Praying In God's Will
1 John 5:14-15
Introduction
Today we will conclude our series on 1 John.
I want to focus on what John says in 1 John 5:14 concerning prayer, ”And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:15And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”
Prayer, of course, is conversation and communion with God. The God of the Bible is a personal being; which makes prayer a multi-faceted experience. Prayer includes:
· Praise and worship (Praise to God for who he is)
· Thanksgiving (Thanks to God what he has done)
· Supplication (Pouring out your heart out to God) and
· Making Requests:
o Petition (Asking God to get involved in meeting our own personal needs and
o Intercession (Asking God to get involved in meeting others’ needs.
Making requests is the kind of prayer John instructs us about in this passage. The Bible presumes that your prayer requests do matter to God and that He does answer your prayers. There are many biblical proofs of this:
· Examples (Ex. 3:7, 8, “Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey,”)
· Assertions (Jas. 4:2; “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.)
· Commands (Eph. 6:18, “pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints,)
· Promises (2 Chronicles 7:14, “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.)
It is this kind of confidence in prayer that John is talking about in 1 Jn.5:14-15.
If you take the Bible at all seriously on this subject, you will find that God is offering us an amazing resource! Yet in spite of this amazing offer relatively few of us spend very little consistent time or energy in prayer. There are a lot of reasons for this, but for many of us the main reason is that we just don’t make the connection between our request and God’s answer. However, the greatest motivation for making a prayer request to God is having received an answer to a past prayer! If you don’t feel your prayers are being answered, you tend to pray less.
Why does it seem that God answers some prayer requests, but not others? This is a complicated and sometimes difficult biblical subject. In fact, it is a subject of great mystery. Theologians and scholars have examined the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility for years! John even hints at it in 1 John 5:16,17 when he says, “If any man see his brother sin a sinwhich is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.17All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death.”
It seems the key condition to receiving answers to your prayers has something to do with praying according to God’s will. The key to receiving answers to your prayers is to learn to pray according to God’s will. Let’s read verse 14 and 15 again, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he hears us:15And if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desire of him.” John says we can be confident that God will grant our requests when they are according to his will. John echo’s what Jesus promised in John 16:23 when He said, “And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will giveit you.” To pray in Jesus’ name is not a magical incantation that obligates Jesus to grant your wish; it is to ask as a representative of Jesus.
Jesus requests were always answered because he always asked according to God’s will. In this sense, request prayer is one aspect of what theologians call “human agency.” God chose Jesus to redeem humanity and re-establish his kingdom in the earth. And he has decided to accomplish this plan through human agents who are people who voluntarily cooperate with him. This is why most people meet Jesus through the agency of other Christians who demonstrate to them the love of Jesus and share how Jesus changed their life. This is also why most mature Christian workers have been developed through the agency of other Christian workers who inspired, motivated, trained, and coached them.
But the ground floor of all human agency is request prayer. When we ask God to act according to his will, he does so by intervening and mobilizing his saints, or by working a miracle.This is why all significant spiritual work must be birthed and bathed in prayer!
So how does a person learn to pray according to God’s will? Well, without removing the complexity and mystery, I would like to suggest that it involves 3 things that are inter-related and dynamically influence one another. They are:
· Learning to trust God’s authority.
· Learning to focus on God’s priorities; praying in line with God’s Word, and
· Learning to act on God’s promptings.
We must learn to entrust our life to God’s loving authority and pray according to God’s Word while being led by God’s Spirit.
I. Trust God’s Authority
The most basic way to ask according to God’s will is to adopt a proper heart attitude. You have to trust God’s authority! This involves humbly putting God above yourself as the rightful leader of your life. It means choosing to trust that God’s will is right and good for you even if you don’t know what it is. It means training your heart to follow Christ. Jesus calls this praying that “the Father may be glorified” in John 14:12 where He says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believes in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greaterworks than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.13And whatever you ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.14If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will doit.” That is an amazing promise!
Prayer is not simply a convenient way for us to impose our will on God, or for bending his will to ours. Prayer is the prescribed way of submitting our will to God’s will. It is through prayer that we seek after God's will, embrace it and align ourselves with it. One writer put it this way, “Every true prayer is a variation on the theme ‘Thy will be done.’”
Deep in the fallen human heart is the suspicion that God is not good and therefore cannot be trusted. It fosters the belief that I know best how to run my life and the only use I have for God is to advance my agenda. This is the basis of a lot of religious prayer. Many religious people use chants, charms, rituals, and traditions in order to gain power over the gods/spirits so they will give you what you want and won’t hinder you from your own purpose. Those who pray this way, even if they ask for good things, rarely receive what they ask because their prayer is so self-centered. Why would God grant a request that originates from a desire to live without his help?(Like: God, give me a great job so I don’t have to trust you to meet my needs!) Actually, it’s a blessing in disguise that God refuses these requests because that is what helps us to see the real need is for us to entrust ourselves to him? This is why when we pray, “Jesus, forgive me for my rebellion and to come into my heart to lead me” that God gives us the miracle of salvation that brings freedom and peace into our lives. It’s hard to pray that prayer honestly! It hard to humble yourself and admit that fallen short on your goals and you haven’t achieved the fulfillment you had hoped to attain. It’s difficult to admit that you’ve failed in many areas of your life and that you need God’s forgiveness and direction if you hope to survive. In fact, maybe this is the very prayer you need to pray today. Simply, “Help me Jesus, I don’t know what else to do!”
I also need to say that even after you receive Christ and experience God’s love, we still have this tendency to revert back to our old ways. Sadly, we all have to wrestle with this issue over and over again. Too often I find myself praying for right things for wrong reasons. Have you ever found yourself praying for someone to repent and change so you don’t have to put up with their grief anymore vs. for them to experience real conviction that brings them to Christ for eternal life.
Do you, on a regular basis, ask God to guide you? And when you are asking God for guidance, are you willing to obey his will before you know what it is—or are you just consulting him before you make your decision? When you really want something, are you willing to say “But if you don’t want me to have this, I trust you.” Can you say like Jesus did “It’s not what I want God, but what you want?”
Rather than telling God what we want, we must learn to surrender and submit to what God wants for us.
Effective prayer is prayer that puts its trust in God.
II. Focus on God’s Priorities
Secondly, we must learn to focus on God’s priorities by praying in line with God’s Word. Besides cultivating the proper attitude in prayer, we also need to pray for the right things. Asking according to God’s will involves focusing on God’s priorities.
While the Bible not only informs us of specific things that are/aren’t God’s will, it also reveals that whatever God says is important. The more your perspective is bathed in God’s Word, the more you will pray according to its priorities, and the more you will see God answer your requests. That’s why Jesus said in John 15:7, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you can ask whatever you want, and it shall be done unto you.” When we don’t know or practice God’s priorities, we will naturally pray for our own priorities. Unfortunately, our priorities center around getting more pleasant circumstances, having people treat us the way we want to be treated, or getting relief from irritating and painful circumstances or people. So, if this is what dominates your prayer requests, your batting average is going to be pretty low, and your motivation to pray is going to be almost non-existent.
Have you ever tried praying primarily focusing on God’s priorities? You should try it just to see what happens! Ask God for more practical insight into scripture so that you can become more godly in character (Ps.119:33, 34). Ask God for better understanding of what God has given you in Christ (Eph.1:16-19) & how much God loves you (Eph.3:18, 19) so you can mature spiritually. Ask God for a greater love for other people (1 Thess. 3:12) or better discernment on how to love them effectively (Phil.1:9). Ask God for opportunities to share your faith, & the courage & wisdom to make the most of those opportunities (Col. 4:3, 4; Eph. 6:19, 20). Ask for God to expose sinful attitudes that are hurting you and others and are dishonoring to God (Ps.139:23, 24). Ask God for wisdom to understand what he wants to teach you through the difficult circumstances he has allowed into your life (Jas.1:5).
Try praying along these same lines for other brothers and sisters (read 5:16) because John says that’s a prayer God will answer! This is why it’s good to turn whole passages of scripture into prayer for a specific situation.
III. Listen to God’s Spirit
And finally, learn to ask the Holy Spirit to lead you and help you. Asking according to God’s will involves letting the Holy Spirit help you pray the right prayers. This is what Paul and Jude call “praying in the Spirit” (Eph.6:18; Jude 1:20).
This is the most subjective part of request prayer. It is also the most easily abused (“God led me to pray for a new spouse” – Really? I don’t think so!) Subjective prayer can be easily abused but it is a key part nonetheless. In Romans 8:26 Paul writes, “The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. 27And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. 28And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”
Since we don’t know how to pray, God’s Holy Spirit helps us to pray by interceding for us according to God’s will. So that when we talk to God entrusting ourselves to his loving authority, and we pray according to the priorities in his Word, his Spirit guides us to pray more specifically for the things he wants to do. This is why it’s important to ask for the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance when you begin to pray.
It’s important to take notice of the things that God seems to consistently urge you to pray for. Because if you focus your prayer on these things and respond to the Holy Spirit’s guidance you will see your prayers are being answered. This is one reason why praying with other Christians is so important. We help one another stay focused upon what God wants. In Matthew 18:19 Jesus said, “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.20For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”