As most of you know, Jenny and I became proud first-time grandparents last year. Oliver (Ollie) was born at 27 weeks. He has spent already four months in the NICU, and is still in a NICU today. Jenny and I are so grateful God has given us a church family so we don’t have to walk on this journey alone. You have not stopped asking either of us about Ollie every Sunday. You have prayed, and continue to pray for my family. Ollie is so blessed to have so many of you praying for him. It feels to me half of the world is praying for him. After I told one of my friends I have known since high school about Ollie, she now tells me she prays for him every day. There is nothing surprising that she prays for him every day. What is surprising is that she prays for him every day, and she is not a believer.
I don’t want to think that, at the moment, my former classmate is the only unbeliever in the world praying to God. If I am right, there are more people besides her praying to God, perhaps many more. (I too have prayed to God many times when I was an unbeliever.) In their desperation, people who don’t believe there is a God are also praying because life is full of tribulation.
I am so thankful and more than a bit excited to learn that my unbelieving friend has been praying for Ollie. Which brings me to my question. Does God hear the prayers of those who don’t believe him? We know from the Bible that our God hears the prayers of his children. (God hears every single prayer we whisper.) But what about the prayers of unbelievers? Does God hear them too? Or does he face the other way? If God hears the prayers of believers only, then are we prepared to say God doesn’t care about the unbelievers in the world? But if God also hears the prayers of unbelievers, wait what? How does that even work?
To answer this question, let’s go to the Bible and read and consider the passages where it appears to say that God hears the prayers of unbelievers. If God also hears the prayers of unbelievers, then we should be able to find some examples in the Bible where he did just that, maybe. If he had heard the prayers of unbelievers in the past, then he hears the prayers of unbelievers today, maybe. Here are some passages in the Bible that we should examine.
One passage that comes to mind is Genesis 21. If you recall, after Isaac was born, Sarah drove out the Egyptian maidservant, Hagar, and her son. At one point in the wilderness, Hagar lifted up her voice (supposedly, to God) because she didn’t want to see her son die, and God saved her and Ishmael. It is sometimes recognized that God heard the prayer of Hagar. In my opinion, however, I question if we have here an example of God hearing the prayer of an unbeliever. The Bible clearly said God heard Ishmael crying. The angel of God also said, “God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.” However, the Bible does not say explicitly God heard Hagar’s prayer. God ultimately saved Hagar and Ishmael, this much we know. But it is unclear to me if God saved them because he heard Ishmael’s voice or he saved them because he heard Hagar’s prayer.
In Jonah 3, Jonah proclaimed to the people of Nineveh that the great city of Nineveh would be wiped out in 40 days. When the Ninevites heard this, they prayed for God to spare them, and he did. God heard their prayer, and relented concerning the calamity he had set to bring to Nineveh. Here also, it is inconclusive to me whether or not here is an example where God hears the prayers of unbelievers. We know that God ultimately decided to save Nineveh. But it also says in Jonah 3.5 that, “Then the people of Nineveh believed in God” before he saved Nineveh. Did God save Nineveh because they prayed after they already believed in God? Or did God save Nineveh because he heard their prayers, even though they were prayers of unbelievers?
There is a very famous story in the New Testament in Mark 7. If you recall, the Bible says a Gentile woman from the Tyre and Sidon region came to Jesus and asked him to cast an unclean spirit from her daughter. When Jesus said to her, “Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” the woman’s reply was swift and full of thought, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on the children’s crumbs.” Returning to her home, the woman found her daughter lying on the bed, and the unclean spirit had left her. When you and I see someone praying, we usually think of someone offering a prayer to God up in heaven. In our story, however, we are not told the mother offered a prayer to God. We are only told that the mother asked Jesus in person to cast the unclean spirit from her daughter, not knowing that when she did just that, she actually asked God, who had come in the flesh. She did not pray to God in the way you and I understand to be someone praying. It is unclear to me what we have here is an example of God hearing the prayer of an unbeliever. It is possible to me the woman simply called out to Jesus because she had come to hear he was able to cast unclean spirits from individuals, and perform many miracles.