Hope for a Reluctant Prayer Warrior: How to Pray with Confidence, 1 John 5:13-17

Hope for a Reluctant Prayer Warrior—How to Pray with Confidence, 1 John 5:13-17; Luke 11:1-13

Intro—My issues with prayer—Let me start with a confession: I have never been what you might call a prayer warrior. In fact, my batting average at getting positive answers from God is not very high. Truth be told, I know I could do more in prayer. No doubt we all share a similar view. We are pretty sure that we don’t pray enough. Maybe when we do pray we aren’t real sure that we know what we are doing or that God will hear us. We lack confidence. Perhaps we don’t try to pray because we don’t think it will work. How can we develop confidence in prayer? Before answering that question, let’s define “prayer”.

Definition of Prayer: For many Christians prayer is a venture, an experiment. There is nothing very certain about it. We often pray because we do not know what else to do. Who of us has not at one time or another said, "Well, things have gotten so bad there's nothing else to do but pray," as though that were the final and last resort. (Ray Stedman)

Andrew Murray says, “Prayer is not monologue, but dialogue. God’s voice in response to mine is its most essential part.” Prayer is a conversation with God. For it to be a proper conversation, both sides will talk and both sides will listen. For many Christians, it is the listening that creates the problem. We do not pay enough attention to God, but we often delight in telling him what we think he should do.

Pastor E. Stanley Jones: "If I throw out a boat hook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God." Proper prayer involves lining up with God, not trying to convince God to line up with us.  So, prayer is a dialogue, it is a conversation in which we talk to and listen to God. Prayer is based on a relationship, and prayer is fueled by relationships.

Prayer reveals relationship, Relationship Fuels Prayer

How then, can we pray with Confidence? John’s letter tells us three things that will enable us to pray with confidence: 1) Start with Assurance (our relationship with God through Jesus), 2) continue with Boldness (our acceptance by God allows us to come before him with freedom), and 3) finish with restoration and life (our dialogues with God should result in life and restoration for us and for others). Let’s unpack this a bit.

1 John 5:13—John ends his letter by letting his readers know his purpose. In the Gospel of John 20:30-31, John says that he wrote so that people may believe in Jesus the Messiah/the Son of God (i.e., the Incarnation) and that by believing receive eternal life in his name. In the letter, John’s purpose is to assure those who have put faith in the Incarnation.  His purpose is to give them confidence in their salvation.  Verse 13 states this purpose clearly.

Point 1—v. 13 Start with Assurance (our relationship with God through Jesus) John begins this section with a statement of assurance. He says that faith in the name of Jesus leads to confidence in salvation. He speaks of knowing our relationship to God. John uses some form of the word “know” in his short letter over 40 times. At least 8 of those uses are found in chapter 5. John seems to be saying that our confidence begins with our salvation and our salvation is something we can know. Throughout his book, John has given us indications of how we know we belong to God.

Assurance of salvation is based primarily on what Christ has done for us. We have confidence because God has provided salvation. God manifested his love for us in Christ, and that love is our assurance. Confident prayer begins with assurance in salvation/eternal life. Has your life been transformed by the salvation that only comes through a knowledge of Jesus? If so, then you have assurance that the God who saved is the God who will hear. Our Father hears us.

Prayer reveals relationship, relationship fuels prayer

If we are in Christ, if we are God’s children, if we have salvation through the life and death of Jesus, then we may have confidence in prayer. Our relationship with God through Jesus the Messiah provides access to the Father to make our request known. Because of salvation, we can be confident that our prayers may continue with boldness.

Point 2—vv. 14-15 Continue with Boldness (our acceptance by God allows us to come before him with freedom) Ray Stedman: “There is a great and ringing note of certainty there. Prayer is not an experiment, prayer is a certainty with John, a sure thing. He knows it works, and he knows how it works. That confidence is expressed by the word he chooses, boldness.”

1 John 5:1 reminds us that faith in Christ has resulted in our becoming children of God. This means that we have a family and a familiar relationship with God. As a child has special privileges with his or her parent, so we have the privilege of confidence as children of God. “Confidence”—this word means in some sense “freedom of speech” (cf. 1 John 2:28; 4:17 both regarding judgment). John is saying that because of our relationship with God as children, we can come into his presence to make our requests with boldness—we have confidence and freedom to speak directly to our Father.

Ray Stedman says that God delights in bold praying and in bold people—our prayer to God should be confident, bold, and certain because he loves us.

This confidence arises from two principles given in these verses:  the certainty of being heard (a promise) and the certainty of receiving (a qualification). The promise:  When we pray, God hears us and responds. We ask confidently (Hebrews 4:16). We come into his presence (the words “in him” in verse 14 could be rendered “before him”).  We come confidently into our Father’s presence to speak freely with him. We must ask him to respond. We have an audience, so we must talk to our Father and we must listen for and anticipate his response. Notice that several times in these two verses he talks about prayer in the context of asking and receiving. That’s the simplest and probably the best definition of prayer.

Prayer isn’t a magic lamp or a secret code by which we obtain all our wishes, but rather as Ray Stedman says, “Prayer is a means of obtaining the will of God, and is limited always by the will and purpose of God.”

That brings us to the Qualification—we must ask according to God’s will (cf. Matthew 6:10; John 14:13). John is not saying that we can get God to do whatever we want by adding the magic words “in Jesus’ name”. Prayer is not asking God to move towards us, but for God to move us towards him. Pastor E. Stanley Jones: "If I throw out a boat hook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God." Remember, James 4:3 reminds us that we can pray and ask improperly. In fact, James acknowledges that we often fail to receive answers to our prayers because we ask for selfish reasons.

John says that if we know we have eternal life through our relationship with God by faith in Christ, then we can be confident that our Father God will hear us when we pray. If God hears us, it then follows that like a good Father he will respond to us. But John goes a step further—not only does God hear us, but “we know that we have obtained the request made of him”. This sounds like we can be assured of a favorable response.

So, does God answer all your prayers with “Yes”? Yeah, me neither!

The problem goes back to that little phrase:  “according to his will”. This means we must line up with God—like Jesus in Gethsemane, we must make sure our hearts cry out “Not my will, God, but yours”—our focus must be on the best interests of God and his kingdom and not our selfish desires. We must not harbor un-confessed or habitual sin (Psalm 66:13). We must trust God for the answer (Matthew 21:22)—he will respond, but not always in the way we desire or expect! We must be sure to seek what God wants, for in doing so we will pray for what he longs to accomplish—we can only do this by spending time with God in his Word and in prayer. (Ray Stedman regarding the Sears catalog—“We could order anything we had the money to pay for, but it would have been utterly futile to have sent in an order for something that was not in the catalog. There was plenty we could order, but it was useless to ask for something they did not have. And so it is with prayer.”)

Prayer reveals relationship, relationship fuels prayer. Confident prayer keeps a relationship with God fresh. This kind of prayer may also have amazing results. A prayer life that is confident in one’s relationship with God and comes into God’s presence with boldness can result in restoration and life.

Point 3—vv. 16-17 Finish with Restoration and Life (our dialogues with God should result in life and restoration for us and for others) John now gives application to his lesson on praying according to God’s will by giving an example to his readers. Praying isn’t just about us, praying is for our brothers and sisters. We should pray confidently for each other. We should pray for restoration and life. Again, John gives a promise and a qualification here.

The promise—if we pray for a brother or sister who is not committing a sin unto death, then God will give them life. The qualification—the promise does not apply to the one committing a sin unto death.

A quick disclaimer: We tend to get tangled up in a discussion of what a “sin unto death” may be, but John assumes his readers know this already.  The point John seems to make here is that praying according to the will of God means that we should pray for each other, that we should pray for restoration and life for those committing sin. We have a responsibility to each other. Part of loving God is loving God’s children and praying for them. John doesn’t say, “If you see your brother or sister sinning, quickly get on the phone and talk to others about it!”  He doesn’t say, “Let the pastor know so that he can deal with it!”  No! John says, “Pray for your brothers and sisters and God will give them life.” We are brothers and sisters, not competitors. All sin is serious. You can’t be indifferent to sin if you love others.

If our prayers are for children of God who sin, then in what sense do they need “life”?  John says our prayers will result in life from God for those who commit sins not unto death. To answer that question is to continue on to the qualification—What is the sin unto death?

There are typically three responses to what the “sin unto death” may be: 1) Some specific sin that causes the person to die physically (cf. Moses, Achan, Uzzah, Ananias and Sapphira, the folks in 1 Corinthians 11); 2) The unpardonable sin, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit or rejecting Jesus; 3) The sin of the false teachers who denied the Incarnation and lived immoral and unloving lives.

It seems likely that the background for John’s comments here is to be found in 1 John 3:11-18 and the contrast between the children of God and the children of the devil. 1 John 3:14—”We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers.  He who does not love abides in death.” The sin unto death, at least in part, seems to be a persistent and intentional disobedience of Jesus’ command to love one another.  It is denying the love of Jesus and following the unloving example of the false teachers. 1 John 3:23—disregarding this command leads to death.

Regardless of the view one takes on this issue, John expects his readers to pray for one another especially when they fall into sin. So, when should we not pray? That is difficult to say, isn’t it?

Apparently there is a time in which prayer is no longer useful—note that John does not command us not to pray, but he seems to suggest that when a person reaches the point of “sin unto death” prayer will not help. We should respond, then, by continuing to pray unless we get some indication from the Spirit to cease praying. If all wrongdoing is sin, then praying for restoration of our brothers and sisters is the best starting point.

Prayer reveals relationships (with others) and relationships fuel prayer—how we relate to others can cause us to pray rightly or wrongly or it can cause us to pray with confidence as we show God’s love for others. Confident prayer results in restoration and life for those who sin. We cannot ignore the sin of others. We should pray for God to work in their lives.

Conclusion

How do we respond to this difficult passage? There seems to me to be only one response, we must become a people of prayer, and not just any prayer, but a confident prayer that comes from an assurance of our relationship with our Father through his Son, Jesus Christ. As E. M. Bounds says, “"What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but people whom the Holy Ghost can use – people of prayer, people mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through people. He does not come on machinery, but on people. He does not anoint plans, but people, people of prayer."

How does this look in everyday life?

Luke 1:1-13 could be a starting point—start with God, be specific with needs, pray for reconciliation and forgiveness, be persistent (Ask, Seek, Knock), and trust in the goodness and faithfulness of God. 

In other words:

First, we must be diligent in keeping our relationship with God current.  That requires time with God, with his Word, and with his people.

Second, we must pray.  We need to carve out time to meet with God in prayer.  This week set aside at least 10 minutes a day where you simply get with God to pray for others. 

Finally, we must avoid sin.  We need to live accountable lives with each other so that we can honor God.  Remember, everything we do reflects on the character of God.  Our lives are the best (or worst) witness for the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  How are we doing?

So, our batting average may be low. We may not see as many miracles or positively answered prayers as we’d like, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still pray with confidence. Following John’s lead, we know that Confident prayer begins with salvation, continues with a confident relationship, and results in restoration and life. Act on God’s promises and watch God work. He is responsible for completing it, we are responsible for joining him in it.

Remember, as Charles Spurgeon reminds us: "If they will not hear you speak, they cannot prevent your praying. Do they jest at your exhortations? They cannot disturb you at your prayers. Are they far away so that you cannot reach them? Your prayers can reach them. Have they declared that they will never listen to you again, nor see your face? Never mind, God has a voice which they must hear. Speak to Him, and He will make them feel. Though they now treat you despitefully, rendering evil for your good, follow them with your prayers. Never let them perish for lack of your supplications." (Metropolitan Pulpit, vol. 18, 263-264)