Of course He does. God not only hears everyone’s prayers, He knows them before they are even spoken (Psalm 139:4). There is nothing God does not hear. We will one day give an account for every idle word (Matthew 12:36). How much more so will we have to answer for every less than idle word, the words we use to address our Maker?
Hear here, however, means simply, “Is aware of.” There are, of course, different ways we use the word. Often we have a more focused understanding, denoting a more focused understanding of whatever was spoken. I do not need to discern if I was an actual believer or not when I was seven years old and prayed that God would give the Pittsburgh Steelers victory over the Oakland Raiders to know both that God was quite aware of what I was asking, and likely relatively indifferent to my heart’s desire.
When, however, I come before my heavenly Father, acknowledging my dependence on His grace, resting in the finished work of Christ, and plead with Him that He would remove from me a sin or a sickness, I know He hears me in the more intimate sense, even if I continue to wrestle with the sin, or fall deeper into the sickness. He hears me as a father hears a son. He is attentive, concerned, joyful that I would bring my troubles before Him. He is eager to bless me, to respond with only love.
Which is not at all how God hears the prayers of those who are outside of Christ. These prayers He hears as an affront, an insult, spitting on His holiness. The issue is not what the unbeliever is asking for. The unbeliever could come before the throne of the living God and ask that He would remove from him a sin or a sickness, and God’s response would still be to take offense. Why? Because to come before His presence without acknowledging our offenses against Him is a grievous offense against Him. It is to see Him as the means to the end of our well-being. It is to minimize our sins against Him.
This truth gets at the reason we end our prayers, “In Jesus’ name, amen.” This is not just some Elizabethan sign off, a pious “Over and out.” It is instead our affirmation that we recognize that we could not even come into our Father’s presence were we not covered in the blood of Christ. We are reminding our Father that we know we are not in ourselves worthy of anything but His wrath. We are reminding Him, however, that that wrath was spent on Calvary. It is because of His suffering for us that we are able to have our prayers not be merely heard, in the sense that the Father is aware of them, but heard in the sense that our Father listens with compassion, concern and a zeal for our well-being.
What though of the prayer of the unbeliever professing His faith? What about when the unbeliever comes to the end of his rope and cries out, “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner”? That, friends, is the prayer of a believer. The prodigal father “heard” the prodigal son’s speech, but paid it no mind as he was too busy embracing his beloved. The same is true of our Father in heaven.