THE GOD WHO HEARS
A Word from Your Pastor
Amazing family,
When you have been praying about the same thing for years and nothing moves, does God actually hear you?
This Sunday, Rev. Dr. Zandra L. Jordan stood in our pulpit and refused to answer that question with a cliche. She told us about a friend who believes God can do wondrous and miraculous things. They just don't believe God will do it for them. How many of us, if we're honest, have sat in that exact spot? We will testify all day about what God did for somebody else, and privately we have stopped expecting anything for ourselves.
Dr. Jordan took us to the burning bush, where God tells Moses, I have observed the misery of my people, I have heard their cry, and I have come down to deliver them. Notice the timeline. The Israelites had been suffering for generations before that bush ever caught fire. The silence was never absence. God had been working in the background the whole time, putting together things they could not see.
Then she turned the whole thing around on us. God does not stop at I have heard. God says, now go, I am sending you. Maybe the delay isn't that God hasn't heard, but that we haven't yet moved. You may be the answer somebody else has been waiting on. She reminded us that when she needed healing in her own body, God did it, and God used a surgeon to do it. God uses people, and God wants to use us.
So bring the thing you have been carrying. The prayer that feels too small and the one that feels too big. There just aren't any prayers that are too small or too big. Then sit with the harder question: is there a place where God has already heard, and is waiting on you to move?
Over these five days we are going to walk with the God who sees and hears, and face the question of whether we are ready to be sent. Start with Day 1.
Grace and peace, Pastor Kaloma
Day 1: He Sees You
"Then the Lord said, 'I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings.'" (Exodus 3:7 (NRSVUE))
Somewhere in year three or year ten of praying about the same thing, a thought creeps in that is almost too heavy to say out loud. A friend once said it plainly to Dr. Jordan: they believe God can do wondrous and miraculous things. They just don't think God will do it for them.
The Israelites had reason to wonder the same. They had been crying out under Egyptian oppression for generations, long enough that whole lifetimes began and ended inside the waiting. From where they stood, heaven looked closed.
Then God speaks from the bush, and notice the verbs. I have observed. I have heard. I know. Before God announces a single plan, He establishes that nothing about their suffering ever slipped past Him. The silence was never absence.
That is where this week starts. Whatever you are carrying, from the bill you cannot pay to the thing you have stopped mentioning even to God, He has observed it. You have never once been invisible to Him.
"God sees, God hears and God responds. God sees our suffering just like God saw the Israelites oppression. God hears our cries just like God heard theirs. And God responds." — Rev. Dr. Zandra L. Jordan
Reflection
Is there an area of your life where you have been assuming God has not noticed, and what would change if you believed He sees every detail of it?
Prayer
Lord, thank You for seeing me when I have felt invisible. Forgive me for the moments I decided my pain had slipped past You. Help me bring You the honest, tired version of myself this week, not the polished one. Amen.
Day 2: He Hears Every Word
"The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth." (Psalm 145:18 (NRSVUE))
A few months ago Dr. Jordan shared one of her sermons with a Jewish colleague, and the reply stayed with her. In her colleague's tradition, people don't generally pray for stuff or for God to do specific things. They try instead to carry a sense of God around them and with them at all times.
There is real wisdom in that. Who are we to presume we know what God should do? Most of us have prayed desperately for something, watched it not happen, and later thanked God it didn't. But Dr. Jordan grew up in a church singing Just a Little Talk with Jesus, raised on Psalm 34 and on Philippians 4, where we are told to be anxious for nothing but in everything to make our requests known.
So she prays for parking spots. If she needs one close to the office and somebody backs out right as she pulls up, you can't tell her God didn't hear that prayer. It sounds small until you see what it rests on. If a child asks her father for bread, he does not hand her a stone. Because we belong to God through Jesus Christ, we can call on Him anytime, for anything.
The question is not whether your request is impressive enough. The question is whether you will bring it.
"I'm convinced that God cares about me. So I figure God also cares about the things that I'm concerned about. There just aren't any prayers that are too small or too big." — Rev. Dr. Zandra L. Jordan
Reflection
What is something you have been hesitant to bring to God in prayer, and what is holding you back from bringing it to Him today?
Prayer
Father, thank You for being near to everyone who calls on You. Give me the courage to bring You everything, including the requests that feel too small to mention and the ones that feel too big to hope for. Teach me to pray like a child who knows she is loved. Amen.
Day 3: Working in the Background
"O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely." (Psalm 139:1-4 (NRSVUE))
Run the math on Moses and the timeline gets uncomfortable. He was about forty when he saw the bush, and at least eighty before he walked back into Egypt. The people he was sent to deliver had been crying out for generations before any of it. If you had asked an Israelite in the middle of those years whether God was moving, what would they have said?
Here is what they could not see. Centuries earlier, God had already told Abram that his descendants would be enslaved in a land not their own, and that He would bring judgment on that nation and bring them out. The deliverance was planned before the suffering began. God was not scrambling to catch up.
Dr. Jordan was honest about how this feels, and the honesty matters. God's timing is best, and it can still be hard to wait. You want what you want, and you wanted it yesterday. Both things are true at once, and faith does not require pretending otherwise.
So the waiting is not evidence of absence. Somewhere behind what you can see, God is putting things together that will only make sense later.
"All along God has been working in the background, putting things together, making a way for you, working out situations, things that you couldn't see." — Rev. Dr. Zandra L. Jordan
Reflection
How does knowing that God sees the full picture of your life, past, present, and future, change the way you approach a situation where you feel stuck?
Prayer
God, You know my lying down and my rising up, and You knew this season before I entered it. When I cannot see any movement, remind me that You are working in the background. Help me trust Your timing even on the days it is hard to wait. Amen.
Day 4: Now Go
"The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. Now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt." (Exodus 3:9-10 (NRSVUE))
God did not stop at I have heard. In the very next breath, the answer to Israel's generations of prayer turns out to be a person standing barefoot in front of a bush. Go. I am sending you.
Moses immediately started debating. He had a complicated past in Egypt, no standing with Pharaoh, and a list of reasons he was not the one. We do the same thing when God asks us to get involved, to take on a role at UAMEZ Church, to go do something in the community, to call our neighbor, to get serious about the thing that has been on our heart for so long.
Dr. Jordan did not pretend the problem of evil is simple. She set Israel's oppression beside suffering in our own history and our own moment, and admitted she cannot explain why evil persists. What she refused to concede is that God is idle. God is righteous, and God's righteous response to evil often requires our participation. We pray, why isn't God doing something about this? Sometimes the question is, where are we?
If you have been praying about the same thing for years, sit with this gently. The delay may not be on heaven's side of the conversation.
"Maybe when we've been praying for something so long and there appears to be no movement, maybe the delay isn't that God hasn't heard, but that we haven't yet moved." — Rev. Dr. Zandra L. Jordan
Reflection
Is there a situation you have been praying about where God might be calling you to take a step of action rather than continue waiting?
Prayer
Lord, I have asked You to move, and today I am asking something harder: show me whether You are waiting on me. Give me the courage Moses had to stir himself up and go. Make me willing to be part of Your answer. Amen.
Day 5: Called and Sent
"I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears." (Psalm 34:4 (NRSVUE))
Moses went. He stirred up his courage, packed up his wife and his sons, and marched back into the one place he had fled for his life. It was not easy, and the deliverance still did not come quickly. Pharaoh said no more than once, and the signs and wonders unfolded on God's schedule rather than Moses' preference.
But God was up to something in the timing itself. There was an intentional design to how their liberation unfolded, because God needed the people to know exactly who was delivering them. I am that I am.
And notice how God delivered: through a person. Dr. Jordan put it plainly from her own life. When she needed healing in her body, she believes God did it, and God used doctors. God used a surgeon. God uses people, and God wants to use us. The thing someone near you has been praying for may be sitting in your hands right now.
You have spent five days with the God who sees, hears, and responds. He is also the God who sends. If this breath is still filling your lungs, you have something to do.
"God's plan to bring about change, to bring about healing, to bring about deliverance in our land, to bring about restoration, is connected to our willingness to take up our own cross, follow the Lord." — Rev. Dr. Zandra L. Jordan
Reflection
Looking back over this week, where have you seen evidence that God has been at work in your life, and how is He inviting you to respond?
Prayer
Father, thank You for calling ordinary people into Your plan. Deliver me from the fears that keep me debating at the bush. This week, help me take one real step toward the thing You have placed on my heart, and let somebody else's prayer be answered through my obedience. Amen.
A Prayer for the Week Ahead
Lord, this week You reminded us that silence was never absence. You had seen every tear in Egypt long before the bush burned, and You have seen ours.
Forgive us for the places where we decided You do wondrous things for everybody but us. Teach us to pray like children who belong to You, with nothing too small and nothing too big to bring.
And when You say now go, give us the courage of Moses to move. Somebody near us is waiting on an answer that may be sitting in our own hands.
Let the prayers we pray and the steps we take outlive us, so that our children inherit a people who kept calling on Your name and kept showing up as the answer.
Amen.
The Conversation Continues
The conversation on the God who hears continues in our Wednesday small groups. Bring the prayer you have been carrying. We'll see you Sunday at 10am, 3549 Middlefield Rd in Palo Alto.
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