God Hears More Than We Say

You know what I long for, Lord; you hear my every sigh.

Psalm 38:9

God hears our sighs as if they were perfectly formed sentences. Our wordlessness is no hindrance to him because he reads our hearts.

My oldest son, Brantley, made up his own language as a toddler. He really didn’t have to learn to talk like the rest of us and use words because his “words” accomplished just what he wanted. Because I so intently observed him, I always knew what he meant. For example, his “word” for music was something like “mawk mawk.” He would say that phrase, and to everyone else’s ears it sounded like gibberish, but I knew exactly what it meant. I responded to it as if he had said, “Dearest Mother, would you mind turning on some music?” Even though the sounds he formed fell far short of actual words, they achieved the same end that a perfectly formed sentence would have.

So it is when you and I speak a ragged and imperfect prayer or have no words to express our groaning. Heaven responds to it as if we had spoken flawlessly.

Psalm 139:4 says, “Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD” (NIV, 1984). Before a need or desire has reached the level of conscious understanding so that we could put it into words—while it is still unformed and raw—God already knows it fully. In Romans 8:26-27, we read, “The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will” (NIV, 1984).When our prayer is nothing but an inarticulate moan, the Spirit of God is already communicating it with perfect clarity. By the time we begin to speak our need or desire in prayer, we are simply joining into a flow of prayer that is already in progress: “Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24, NIV).

Father, hear my sighs and groans as I turn all my longings toward you.

Prayer is not so much an act as it is an attitude—an attitude of dependency, dependency upon God.

A. W. Pink(1886–1952), English evangelist and Bible scholar