Scenario
Unbeliever: “Mom, I’m having the hardest time finding a job. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
Believer: “You should pray about it, sweetheart. Ask God to help you, and He will.”
I later spoke to the believer after witnessing this scene. Why was the unbeliever led to believe and be encouraged that God would listen to that prayer? God listens to all prayers, I was told.
Another scenario
Believer: “My brother no longer goes to church. And even though he’s lived a worldly life for years now, he still considers himself to be a Christian. I’m not sure about that because he drinks, smokes, and cheats on his wife. That’s his lifestyle. I’m not going to say anything to him, though, because he says he still prays to God.”
In this scene, I told the believer that his brother was at best a carnal Christian; one who professes to be Christian, but is one in name only. I suggested that his brother was perishing and had fallen from faith; that he should try to gently restore his brother to the Lord by being truthful with him about his spiritual condition. I asked him the same question asked in the 1st scenario.
This believer too, like the earlier one, believed that God’s blessings of rain and sunshine fall on both the righteous and the unrighteous; that God loves everybody even if they walk in darkness.
That’s true, but I see the falling of His rain and sunshine in the context of how we are to treat our enemies (Matthew 5: 44-47). In these two cases, the discussion is about an attempt to commune with and beseech the Lord by going directly before His throne.
I had both believers turn to Isaiah 59:2, which reads, “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.” (italics mine).
God can only be approached and will hear a sinner’s prayer (like that of all Christians) when it comes through Christ Jesus. Prior to an unbeliever’s prayer of confession and acceptance of Jesus, God’s word, if I’m reading it correctly, states that all their prayers are void; thudding against closed, divine ears.