How to Make Sure God Hears Your Prayers (eBook)

Chapter 1

WHAT THE WORLD SAYS IS GOOD

There are over seven billion people on this earth right now. Many of them walk through their daily lives believing they are good people. Maybe they volunteer at the local nursing home or donate to orphanages. They may even attend church every Sunday. Yet when they pray, they wonder why God feels distant. They’re “good” people after all. However, they don’t fear the Lord. In secret, they sin because they don’t think God notices or cares. But God cares deeply about our sin. It separates us from him.

SIN IN BELSHAZZAR’S COURT

While Daniel was faithfully serving God as an exile in Babylon, his captor, King Belshazzar, was partying. This was despite his city being surrounded by his enemy, the hostile Medo-Persian army, for four months. But he had a good reason not to be too concerned. Belshazzar had water and food enough to last for two decades. His city was encircled by two walls. The inner wall was twenty-one feet thick with massive towers at sixty-foot intervals. The outer wall was eleven feet in width and had watchtowers. Six feet outside these walls was a moat fed by the Euphrates River, making Babylon a seemingly impenetrable fortress.2 Belshazzar, therefore, was unintimidated. He needed only wait until the enemy became discouraged and left, so despite the siege, he made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and calmly drank wine in their presence.

However, the God of Israel had already given the king a prophetic message:

[Daniel] told the king three times that the kingdom of Babylon would end and that it would be replaced by the Medes and the Persians. The army outside the gates would win.

God had also given the same message through other prophets. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied that Babylon would fall to the Medes (see Jeremiah 51:1–11; Isaiah 13:17–22). Isaiah’s prediction was over 200 years earlier!

Belshazzar knew what God had said, but he felt safe inside his city walls. In a final act of defiance, he threw a great party.3

His drinking of wine is mentioned five times in these few verses, inferring that this was more than just a feast. And one sin led to another. Scripture doesn’t hesitate to align sexual sin with drunkenness. They are bedfellows: “Let us conduct ourselves properly and honorably as in the [light of] day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility” (Romans 13:13 AMP). The Bible further warns that drunkenness leads to sexual sin:

For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles—when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. (1 Peter 4:3)

Drunkenness emboldens sin by dulling the conscience. It muffles its warning and has no doubt robbed many men and women of virginity they otherwise would have prized. Drunkenness certainly marred Noah’s good reputation (see Genesis 9:20–23).

Belshazzar’s drunkenness not only led to sexual sin but also to idolatry, for it was while the king had a cup of wine in his hand that the now infamous and devilish thought entered his mind: he would take the cups from the temple so that he and his guests could drink wine from them:

While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple of the house of God which had been in Jerusalem; and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone. (Daniel 5:2–4)

But this wasn’t solely for the pleasure of drinking fine wine. It was to be a time of praise to the demon gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone. And in Belshazzar’s mind, they were worthy to be praised—because dumb idols don’t forbid sexual sin. His idols let him behave however he pleased. The psalmist speaks of how the ungodly boast of their idols: “Let all be put to shame who serve carved images, who boast of idols” (Psalm 97:7).

Sinners feel so safe and secure from the judgment of God that they throw a party. Despite the many warnings in Scripture, the voice of conscience, and the protest of the church against sin, people today have fortified themselves behind impenetrable walls and become emboldened in their sin, just like Belshazzar: “Yet they say, ‘The LORD does not see, nor does the God of Jacob understand’” (94:7).

All the while, justice strains against the reins of mercy. Despite the patience of God, his law remains. His love of justice never changes, but the Scriptures tell us that he is rich in mercy. Like a good judge, he waits patiently because he wants to show mercy to a criminal. The judge waits for signs of remorse. And it’s the same with our Creator. He waits, but all the while, wrath is being stored up; the ultimate stallion rises on its hind legs and is keen to rush into battle:

But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who “will render to each one according to his deeds”: eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil. (Romans 2:5–9)

How can we not but tremble when we think of the terrifying fate of those who don’t fear God—who, without restraint, give themselves to sin? They “feast…without fear,” serving their own lusts. “They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 1:12–13). They act in rebellion against God’s commands. These people could be your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends, and even your family members. Without the fear of the Lord, all await his judgment.

THE WORLD’S DEFINITION OF GOOD AND EVIL

But our world tries to say, “Surely you don’t mean everyone who doesn’t fear the Lord is destined for hell? What about the neighbor who bakes cookies for you? Or the cousin who’s just had a hard life? Or the friend who goes out of her way to help people?”

If you ask the unsaved to define evil, you will find that most confine their definition to a mass murderer like Hitler—someone who was responsible for the slaughter of millions of people. Or they will point to Jeffrey Dahmer—a man who, between 1978 and 1991, molested seventeen men and boys, strangled them, dismembered them, and cannibalized them.4 Most people wouldn’t deny mass murderers are evil.

In fact, the dictionary says that to be evil means to be “profoundly immoral and wicked.”5 These two monsters adequately qualify for that definition. However, the dictionary’s use of the word profoundly elevates evil above the reach of average sinners, completely ignoring God’s moral standards. Even respected theologians miss the mark if they don’t point to an objective standard when describing evil:

Essentially, evil is a lack of goodness. Moral evil is not a physical thing; it is a lack or privation of a good thing. As Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland has noted, “Evil is a lack of goodness. It is goodness spoiled. You can have good without evil, but you cannot have evil without good.” Or as Christian apologist Greg Koukl has said, “Human freedom was used in such a way as to diminish goodness in the world, and that diminution, that lack of goodness, that is what we call evil.”6

Although these statements are true, they are obscure if goodness is also left without a clear definition. What may be goodness to one person may not be goodness to another. How profound is profound, and how good is good?

With these vague definitions of good and evil, it’s no wonder most people today wonder why God feels distant to them. They may even think that as long as they’re good people—living up to whatever their definition of good is—that God will hear their prayers and do whatever they ask. However, the Bible has clearly defined good from evil. This is why we must point to the law of God as the ultimate reference point for good and evil. Scripture says the law is perfect, holy, just, and good (Psalm 19:7; Romans 7:12). By it, we can measure evil. The law demanded that Hitler love the Lord his God with all of his heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love every Jew as much as he loved himself. If he saw an injured Jewish person, he was required to lovingly bathe his wounds, transport him to a place where he could find help, and pay for any and all costs incurred (see Luke 10:25–37). Scripture is clear that anyone who breaks God’s commandments “shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19). To look the other way when someone is in such need is profoundly evil. The law thunders the truth about evil: “For out of the heart...