“And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” 1 John 5:14-15
It is fair to say that most Christians generally acknowledge the importance of prayer in their walk with the Lord, even though not all of us practice the discipline with the consistency and urgency it requires. In a previous article, Ebenezer, my colleague, laid out with clarity the importance of prayer as taught in the Bible.
However, the question will always remain, if prayer has so many benefits and is of such importance according to the Bible; why don’t most Christians pray consistently and regularly as they should? In his article, Ebenezer talked about prayer being akin to physical exercise, which requires some amount of hard work; as a result, not many of us like it.
In addition to it being hard work, I have discovered over the years that many Christians are not quick to pray because they haven’t experienced quick answers to their prayers as they would like. I have had many Christians come up and ask me; does God really answers all prayers? They read passages like Matthew 7:7-8, “ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened”; yet they still don’t receive what they asked for, even though they asked with much faith.
Is it that God didn’t mean many such verses spread across the New Testament? Or is there a secret formula for unlocking verses like Matthew 7:7-8? Because I’m sure if they instantly received every request they make of God, there would be no shortage of people on their knees praying.
As you read the whole Bible, you realise that the only secret formula is to let other parts of the Bible interpret the part you are reading. This is what 1 John 5:14-15 does for us as we seek to understand passages like Matthew 7:7-8.
In our opening two verses, John tells us that this is the confidence every Christian can have when they approach God to pray. He hears us! After all, he is the one who bid us to come and pray (Luke 18:1; 21:36; Romans 12:12; Ephesians 6:18; Colossians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:17; James 5:14).
Prayer is not the invention of the church; it is God’s idea. Which means he is more ready to hear and answer our prayers than we will ever be willing to pray. Therefore, as a believer, you should never doubt for a second if God hears your prayer. This is the confidence with which we approach God in prayer.
Praying According to God’s Will
However, the text also tells us, “if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”
According to John, the surest way to receive answers to your prayer is to pray according to God’s will. The next logical question is, how do I know God’s will? In Deuteronomy 29:29, Moses told the Israelites, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
It is true that the Bible doesn’t provide a step-by-step guide on every aspect of our lives. There are undoubtedly many things for which the Bible doesn’t tell us what to do specifically. For example, who to marry, what job offer to accept, in which neighbourhood to live, etc. But even in those cases, there are clear biblical principles which can be applied to guide our decisions and so help us to be in God’s will.
Therefore, even though there are secret things that have not been revealed to us by God, “his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2 Peter 1:3). No Bible-believing Christian can claim ignorance of God’s will for their lives, because he has graciously and clearly revealed it in his word.
When John admonishes us to pray according to God’s will, he is basically saying to pray according to the word of God. Which means we must pray with our Bibles open. As a general principle, our prayers are more likely to be aligned with the will of God if they are rooted in the written word.
Self-Centred Prayers Will not be Honoured by God
All of history is moving toward one climatic end, when all of God’s purposes will finally culminate in the glorification of his Son Jesus Christ with the breaking in of the new heaven and the new earth. This is where creation is finally headed, which means as believers, everything about our lives must be oriented toward this grand vision.
Which job offer to accept, the spouse we marry, how we raise our children and even which dress we wear should all be oriented toward this grand vision of God. Therefore, the prayers we pray regarding all these aspects of our lives must also be aligned with how they will ultimately further this grand vision of God.
God does not exist to further our own little kingdoms. It’s a very popular idea within certain Christian circles that, as children of God, we have the right to command God to answer our prayers when we do so in faith. Such an idea is sorely mistaken and has no place in biblical Christianity.
In admonishing his readers against worldliness and self-centeredness, James wrote, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 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. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:1-3).
According to James, God will not honour selfish prayer requests made without regard to his will. Does he answer prayers? Yes! But he doesn’t honour self-centred prayers.
God’s Three Answers to Prayer
The question is not so much whether God answers all prayers; as it is, does God say yes to all our prayers? For the believer, God answers all our prayers in one of three ways; yes, no, or wait.
As a loving father, he desires to give good gifts to his children (Luke 11:9-13). It is because of his yeses to our prayers that we live and move and have our being. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17). It’s unfortunate that, as Christians, we sometimes live as though God has been unkind to us. Our long faces, anxiety and complaints provide ammunition to a mocking world that is always looking for an opportunity to castigate our Heavenly Father as stingy and unkind.
Then, there are times when in his grace and mercy, God says no to our prayers. Knowing that most of us, if not all of us as Christians, don’t always perfectly pray in accordance with his will, God will be unloving to say yes to all our prayers. As a loving father, for our own good, he sometimes has to say no to some of our prayers.
From hindsight, I’m thankful that God didn’t answer some of my prayers, because if he did, that answered prayer would have made a shipwreck of my faith. I’m sure the believers in James’ day could say the same thing. Their selfish prayer requests, if answered, would have pushed them further and further into worldliness and away from God. And as observed by James, friendship with the world is enmity toward God.
And even when he says no, as a loving father, he gives us grace in our disappointment, just like he did for Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9: “but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
The third and final answer we will encounter on our praying journey is, “wait”. Perhaps, of all God’s answers to prayers this one is the most sanctifying. This is because as believers who still live in a fallen world, we don’t like to wait. Yet, throughout the Scriptures we’re told that God works on behalf of those who wait on him. There will be many times in our walk with God when we will have to wait for his answer to our prayers. It is in those times that our trust and dependence on him is tested.
But we can be sure of one thing, “this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”
