When you pray, do you feel like you have a bad cell phone connection with God? Have
you had times when you wonder if what you are saying is getting through to Heaven?
Do you ever wonder about the unclear messages you are hearing? Are you
confused and paralyzed? Or maybe there’s total silence on the other end?
All of us who try to communicate with God have struggled at times with both sides of
the conversation. What do we say? And, what is God saying back to us?
Let’s consider a broader question: Is there any place in all the world so remote that
God would not hear your prayer?
Can you go so high in altitude that God could not hear you? It has been over 50 years
since the first man stepped foot on the moon. During the Apollo space missions, there
were twenty-nine different astronauts. Twenty-three of them were protestants and six were Catholic. There was a high percentage of them who were more than nominal in their
faith. Many were volunteer leaders and elders in their home churches.
Buzz Aldrin was one of those astronauts with a strong faith. As a child, I remember when Buzz, and the crew with him, were interviewed on television as they were on their return to Earth. The crew shared in reading from Genesis 1, the first ten verses,
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”
If space had any impact on their faithful pursuit of God, it only intensified it.
How about the opposite direction? Can you go so deep into the earth that God could
not hear you? We have a story of a man named Jonah who prayed to God from inside a
whale. He wondered if God could hear him from possibly hundreds of feet down in the
Mediterranean Sea. After three days in the great fish, Jonah wrote about the encounter
and said these words,
“‘In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry’”
(Jonah 2:1-2).
There is no longitude or latitude, altitude or depth, where you can escape the
presence and the care of God. King David realized this as he wrote through the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit these words,
“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (Psalm 139:7-8).
With this truth in mind, let’s journey a bit further. If God is always present and aware of
our location and situation, it is futile to try and run from God. Like Jonah, mentioned above, God is with us even when we are trying to be far from him. Many people live like this and think they are getting away with something, living as if God doesn’t exist, or is too remote and aloof to know their situation.
Others of us long for God. We want to hear more from Him, but He seems so far away
that He doesn’t care about us, let alone see the struggles of this life. But He does, and
first hand! The whole point of Jesus living down here as the “exact representation of
God in bodily form” was for God to let us know He sees and understands our needs. In
fact, if God notices anything from Heaven, it is our hurts and struggles, rather than our
wealth and successes. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
If you want to get closer to God, it is easier than you think.
“He is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:27).
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