To you, O Lord, I call;
my rock, be not deaf to me,
lest, if you be silent to me,
I become like those who go down to the pit. (Psalm 28:1)
Those who are content to hear only their own voice in prayer, become like dead people spiritually. Spiritual zombies if you will.
Prayer is about more than simply hearing the sound of my own voice. It’s about having a conversation with God, which means hearing from him. David knows this and insists not only on God hearing his prayer, but also responding.
He knows that if he fails to hear God’s voice, he becomes spiritually dead, “like those who go down to the pit.” It is God’s voice in our soul that gives us spiritual life.
The entire testimony of scripture speaks to this. We are dead spiritually apart from God. It is his voice that gives us life.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:4-5)
Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. (John 5:25)
And how do we hear “the voice of the Son of God”?
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)
We primarily hear from God through the scriptures, where he has revealed himself to us.
But when we pray, or in other ways lead a religious appearing life, but don’t hear from God, we become zombies. We are walking around as if we’re alive, but we’re not, we’re “like those who go down to the pit.” The bible has a word, other than zombie, for this condition: hypocrite.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:27)
Don’t be a christian zombie (religious hypocrite), plead with God, as David did, that you might hear his voice, and then open the bible expecting to hear from him.
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