“HOW DO I KNOW IF GOD HEARS MY PRAYERS?” (Part 1)
There are specific moments in our life, usually when we feel physical pain, mental anguish and/or isolation, when our souls scream out for an answer from our God. In those moments of loneliness and desperation, we search for a response from God-our Creator or any sign of his presence. Those moments are emotionally overwhelming and spiritually exhausting. These moments of spiritual desperation or as many refer to as a spiritual black hole, result in many people losing faith due to loneliness from God’s silence. This happens not only to us struggling in this world, but also in the spiritual life of the monastics. Our souls scream out to God, yet all we experience is complete silence. The experience is very real.
One of the questions of this nature was posed to me by a young girl ten years ago: “How do I know that God hears my prayers?” This is one of the most difficult and relevant questions in our spiritual. It is short, concise, and extremely poignant. It reaches the heart of Christian spirituality and humanity’s call to our merciful God for an answer. Because of the difficulty and complexity of this question, I have struggled with an answer. After ten years of pondering this question, I realized that it can’t be generalized, oversimplified, and presumptuous. There is a mysterious warning not to be overconfident and overzealous with an answer. This question asks for careful reflection and a holistic approach. The following personal observations are essential in our understanding of the question and its response. These observations are not finite, as they embrace so many multifaceted spheres of human life and our interactions with the Divine.
Observation 1: Personal experience: we have to realize that the question touches the personal experience of every human searching for an answer from God. Every answer from God depends on a unique and personal relationship the individual creates with God in his/her own life. It is an individual and a personal experience, which can’t be repeated or duplicated. The response is characteristic for every person and as such is always evasive from generalizations. This leads me to the words of blessed memory Romanian Orthodox theologian Dumitru Staniloae who said that: “…there are many ways of experiencing God as there are many people in the world”. The answer from God of one individual will be different from the other one, as every experience with God is different. The answer from God for the one who spending the very last years of life at a nursing home will be different from the one who is only finishing University. The answer from God for a single mother taking care of her family will be different from the one who is blessed with a good job enjoying many daily privileges of life. The answer of a monk living in a monastery will be also different from the one who is spiritually struggling in the contemporary world. A personal experience is essential in our quest for an answer from God, but never identical or similar. The uniqueness of a personal relationship with God also depends on the adaptability of an individual to receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. Our God acts every single moment, but it is our ability and receptivity to accept God’s action: energies of God in our life.