours now, so I think it's time for me to take a break.  I know this isn't a cute "Chicken Soup for the Soul" style story with a nice moral at the end, but it's the true story of my innermost thoughts and concerns regarding my walk with God.  There's no truer story for my life at this moment than what I've shared with you today.