Tuesday, October 11, 2022

How Does God Hear All Our Prayers at Once?

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  Hebrews 13:8

If you’ve ever wondered how God can hear all our prayers at once, you’re definitely not alone.  It’s a fair question, but difficult to grasp because we’re so limited in our understanding.  God even told us that his ways are much higher than ours (in any direction you care to point).   

I’ve been asked that question many times, by people of all ages.  But the children are the ones who’ve asked that question most.  And most often it is on a Sunday, during worship at the children’s time.  It’s hard to do a two-and-a-half-minute explanation.  But, let’s try.

There are 7½ billion people on planet earth right now, and, let’s say, only half of them even believe in God.  Only half of them pray, and not all at the same time.  But let’s be generous and say about half-a-billion pray, several times a week.  So, at any given time, there are (I’m guessing) maybe 50-75million prayers offered during an average day.  If it’s a short prayer…God, I need to win this lottery…just once…please, please, please?  Well, that one won’t get much of God’s attention.  But if it’s an unselfish prayer to bless someone, or heal a tumor, there might be a couple hundred thousand of those an hour.  How does God multitask that?  Even on my best days I can’t listen to more than one conversation at a time.  My wife is a magnificent multitasker for a human, and her limit is less than a dozen. 

C.S. Lewis gave (in one of his books) the best explanation for that problem of God handling all the requests at one time.  His answer is that God is not constrained by time, because as the creator of time, He controls it.

Here’s the explanation Lewis gave, and it satisfied even my dense mind:

Suppose I am writing a novel. I write ‘Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!’ For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary’s maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary. I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary’s time (the time inside the story) at all".[1]

For You Today

I can’t do better than that for a wise understanding of God’s ways, but taking Mr. Lewis at heart, here’s a thought for today’s musing:  A God who has eternity to be outside even our split-second need, and is without limit in knowledge and power, yet loves us enough to die for us, is more than able to do (as Scripture informs) excedingly abundantly above that which we could think or ask.[2]

It seems we should wonder less how God could possibly hear and answer all the billions of prayers, and spend a little more time in prayer, trusting the God who hears and answers.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Pain Has a Purpose   and   Answers in a Bottle

[1] Images:  via Reddit.com (copyright restrictions unknown)   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©  


[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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