Word of Encouragement (02/25/2025)
Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, 14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. 16 For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. (2 Chron. 7:12–16)
What assurance did God give concerning the temple Solomon built and dedicated to Him? “Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place.... My eyes and my heart will be there for all time” (vv. 15, 16b). How strong this assurance is! He promised that His ears would be attentive to the prayers made in the temple. God hears everything. No noise is so soft that God cannot hear. Even the deepest groanings of our innermost being are loud and clear in His ears. We don’t have to shout out our prayers. There are times when we can’t even sound out our words, let alone articulate our thoughts. But God can hear what we want to say even through our sobbing and weeping. How comforting this thought is!
But that is not all. God promised that His ears would be “attentive” to our prayers—that is, “to be fully alert” (HALOT). His ears pick up everything without even trying. But when His people pray, He promises to be attentive, to be fully alert. Of course, this is an anthropomorphic expression. Everything God does, He does fully and wholeheartedly. He cannot do anything half-heartedly. He is never conflicted in Himself. But we are not God. There are times when our ears just pick up noise, and we may not even be aware of what it is about. We are often distracted, so if something requires our attention, we must make an effort to listen. Through this anthropomorphic expression, God is assuring us that His ears are fully alert and engaged to hear our prayers. What a blessed gift prayer is!
But that is not all. God also promises, “Now my eyes will be open” (v. 15). We can understand why God spoke of His ears in this assurance to answer our prayers. Why the eyes, too? This is added to reinforce the idea of God’s full engagement with our prayers. We know the danger of written correspondence. Words have meaning. But words can mean different things depending on how one says them (which the written words cannot fully express). But when an important matter must be discussed, people say to do it in person, not even by phone. Our speech is much more expressive than our written words. But even our speech is limited in communicating our full emotions, which our facial expressions and body language embody. Oh, how good it is to know, then, that God’s eyes will be open toward us when we pray! He will not just listen to our words. He is committed to reading every subtle expression on our faces to catch all that we think and feel. Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How can we not pray in His presence to be heard and seen by Him!