“Does God listen to the prayers of unbelievers?”

Steve Brown:
Does God listen to the prayers of unbelievers? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Key life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus and the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers. Life’s hard for everyone, so grace is for all of us, but there is a lot of confusion about how grace applies to real life. So, here’s seminary professor and author, Steve Brown and Pete Alwinson to answer your questions.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey, happy Friday. Here we are.

Steve Brown:
Happy Friday to you.

Pete Alwinson:
Going again.

Steve Brown:
Listen, we’re going to do this, until I drool or die.

Pete Alwinson:
Til we cross the finish line, man.

Steve Brown:
That’s called DD day, drooling and dying day.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man.

Steve Brown:
We’ve done this for over 25 years and it seems like we just started yesterday. That’s because we both enjoy each other and sitting around and talking about questions. Love your questions, by the way. By the way, that’s Pete Alwinson. And do check out ForgeTruth.com. You’ll be glad I told you about it. And as I said before I interrupted myself. We like to get your questions. You can call 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7, record your question. And sometimes we put your voice on the air. Or you can send your question to

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Pete Alwinson:
That’s great. Let’s pray. Our Father, we come to you and we thank you that we can come to a Father. Thank you that we’re intended to live without a heavenly Father and a Savior and the Spirit of the living God. And so, we come to you in your presence now at the end of this week, and some of us are a little tired. It’s been busy, it’s been full of to do’s. There’s been failure on our part. There’s been challenges and some great things as well that have happened. So, we give you praise and honor and ask that you would do a great work in us. Lord, we need to rest, and we look forward to Sunday or this week-end, whenever we get to worship with your people as a means of Sabbath, of rest, of remembering the great Sabbath rest that we have in Jesus, that we’re not working for our salvation, but we are living out of the reality that we are the deeply beloved redeemed daughters and sons of the most high God. So, we come to you. We praise you our great God. And ask that you’d continue to work in us, work in our leaders this week-end, empower them to be able to speak to us and lead us into your presence. And now receive this time we give to you and ask that you would give us wisdom to do this Q&A. We honor you in Jesus’ strong name we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Pete, this first question is an e-mail. Is it true that if you haven’t received Jesus, he doesn’t hear your prayer unless you’re praying for repentance or praying from repentance.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Interesting standpoint, huh? You know, there’s, really the Bible seems to send a couple of messages on that. Now, I’m going to say a couple of things, you clean it up. Okay. Well, I think there are times when we hear in Psalms and some other places where God doesn’t hear the prayer of the ungodly or the unrighteous. But he is omnipresent and omniscient. And so, he does hear all things too. And that here, so as to answer, I think maybe is the idea of what they’re getting at. Well, what’s your take on it?

Steve Brown:
It’s a good question. And I understand the point that was made when he heard this, you know, the head of the Southern Baptist convention said that one time, years ago, and got hit in the press by it. But I understood, you know, I think I wouldn’t say it with a reporter standing around because it requires a lot of explanation, but I know what he was saying. The most important prayer and the prayer that God always hears from an unbeliever is of course, one that says, have mercy on me, a sinner. But you know, you move into dangerous territory when you start telling God what he can listen to and what he cannot listen to.

Pete Alwinson:
There is that.

Steve Brown:
God does things that we didn’t expect, that don’t violate who he is. And if he wants to listen to a little girl’s prayer, who isn’t yet a Christian in east podunk. That’s his business man. And that’s cool with me.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. This is a big question.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it really is.

Pete Alwinson:
One aspect of this that I really, that helps me is that if my kids come and ask me something, I’m way more inclined to answer it, then if a guy I know who is a known liar, embezzler, cheat or thief comes and asks me to do something. I’ll hear him with my ears, but I’m not going to say yes to anything that he says or wants. So there is, I think in that sense, that fatherly relational hearing, can a non-believer pray to God? Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. And he might, and he might not, because he’s God, and he does as he pleases. I heard a preacher one time, it was back in the old days at Disney, where you had to get tickets for every ride. And he said that he had brought his two children, four of his grandchildren. And they were all in line, and he was giving each of them a ticket as they went by, until two or three came by and he didn’t recognize them. And he gave them a ticket and then he thought, his grandaughter said, they’re my friends.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, okay. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
But you don’t just give out tickets indiscriminately, you know, to people that you don’t know.

Pete Alwinson:
And God is never going to answer a prayer, a request for an ungodly action. If I say, Lord, give me an opportunity to shoot that guy, because I want to kill him.

Steve Brown:
Will never happen.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s not going to happen, you know. So, there’s a lot wrapped up in that.

Steve Brown:
Ok. Why is wisdom referred to as she in Proverbs.

Pete Alwinson:
And you and I both read Proverbs. I don’t know if you read a proverb a day. I do, because it keeps stupidity away. But, I have pondered this one. Here’s my take. I think that, you know, she’s called lady wisdom sometimes in Proverbs, not a hundred percent of the time is wisdom in the feminine, but I think it’s because, you know, for men, women are attractive, you know, and God makes, wisdom is attractive. And he gets our attention by saying wisdom is a very attractive trait.

Steve Brown:
Listen, that works for me, but I’ve got another answer.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay.

Steve Brown:
Meet my wife.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
And you’ll know, you know,

Pete Alwinson:
There you go.

Steve Brown:
I have mor hair brained things to do and want to do, then you would believe, and I’ve got a wife who says, honey, I think you ought to think about that a little bit longer. She’s usually right when I think about it, I don’t go there. So, when God said I’m going to name wisdom. I’m going to make it a her because women are smarter and wiser than men.

Pete Alwinson:
Oftentimes, they have a wisdom about relationships and a lot of Proverbs is about relationships.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. I really is. That’s a good point. How can I find a balance between my family and serving God? Listen, it’s God, ditch your family and serve him.

Pete Alwinson:
Lightning. Thunder. Yeah, that’s a good balance because sometimes in the church and you know, that could be a pastor saying that, it could be a, just a person in the church who’s just enthusiastic about helping other people. A lot of times we get kudos from other people outside our family that we’ll get from our family.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. And when that happens, something’s out of balance.

Pete Alwinson:
Something’s out of balance.

Steve Brown:
You know, one thing that I’ve thought about. And I don’t, and I’ve said this to kids in seminary to young men and women in seminary who were trying to think about how they’re going to balance that, I say it’s not a priority thing, it’s a pie. And depending on who’s the hungriest, they get the biggest piece of pie.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And God arranges the hunger in a way, that it won’t get out of balance. There’s sometimes the church is in bad trouble and I’ve got to give them a lot more time than I ordinarily. And sometimes my family’s in trouble and I need to give time and God, because he’s sovereign arranges circumstances so that the person who is the hungriest gets the biggest piece of pie.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I think that is so wise. I also think that we have to realize that our kids and our wives and our husbands have to be, have to feel that they are central to us. And so, time, love is spelled T I M E a lot of times. Right?

Steve Brown:
Absolutely.

Pete Alwinson:
And so, there has to be that. And if, if we’ve got things out of whack in that regard, and we’re looking for more input from people in the church or praise for people in the church, we ought to be, we ought to do a look inward and say, what’s going on there? Why is their approval so important to me? And it may reveal some issues from our past that we need to look at.

Steve Brown:
So true. And you and I both have been there.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man.

Steve Brown:
And we have wives that loved us anyway.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And I wouldn’t have, I just want you to know that. So, we rise up and call our wives blessed on that.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s true.

Steve Brown:
Well. We’ve still got time. How is that Jesus did not know his own return?

Pete Alwinson:
This came up in a question this week to me. And I think the answer is kind of simple. I think, you know, in Philippians it talks about him laying aside his privileges.

Steve Brown:
He really did.

Pete Alwinson:
He did, and he didn’t cease to become God. He can’t do that. That’s impossible. But he could not use his privileges. And so, he was making a point there in not using his privileges, that that is an answer that God, the Father is going to be dealing with it.

Steve Brown:
And he, you know, he could say, I don’t even know.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
But he could have added paranthetically, but if I wanted to know, I certainly could find out and probably wouldn’t tell you.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
So, that works. You know, when you start talking about incarnation, it really wasn’t a game, was it?

Pete Alwinson:
No. And there are times when in the gospels, it says, he knew what was in man, you know, so, he knew what they were thinking. So, he said things to them, knowing what he was thinking to raise certain… Though, that’s, it’s more complicated than, we don’t have God in our hip pocket or Jesus in our hip pocket.

Steve Brown:
Isn’t that true. And if you’re not confused, you’re probably worshiping an idol. We’ve got to go. We’re so glad that you joined us. We love doing this. And when we hear from you, we love being a part of it. So, thank you. And before we go, I must say. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.