FBC Morning Light – November 11, 2022

Confidence in Prayer According to God’s Will

Well a good Friday morning to you, looking forward to another weekend. We gather together with God's people on Sunday. I hope you're planning to do that and join in maybe attending Faith Baptist this Sunday if you're in the area.

Come to our adult Bible study, we're getting close to wrapping up our study of the book of Isaiah in adult Sunday school, and then morning service doing a series on the fruitful life, and be a challenging series for us, and then Sunday evening service we meet at 6 o 'clock and studying the book of Mark.

So a lot of good opportunities on the Lord's Day to learn of Him and to grow in grace and knowledge of Christ. Hope you can make it on Sunday. Well today we're in the book of 1st John, and you know John says something in chapter 5 that really challenges our prayer life, doesn't it?

Listen to what he says. He says, this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.

Now there are some who would take this passage as sort of like a blank check, that I can ask anything of God, and He hears when I pray, and therefore I can expect Him to give me what I ask of Him. But there's an important caveat in this passage, these couple of verses, that really help us out in our prayer life and in our confidence in praying, and it is in verse 14.

It says, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. Now you can flip that around, right? If I ask anything that is not according to His will, He doesn't listen to that. He doesn't hear it.

If He doesn't hear it, I can't expect to receive it. So the point is that there's this incredibly important condition that has to be met for me to have the confidence that God hears and will answer my prayer, and that is that I'm praying according to His will.

Now, brings up a big question, doesn't it? Well, what is His will in this particular matter that I'm praying about? Sometimes we don't know. Sometimes we can't know. Can't know, for sure. So let me address that first of all, because you know a lot of times we pray for people who are suffering with some kind of an illness, maybe a terminal illness, and you know we pray that God would heal them, and they would be better and live and so forth.

But is that His will? Is that His will? You say, well, you know, God will be glorified in that. Yes, He would be glorified if He chose to perform a miraculous healing in a person's life, and you know they have a terminal illness, and they completely recover from it.

There have been plenty of cases that have been recorded where, you know, people have had a tumor, some kind of cancer, and it was supposed to be a terminal condition, and God miraculously healed them.

And I've heard of those cases, never experienced them directly in my own ministry, but I have heard of them, and they're a great blessing, and God is praised and glorified in that. But on the other hand, there have been an awful lot of cases where people have been terminally ill, been prayed for, asked God to heal them, and He chose not to do so.

It was not His will to heal them. So the challenge is to be able to pray according to His will, and we don't always know what that is. In those kind of cases, the way I tend to pray is, you know, Lord, I don't know what your purposes are in this sickness.

It could be a sickness that leads to death. I pray that you would glorify yourself by granting that person a good death. But Father, from a human standpoint, from our perspective, our will would be that this person would survive, that they'd be healed, that we might enjoy ongoing relationship and time with them.

But Father, we commit this to your will. We want your will to be done. That is, after all, the way the Lord, in His model prayer, encouraged us to pray, right? He said, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

But on the other hand, here's another way to look at this. On the other hand, there is an awful lot we can learn about the will of God, what God's desires are, His purposes, and so forth, from His Word.

We can know from His Word what His will is, in at least general ways, and sometimes in some very particular ways. So the challenge to us in this case is to learn more and more about what God is like, and what God likes.

I can't pray for something that I know is...I mean, His Word reveals to us that He doesn't like. I can't ask Him to do something that I know He doesn't like. I can't ask Him to do something that I know would be contrary to His character, to who He is.

I can't ask Him to bless my purchase of the latest Powerball ticket. I can't. I can't ask Him to give me a winning lottery ticket, because I can't say with any great...I can't say with any degree of confidence whatsoever that it's God's will that I go to the place and buy a lotto ticket.

I would expect that you would be aware that that's not pleasing to God, a pleasing use of my funds, and I can't expect God to bless that, answer that prayer and bless that, just as one example. So I think it's important for us to grow in our knowledge and understanding of God's Word, God's will, His ways, what He's like, what He likes, so that our prayers can be shaped accordingly.

Obedience and Pleasing God in Prayer

Now I want to go back to chapter 3 for a minute, just for a second, and point out that there's another passage here in 1 John that has to do with confidence in praying, and that's in chapter 3 verse 22.

He says, and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. So another key to confidence in prayer and answers to prayer is a life of obedience, a life that is lived that is pleasing to Him.

If I'm living in obedience to God's Word, I'm not going to ask for something contrary to God's Word. If I'm living a life that's pleasing to Him, I'm not going to ask Him to do that which is displeasing to Him, and so forth.

So again, learning what God is like, what God likes, obeying what I know God would have me to do, living in a way I know that would be pleasing to Him, these are key components to confident prayer, confident prayer life.

So may we take the challenge and be able to pray confidently, because these conditions are consistently being met in our lives. So our Father and our God, I pray that you would speak to us today about our own prayer life, and how we're doing in learning your will, doing your will, obeying your will, and doing that which is pleasing in your sight, that indeed our prayers might be effective.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well have a great Friday and a great weekend, and I trust the Lord will bless you in it, especially on the Lord's Day, as you gather to worship with God's people.

Good day.