*_🍞Our Daily Bread🍞 28-10-2021_*
*Is God Listening?*
By: *Elisa Morgan*
_When I served on my church's congregational care team, one of my duties was to pray over the requests penciled on pew cards during the services. For an aunt's health. For a couple's finances. For a grandson's discovery of God. Rarely did I hear the results of these prayers. Most were anonymous, and I had no way of knowing how God had responded. I confess that at times I wondered, Was He really listening? Was anything happening as a result of my prayers?_
_Over our lifetimes, most of us question, "Does God hear me?" I remember my own Hannah-like pleas for a child that went unanswered for years. And there were my pleas that my father find faith, yet he died without any apparent confession._
_Etched across the millennia are myriad instances of God's ear bending to listen: to Israel's groans under slavery (Exodus 2:24); to Moses on Mount Sinai (Deuteronomy 9:19); to Joshua at Gilgal (Joshua 10:14); to Hannah's prayers for a child (1 Samuel 1:10–17); to David crying out for deliverance from Saul (2 Samuel 22:7)._
_First John 5:14 crescendos, "If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us." The word for "hears" means to pay attention and to respond on the basis of having heard._
_As we go to God today, may we have the confidence of His listening ear spanning the history of His people. He hears our pleas._
```Reflect & Pray```
_Pause to consider what you've most recently asked of God. What motivated you to ask? How can you know that God hears you?_
*Father, I come asking and trusting You to hear me because You say that You do.*
*_Our Daily Bread_*