Can you hear me now?

For several years Verizon had an ad campaign that eventually I found annoying.  It was about the range of service for their cell phones, and the catch words for the ad were "can you hear me now"?  It was about people being able to connect without dropped calls.

During my childhood it could have very easily been my mom uttering those word...can you hear me now?  I had developed a keen sense of selective hearing as a child.   And when we were raising our own kids I know I used those words plenty of times.  It often seemed as if they too had bad cases of selective hearing.

As we walk down that long narrow road of life, do we not sometimes wonder if God might also have a case of selective hearing?  I mean, after all, we get so fixated on our own agendas, that when things don't quite go as we had hoped for and planned (or thought they should), doesn't it sometimes seem easy to just blame God..."He wasn't listening to my prayers". 

 

The truth is, God doesn't have selective hearing at all.  We do.  By my own experience, I think we as men, husbands, and fathers tend to get so wrapped up in whatever it is we might be praying about that we expect immediate answers from God...just like our parents did of us and we of our kids.

 

Prayer is about talking with God, sharing with God, and then waiting and being available for His response.  It will never work to ask God "can you hear me now."  It is He who is asking us that same question....time and time again.

 

Can you hear me now?