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)
