If God is real, how can we communicate with Him? How can we have a meaningful, interactive relationship with the God of the Bible?
Communicating with God is among the strongest desires for people with faith - or a desire to have faith in God. How can people talk to God? How can people pray to God or have conversations with God? How should people listen to God?
The Christian Bible asserts that the universe was made by and is continually supervised by an all-powerful, all-knowing Supreme Being. And this God desires a deep, personal relationship with each and every individual human being - both now and in the afterlife.
These rather audacious assertions clash with the stresses, frustrations, and anxieties of everyday life in which people search for answers to life's problems and a relationship with the God who is supposed to be there watching over them.
Faith: The Fundamental Requirement for Successful Prayer
The book of Hebrews says that "without faith it is impossible to please [God], for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6, NKJV). In other words, you have to believe in God in order to pray to God and have Him answer.
For many people, this becomes a Catch-22. How can they believe in God if He doesn't reveal Himself to them? And, if they don't believe in God or if they are tormented by doubts, He apparently will not hear them or respond to them.
Anyone who finds himself or herself in this predicament should consider some basic evidences for the existence of God, which can bolster one's confidence in the Creator's existence.
God as the Divine Cause and Intelligent Designer
The universe is finite, and therefore it must have had an ultimate “first cause" or divine originator. Three basic arguments affirm this:
- The universe is expanding, which indicates that it began at a fixed point in space and time.
- The universe is running down -- i.e., it is literally running out of usable energy. This means that it can’t be eternal. Otherwise, it would have already run out of energy.
- Based on insights from the fields of mathematics and philosophy, an eternal universe (and with it an eternal number of moments) is logically untenable. Says philosopher William Lane Craig: "An infinite can never be traversed - it has no end (or beginning). But since the moments before today have been traversed - that is, we have arrived at today - it follows that there must only have been an finite (limited) number of moments before today." In other words, time had a beginning!
Accordingly, the overwhelming view of modern science that the universe began to exist (most scientists estimating that origin to be roughly 14-15 billion years ago). Given the fact that the universe began to exist, it must have had a “cause” that originated it.
The cause of the universe would be its ultimate cause. Only an independent, infinite, uncaused, eternal, and omnipresent cause is sufficient to account for the universe. Therefore, such a being must exist. If it does not, then the universe doesn't exist. Since the universe does exist, it can therefore be safely concluded that an independent, infinite, uncaused, eternal, and omnipresent cause also exists.
Why can't we "see" and "feel" God?
According to the Bible, God is Spirit (John 4:24). Indeed, the Genesis account of Creation identifies the “Spirit of God” (Genesis 1:2) as the driving creative force for our universe. This makes sense, given the fact that only a spiritual or supernatural being is capable of serving as the ultimate, first cause of a universe characterized by time, space, matter and energy.
A human being interacts with the world through his or her main senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. God operates largely outside of those senses, making Him largely "invisible" and (to some) "unreachable." (The Bible does record rare instances in which God stepped into the natural, physical world to interact with humanity - such as the voice from Heaven at Jesus' baptism and, for that matter, the incarnation of Jesus himself).
So....how can someone bridge the gap between the natural and supernatural - and reach God in prayer? Future articles will explore that question in more depth. In the meantime, please consider the following books:
Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference? by Philip Yancey (Zondervan, 2006)
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find? by Philip Yancey (Zondervan, 2000)
Cries of the Heart: Bringing God Near When He Feels so Far by Ravi Zacharias (Thomas Nelson, 2002)
How to Listen to God by Charles Stanley (Thomas Nelson, 2002)
And....of course...talk to your pastor. If you are not in a church, seek one out. They are there to help you.
**This article has been written from an evangelical Christian perspective. Disagreements, questions, concerns, etc. are welcome in the discussion forum.
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