Thursday, March 2, 2023
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
Praying With Confidence
In the verse just prior to this passage, John states that he is writing to those who believe in Jesus so that they can know they have eternal life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:13 Now he continues saying that those who know they have eternal life in Jesus can be confident in their prayer to Him.
John tells us that when we know we have eternal life in Jesus we can be confident that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us. God loves us and He wants us to come to Him, asking for what burdens our hearts. Sometimes we don’t get an answer because we don’t ask. He wants us to come to Him. God cares about every part of our lives, and He wants us to bring it all to Him - everything. He cares about our whole life and nothing is too big or too small to pray about.
God does want us to ask according to His will. He wants us to want His will, and to seek His will for our lives. He wants us to seek direction in His word and move in discernment when we hear Him.
Sometimes when we come to God in prayer, we have big heavy issues going on, and we are coming in supplication, asking for God’s help. We have our ideas about how our prayers should be answered. But John says clearly, we should ask, and ask according to His will. God loves us and wants the very best for us. We can ask for specific things, knowing that God’s will is the very best for us and He works in ways we cannot even fathom on our behalf. Those burdens we take to Him - He hears, and He cares.
When John wrote this, John may have had Jesus’ own words in mind, which he recorded in John 15:7: If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.When we abide in Jesus — living in Him, day by day — then our will becomes more and more aligned with His will. The more we abide in Him, the more we realize that the ONLY thing we want is for His will to be accomplished in our lives.
When we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we can know that we have the requests we have asked of Him if they are within His will for our lives. We can release those things we asked for and we can rest in His sovereignty.
