I can be afraid that God doesn't hear me.

I can be afraid that he does hear me.

I open my heart to the Lord and pour out like, here, God, here's my desires, here's my

needs, here's the depth of who I am, and that he doesn't answer my prayer the way I want

him to answer my prayer.

This is the revolutionary.

This is like the thing that like literally revolutionizes the world and prayer.

Our name is Father Mike Schmitz, and this is the

Sintz Presents. I was recently contacted by someone who said they were really troubled because

they have a friend, and their friend found it very difficult to pray. Obviously, prayer is difficult,

but for them, the difficulty was they were afraid to approach God. And so they were saying,

why do you have any words of counsel for this person? And I thought, well, yes, but also before I offer anything, the important question to ask is,

why exactly does your friend experience fear?

The reason that they were afraid to pray is because of their image of God.

And the image of God is essentially that God can't be trusted.

The image of God is essentially that God can't be trusted. The image of God is essentially that, I've said this so many times, that they might have heard that God loves them, but they believe at a minimum that God merely tolerates them.

How could you possibly approach a God like that?

It makes perfect sense that someone would experience a degree of some kind, at least, some kind of fear when it comes to the prayer.

Why? Because we are approaching the true and living God, right?

Scripture goes again and again and talks about how, like, no, it is a fearful thing to approach the living God.

It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

And at the same time, Scripture also reveals something very important.

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