The God of the Bible is a listening God.

The psalmist said, “You know what I’m going to say even before I say it.” (Psalm 139:4, NLT) The Apostle John reminds us in 1 John 5:14-15 that
God listens and hears us.

This is the assurance we need living in a broken world filled with much pain, desperation and disappointment. In moments of emptiness, loneliness, hopelessness, or at times when we feel complete despair of ourselves or our circumstances or both, we are not left to wonder if anyone hears us, if someone truly cares. These are places and the necessary moments God designed and intended us to reach, for here in these moments and places of deepest humility, we find the sufficiency of God’s grace. Grace is God's ability and desire to listen and hear his children.

God is an attentive listener. He not only hears your voice, he hears your heart.

Adam McHugh writes, “Our King gives us his attention, turning his face toward us, a servant ready to ask, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ (Matthew 20:32).” God is also an active listener. He does not listen as humans do - partially or dismissively. He is intensely devoted to listening to us, actively engaged in hearing not just our words, but sensitive to every thought and attitude of our hearts.

While it is true you can ask God for anything, it is not true that God will give you everything you desire! Paul Tripp speaks about how we confuse desire and need. I desire becomes I need. It controls us. Desire (I want) morphs into demand (I must) which morphs into need (I will). John qualifies our asking for “anything” in verse 14. “This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”

God is always faithful to what he has promised. John says that those who ask God for anything do so because they can ask God for anything, that is, they can freely come to God with anything on their mind. God desires that kind of open relationship with you. Nothing’s off limits. There is never a time that he is unapproachable. You can bring anything to God that is in your heart and mind because he loves you and hears you! That is because God is a listening God!