Isaiah 66:5 Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word.
Maybe you know the feeling of foolishness when you realize after a four minute phone conversation that you have lost your connection. You have been talking to nothing but air for most of that time! I always feel foolish when this happens to me. I think, “Oh, how much have I said that no one actually heard?” Such a conversation is not a conversation at all; it is a monologue! It is a one-sided conversation.
A lot of people think of prayer that way. Prayer is a monologue for a rebellious believer. A rebellious believer is not listening to God; he just wants God to hear what he has to say. On the other hand, that is also the thinking of an atheist, a person who thinks there is no God. To him, prayer is just something that makes you feel better. There is no one to actually listen or hear.
Yet, prayer is not a monologue. There is a living God. There is a speaking God. The amazing thing is that God loves us, but He doesn’t need us. In Isaiah 66:1 he says, “Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? For all those things hath mine hand made.” God doesn’t need me; God loves me.
On the other hand, so many times I need God, but I don’t love Him. I need help, guidance, protection, and favor. I need these things and perhaps I go to Him asking for those things, but there is a lack of love. There is not a recognition of the relationship between provision and praise, between what God has given and how I should give gratitude. So, the long and short of it is that prayer is not a monologue.
God gives us promises. When we pray, we ought to think on those promises. Back in Isaiah 62, speaking of God, the Bible says, “And give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. The LORD hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength.”
Basically, God’s people are being challenged in light of what God has already promised. The Bible says, “Pray without ceasing.” Sometime we don’t know what God would want; we just know what we want. We need to pray and ask God for what we want until He shows us that we are praying for the wrong thing. We pray in light of promises, promises that God has spoken.
We pray in light of the warnings we’ve heard. We ought to be aware of those. In Isaiah 65:11 God says, “But ye are they that forsake the LORD, that forget my holy mountain.” Later, He says, “Because when I called, ye did not answer; when I spake, ye did not hear.” In contrast, there is coming a day to the people of God that “before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”
There are numerous examples of God saying, “I’ve been talking, but you haven’t been listening.” Then there is the ability of God to answer before we even ask. So, we are blessed, but not entitled. We need to take heed to the warnings. God’s people were very much aware that they were a special people. They said, “Look down from heaven, and behold.” They said, “Doubtless thou art our father.” They were aware of their place in God’s economy, but they weren’t aware of the place God was to have in their lives. God said, “I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts.” They weren’t listening.
So, prayer is not a monologue. We speak and we hear. We pray in light of the promises we know, in light of the warning we’ve heard, and we realize that we are blessed but not entitled. Prayer is something that should be a two-way conversation. There is a living, speaking God, and we should live to hear Him and pray to be heard.