Remember this the next time you think you are too busy or burdened to ask God for help, or direction, or protection. Pray while you’re studying for or taking a test, making a sales presentation, apologizing to your spouse, or explaining the gospel to your children. God hears your prayers!

“My God will hear me” (Micah 7:7).

Five small words — but they teach several crucial lessons. As Micah determines to look to the one true God as his only hope and sufficiency, waiting on his perfect timing and perfect answers, he confidently asserts: “my God will hear me.”

Having learned the bitter lesson that one cannot always trust even one’s friends (Micah 7:5) and that a person’s enemies can even come from among his or her own family members (Micah 7:6), Micah nonetheless reflects an unshaken conviction in the goodness and mercy of God. We do well to contemplate the clear implications of Micah’s simple statement of faith.

My God Will Hear Me

Leonard Ravenhill, a 20^th century Englishman well known for his studies of Christian revivals, observes in his book Why Revival Tarries that “to be much for God, we must be much with God.” We cannot hope to make a difference for God if we are not ourselves in intimate communion with God.

There is no substitute in Christianity for Christ, and there is no way to spend time with Christ without spending time in prayer.

It is no accident that Micah refers to the one true God as “my God.” It is clear that, as Micah determines to look to the Lord and present his needs to God in prayer, he is not speaking of, or to, a strange, unknown God. This God is his God. This God is “the God of my salvation” Micah says, in whom I trust because we have a history together already—life-transforming, obstacle-overcoming, relationship-forming, love-inspiring history—and so I know my God will hear me because he is my God, not just some metaphysical theory or religious icon or comforting ideal.

Similarly, the prophet Isaiah testifies: “God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2). Can you say this? Is God your salvation?

This is not an academic question, with an intellectual answer — if God is your salvation then he is saving you! Is God delivering you right now? Can you think of a recent instance in which you were rescued or liberated by God? When you think about God, is it with a distant, vague memory of a past relationship or feeling? Too often God is just part of a past profession, rather than a present, palpable, passionate reality in our life.

But the confidence with which Micah is able to speak flows from an evident closeness to, and communion with—not his parent’s God, or his pastor’s God, or his spouse’s God—but his God.

My God Will Hear Me

The language of Micah’s statement is impregnated with both expectation and with patience, with confidence and with endurance. While he affirms his trust in God, the whole movement of Micah 7:7 is toward the future: “I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.” I will look, I will wait … and God will hear.

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