When It Seems God Doesn't Hear

Some will object, God does not hear me: I have prayed a long while, and yet he has not given me an answer.
(1) God does always hear, though he seems not to hear sometimes, to increase our importunity. Christ heard the woman of Canaan at first; yet, to increase her importunity, he gave her the repulse and denial, and with the same, inward strength to wrestle with him.
(2) God seems not to hear, because he delights in the music of his children's prayers. Oh, how he loves to hear the voice of his children! As a father to hear the language of his child, though it may be none of the best; so, it is sweet music in God's ears to hear the prayers of his children. He will have prayers to be cries. In deferring he increases our strength, as in Jacob's wrestling, that we might cry after him and wrestle with him.
(3) Sometimes, he will not hear us, because, it may be, there is some secret Achan in the camp, or some Jonah in the ship; some sin, I mean, in the heart unrepented of. For in this case we may come before God again and again, but he will not hear us. This is the reason why God hears not many Christians, because they have not made a thorough inquisition into their own state, found out their sins, and humbled themselves for it.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
Josiah's Reformation, pp. 123-24 [95-96]
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