1 John 5:14-15 “This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him.”

“This is the confidence we have before him,” John says. And this is not just any kind of confidence. Some confidence is little more than swagger, a self-confidence that doesn’t bother to take into account whom you are dealing with.

Our confidence before God to ask him things does not grow out of disrespect for who he is. We are fully aware of his awesome power and holiness. But we still come to him and speak with a kind of freedom. We pour our hearts out to him with sort of reckless abandon, because in Jesus we know just how much he loves us.

One of the reasons Jesus taught us to call on God as our Father is because he wanted such parental love to influence our prayers. Or, as Martin Luther said it, “With these words God tenderly invites us to believe that he is our true Father, and we are his true children, so that we may pray to him as boldly and confidently as dear children ask their dear fathers.”

That makes us certain that when we ask, God hears us. Even more, John says, “If we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what have asked of him.” Could that be true? Is that possible? Can we be certain not only that God is listening to our prayers, but that we actually have the things we are asking for? Aren’t we venturing into TV preacher, prosperity gospel, wild-unsubstantiated-promise territory here?

The key to understanding this promise is in the qualifier, “If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” “Oh,” we might think, “that sort of spoils the excitement. We have to ask in line with God’s will.” But not so fast. Isn’t that how Christians want all their prayers to be, or at least they should?

Several years ago a book on prayer was published titled On Giving Advice to God. It intends to be a remedy for the kind of prayer life that seems intent on telling God how he should run our world, as though he wasn’t doing a very good job already and needed us to help him figure things out. If our prayers seem to start with the assumption that so far the Lord has it wrong, those aren’t very useful, or even sensible, prayers. God forbid that we should get anything that goes against his will. That can’t end well. We should even try to avoid asking for such things.

But if we are asking according to his will, how can we fail to get it? He’s God, and he loves us! Sometimes we may not know whether something is his will, so we acknowledge this in our prayers. We qualify our request: “If it is your will…”, at least in our hearts if not in the words we say.

But there are many things he has promised to do for us. Let’s pray about those things more! The whole Lord’s Prayer is an example. Let’s pray it with sincerity and full attention. James says, “Pray for wisdom,” and God will give it. Jesus teaches us to pray for more workers in God’s harvest, to ask for the Holy Spirit, to ask for protection from the devil and temptation.

Let’s search the Scriptures to know God’s will better, and then be certain, by faith, that we have what we pray for.