Q1 – “I have a million questions. Does God really hear?”

• I think this question is an excellent place to start, because, what’s the use of having a Q and A if God doesn’t answer questions?
• There are really 2 parts to this question. One is ‘Is God able to hear us?’ The other is ‘Is God willing to hear us?’
• For the former, we don’t have the time to go into depth about the theology of God’s existence and creation. But I’d like to quickly say that it seems clear to me that an intelligent creator God must be able to understand his creation. I’ve never met a computer programmer who can’t understand the program he has written. In much the same way, God must be able to hear us because he made us.
• So the second part is, is God willing to hear from us? The God of the Bible is not a God to shy away from contact with us people. He is the God Who instigates and initiates contact with us. The Bible says in 1 John that “We love Him because He first loved us.” It’s not that we reach up to God but that He reaches down to us. Relationship with us is so important to Him that He was willing to die for it, and that was through Jesus’ death on the cross, to fix our relationship with Him so we can communicate to Him. He can communicate to us and we can be in a relationship with Him. God has given us His Word, the Bible, and He communicates to us through His word, and He shows us Himself through Jesus, and in His word He promises many times that “if you ask according to His will, He hears us.”, also so 1 John. This is repeated in many parts of the Bible.
• There is a condition there, you might have noticed, that “If we ask according to His will” – relationship is always two ways. God hears is, but there is no point in Him listening to our questions if we don’t listen to His responses. We have to listen to what He says in His Word, and how He instructs us, and how He set the example through Jesus, and what that means for us, and He is also willing to hear us if we ask questions of Him in a pure heart.
• So the problem with our relationship is not that God is unwilling. He wants to answer every question we have. He wants the best for us, but we have to listen to Him.

Does anyone want to add anything to that?

Just one thing comes to mind as you were speaking. There is a place in one of the prophets where God says “come, lets reason together.” He is not speaking to the prophet, but to us through the prophet. It’s not that God is hiding, or doesn’t want to be asked a question.