More Than Three Wishes, Part 1

Prayer with thanksgiving is the means of obtaining freedom from anxiety and peace which passes all understanding. Because prayer is the means by which we are to keep watchful and stay alert.

He just kind of throws everything in the kitchen sink in here to summarize it all. He says because prayer is used by God to promote our spiritual growth, bring power into our work, lead others to faith in Christ, and bring all other blessings into Christ's church. The question isn't should we pray, but how in the world can we afford not to? God wants Christians to be the kind of people who pray frequently. He enjoys the fellowship and the kind of relationship that's marked by prayer. So the question is, how is your prayer life? Do you feel like God is really listening? Do you wonder if your prayer life is powerful? Is prayer worth the time and energy that it takes? Or maybe you know that your prayer life isn't what it should be. Today, Stephen Davey returns to 1 John 5 and a lesson he's calling, More Than Three Wishes. We're going to explore some important aspects of prayer today.

Stay with us. Many years ago, Rod Serling penned an episode of that old television series that, if you know what I'm talking about, is going to date you some, but you may remember it was called The Twilight Zone. Really scary stuff, you know, back then. But there was an old antique dealer that had this rather old and unimpressive bottle, and he happened to clean it, and a genie was released. The genie immediately promised to grant him three wishes, but warned him to choose carefully and to word it just so. So the man's first wish, which the genie granted immediately, but when word got out that this man and his wife were suddenly millionaires, they were deluged with requests and appeals from friends and then family and then angry appeals from friends and family, and they did their best to give money to everybody that they could possibly help. They tried to respond to everyone.

As their money dwindled, the IRS caught wind of this unusual amount of money, performed an audit, and found the couple actually owed the government all but $5 of what remained of that $1 million. The genie told the man, you should have been more specific, and you should have asked for a million tax-free dollars. Well, next the man wished for power, and then he thought, well, I better be specific, and so he said, I want to be the leader of a modern, powerful country in which I can never be voted out of office. He thought that would solve his money problems and also put him at the top of the food chain, and so the clever genie immediately granted his request. The man found himself suddenly underground in a military bunker surrounded by frantic Nazi soldiers, and he himself sporting a mustache that has never come back into style, and again, he hadn't been specific enough with the genie, and the mischievous genie had simply made him take the place of Adolf Hitler.

So the poor antique dealer had no choice but to use his third and final wish to restore his life as it had once been. You know, as I read that transcript by an author who was using it to illustrate another point, it struck me that you asked the average believer about going to God in prayer, and you're likely to hear a combination of similar concerns or doubts or frustrations. I wonder if I'm going to God in the right way.

I'm wondering if he is a little bit like a mischievous genie, and I'm not saying it just right, so I'm not quite getting the answer I'm looking for. Or maybe God is a little irritated with me and is having fun with my life. Do my prayers really matter to God? Does God grant the wishes of only, you know, the choice servants or even someone like me?

Maybe God doesn't want to help me out. The Apostle John knows that every Christian in some way, shape, or form asks similar questions or at least has little doubts nibbling away at his faith. John is on a mission, as he writes this letter, to remove all doubt, and he's done so in chapter 5 of 1 John, all doubt that God loves his children. He wants to remove all doubt that God has indeed won the victory already.

It's one that God's children are forever secure in their salvation. And in our last study that the Christian can actually know for certain that he has received the gift of eternal life. Now we arrive at that text where John wants to remove all doubt about another critical issue in the life of every believer. He not only wants us to know, K-N-O-W, know that we are saved by God, he wants us to K-N-O-W, to know that we can talk to God and that God anywhere, anytime, about anything is interested in our approach.

We're at verse 14 in our study, 1 John 5. John is going to speak to three critical issues related to prayer. He's going to talk about our direct confidence in our praying. He's going to bring up a defining condition in our praying. He's going to talk about a daily consequence to our praying. I want you to notice, first of all, the direct confidence of the believer in prayer.

Look at just the first phrase of verse 14. This is the confidence which we have before him, literally in facing him. You could render that face to face with him, in his presence is basically what he's saying.

And this is the confidence. Again, John uses that word, that's one of his favorites. He's already used it three times in this letter. He's used it in chapter 2 and verse 28 related to our confidence in the appearing of Christ. He's used it to relate to our confidence in the day of judgment, chapter 4 verse 17. He's used it in chapter 3 verse 21 and out here in chapter 5 to refer to our confidence in this matter of prayer.

Now let me go back for just a moment and refresh our memories on what this word confidence means. It's a compound word which woodenly translates free speech. It refers to, not this kind of bravado that you might think when you read the word in the English language, it refers to open and honest speech.

It originated out of the political scene where a candidate spoke openly and truthfully and over time, it came to refer openness, transparency in communication. So John is telling us that without a doubt, we can have an open and a transparent conversation with God and God is actually inviting that. He invites that.

In other words, we have a listening audience. God is not a genie. You get three shots at it, you better be good because you know you could end up in a bunker or with some money you really can't enjoy and then he's gone, you had your chance, it's over. You know he's available 24-7 and his schedule is never too cluttered for one more appointment. I read recently of a prank pulled, in fact it was pulled years ago, I only read of it recently by the New Yorker magazine when the internet and email was really taking the world by storm and the New Yorker actually published Bill Gates email address and in no time he was swamped with thousands and thousands of unwanted email. So he had to install filters and systems to receive only the important messages and send away all the others into the cyber oblivion.

Maybe you're sitting there thinking, I wonder what filter he used because I'm getting way too much email myself these days, right? Reminding me of what one Christian school kindergarten teacher said when she was teaching her students to memorize and quote the Lord's Prayer and she had a student in her class by the name of Andrew who was five years old and already very very much into computers and he had his turn in front of the class, he was saying it out loud but he mixed it up a bit to say, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from email. It's actually a great prayer, isn't it? Maybe you're praying that right now. What John wants to remind us with this promise that God implies in it is omniscient and omnipresent, he'd have to be, to be available to every one of us individually at any time for any request, any conversation, and he invites it. Invites it. George Mueller once wrote it this way, when you go to God in prayer you are not overcoming his reluctance, you are laying hold of his willingness.

I love that. You're not overcoming his reluctance, oh no, here he comes again! Gabriel shut the door quick, he's been here three times already today. No, you're laying hold of his willingness. This is exactly where John begins to remove all doubt from the believer's heart, this is the confidence which we have before him in his face, face to face. Secondly, John not only addresses the confidence of the believer in prayer but he also addresses the defining condition for the believer in prayer. Notice again, and this is the confidence which we have before him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

So in other words we have a listening audience but we also have a limiting arrangement. If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Now let me quickly point out as you weigh scripture with scripture that God hears everything, you pray. You'll find in the New Testament that this idea of God hearing us relates to our sense of God answering us in the sense of us seeing something take place in relation to whatever we requested. That's what John is focusing on, but God hears everything. If we really want to get technical as we weigh scripture with scripture, every prayer you pray is effectively answered. It might be yes because it is the will of God.

That's the part John is going to focus on here. It might be no because it isn't the will of God. It might be no, not that because God has something else in mind. It might be no, not now. It will come later. There are at least four possible responses.

You might come up afterwards and say, Stephen, you forgot a fifth and I may have, but these are the four I can think of. And they're all answers from God. Yes, no, not that, not now. So if you prayed and nothing happened, that was God's answer. If you prayed and something different happened, that was God's answer. See, John is referring to the confidence that we can have as we mature in our praying and this is where he wants to lead his children into faith as we recognize that as we pray there is this limitation and it isn't copping out.

There's a world out there that believes you just copped out. When you said, oh Lord, by the way, if this is your will, oh, you just copped, the genie will never give it to you now. That's exactly how Jesus Christ prayed. Not my will, but thine be done. And he fully understood communication with his Father. So we always pray with whatever we request, with this submission of thine will be done and you are not copping out.

You're growing up. In fact, sometimes all we can pray is thy will be done because we really don't have a clue what his is. Think about it, beloved, would you ever dare to pray at all if you weren't certain that God will always deliver what is best in his mind and purposes for you? Would you dare pray a request? As we understand in our maturing of our communion with God the Father, we understand the limitation and we glory in that because we know God will only deliver what is our best. We might wish for, we might pray for that job or that relationship or that promotion or that cure or that opportunity only to realize later on, has this ever happened to you?

That was the last thing you really needed. So you thank God at times that it was no, or no not that, or yes but not now. Howard Hendricks, now with the Lord, was fond of telling the story as he would speak on the subject of prayer.

I heard it the first time when he was in class teaching us and he told us how he was at one point in time young, he was single, he was studying for the ministry, in fact he was the apprentice to Donald Gray Barnhouse, a great expositor from 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. And while he was interning there in that church, he's going into the ministry and he's single and he's eligible, he said often times I would be invited over after church to lunch by an over eager mother who had an eligible daughter and somewhere around the lunch time she might whisper to me something to the effect of, Howard I'm praying that you'll marry my daughter and Hendricks would kind of look at us and grin and say, have you ever thanked God for unanswered prayer? John is removing the mystery of prayer that can so often be discouraging to the believer. If the answer doesn't come that we're looking for or praying for, we might be led to believe that God isn't listening or that God doesn't care or that God doesn't see.

No, it just so happens at this moment to be outside his divine purposes for your life and by the way he is committed to giving you only what's best for your spiritual growth and life. Someone might ask, but if it's God's will for me to have something, why should I even have to pray for it? Because according to God's word, God not only ordains the end, the answer, but he ordains the means to the end and the means is you praying. In fact while you're praying in faith and confidence or maybe not in great faith and not in great confidence, the greater good is taking place in your own heart and in your own character because we so often forget that the greater work of God is not what he does through us or with us but what he does in us. Ken Hughes in his excellent book, The Disciplines of a Godly Man, writes that prayer is like time exposure to God. Our souls, our character, is like a photographic plate and Christ is the shining blazing light upon it and the more we expose our lives to the light of his character for say five minutes or ten minutes or fifteen minutes or thirty minutes or an hour in a day, the more his image will be burned into our character, his love, his compassion, his truth, his integrity, his humility. And when we pray according to that greater desire which is not I'm going to get my will done in heaven but Lord would you do your will on earth, our wills are bent toward his.

That's part of John's point. Have this confidence as you pray according to his will. By the way, according to can be woodenly translated down along the line of or in harmony with. So when we pray according to his will, we're praying according to the lines that God has outlined and I couldn't help but think of the analogy of learning to color every eight o'clock service here. There are people awake at eight o'clock and here in our first worship service. They're not awake but we have an eight o'clock, no they are actually, a great crowd. Every eight o'clock afterward there are three little kids belonging to the same family, a little seven year old boy, a little five year old girl, about a three year old. Just close enough to drive their mother crazy. But at any rate they come up to me and I usually go sit down because they're going to bring me what they colored during the hour out of their Bible story coloring book.

And I've noticed over these months how they're improving. You've raised children and perhaps and you've seen the same thing happen. When they first start they don't color in the what?

In the lines. And you put it up on your refrigerator, look at what little Picasso did and you're thinking oh Lord please. Eventually it gets a little bit more concentrated and they also choose the wrong colors.

So you have purple people and green clouds and all that kind of stuff. Learning to pray is a lot like learning to color. You learn to pray according to the divine lines.

You understand that's the greatest glorious most wonderful opportunity of all. Lord your will. It's a limitation which is to God's glory and to our benefit though isn't it? Maybe you think well you know why pray? We're just praying for God's will to be done.

Why be specific? I mean if God is sovereign and his will is going to be accomplished wouldn't our growing confidence in him actually lessen the time we spend with him? I mean wouldn't we just you know eventually get to the point where we get up in the morning and say okay Lord it's all yours and I'm fine.

Whatever you decide we're good. Some of you are thinking that's a great prayer I'm going to just start doing that. No.

No. You could reach that conclusion if you were going to miss the communion and the exposure of your heart to God. You could reach that conclusion if you thought that prayer was just an attempt over time to change his mind or convince him to respond. But God intends to change us through prayer. He intends to develop us and empower us and reshape our will and our thinking as we face to face commune with the Father. And then in the mystery of God's purposes he actually uses our prayers and speaks of them as if they are the impetus for his divine action and then rewards us for having prayed for it. R.A. Torrey the president of Moody Bible Institute for some time and then the dean of Biola once wrote out ten reasons why you should pray. Just as the apostle Paul exhorts us to pray about everything and without ceasing. There's an unconscious communion and sometimes conscious. Number one we should pray he writes because there is a devil and because prayer is the God appointed means of resisting him.

Well that's good enough just to stop right there. Number two because prayer is God's way for us to obtain what we need from him. Number three because the apostles considered prayer to be the priority of their lives and they serve as an example for us. Number four because prayer played a very important role in the earthly life of our Lord who is our supreme example. Number five because prayer is the present ministry of our Lord since he is even now interceding for us. Number six because prayer is the means God has appointed for our receiving mercy from him and help in time of need. Number seven because prayer is the means of obtaining the fullness of God's joy. Number eight because prayer with thanksgiving is the means of obtaining freedom from anxiety and peace which passes all understanding. Number nine because prayer is the means by which we are to keep watchful and stay alert.

And number ten he just kind of throws everything in the kitchen sink in here to summarize it all. He says because prayer is used by God to promote our spiritual growth, bring power into our work, lead others to faith in Christ and bring all other blessings into Christ's church. So the question isn't should we pray but how in the world can we afford not to? I think that prayer actually unites puny people of Almighty God in this mysterious, miraculous partnership which he designed to fulfill his purposes and he actually includes our prayers into the fulfillment of those purposes which then makes this activity our most noble, our most essential work.

Perhaps the enemy attacks us on this front because of its incredible importance. This is the direct confidence of the believer in prayer. This is the defining limitation for the believer in prayer.

Thirdly, John points us to the daily consequence for the believer in prayer. Look at verse 15 and if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask. By the way, the word if there, you ought to circle that word to the Greek reader. He fully understood this is a fulfilled condition in the Greek language. We miss it and we could render it to help us understand that condition by writing in the margin the word sins.

That's what he means. And since we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, he goes on to say we know that we have the requests which we have asked from him. Now his first point is that we have a listening audience.

His second point is that there's a limitation to our appeal and now this third point is that we actually have a lifelong ongoing answer. We know that we have the request which we've asked from him. We know, there he goes again with that favorite statement or verb, but he uses the verb oida translated we know, but he uses that one because that's the verb for knowing on the basis of divine revelation. You might think that John would say we know that God answers or hears us and we know that by experience. I'm really glad he didn't use Ganesco which is to know by means of experience because if we read this, we know that God hears us by experience, we'd all say well that's John and he's an apostle, he can say that we can't. But he doesn't say that. He effectively says we know on the basis of what God has revealed that he hears us and we know that we have the requests asked from him. I'm so glad he used that particular verb to know on the basis of truth revealed, not truth experienced. Our experience isn't being allowed to dictate to us God's revelation about the truth.

In fact, can I tell you something that's challenging about the assembly? Everybody's experience is different in here too. In fact, testimony meetings can become extremely discouraging because you'll hear somebody that sounds like you might think the apostle John is speaking and you'd think well I guess I don't have the right incantation or I don't have the right discipline or I don't have the right words or I'm not the right person and that's just not my experience. But you notice that John is giving us confidence in prayer based not upon the experience of the moment but upon the revelation of the Spirit of God.

God wants our prayer life to be rooted in the truth of his word and he wants us to evaluate it based on his word. We're going to continue doing that for one more lesson as Stephen returns to this topic tomorrow. Before this month gets away from us, I want to remind you of a special offer that we have. During the month of May, we have a free resource to celebrate and encourage mothers. Stephen has a booklet called Motherhood in a variety of settings. In this booklet, Stephen offers words of encouragement to moms.

You're not alone. In fact, God delivered some encouraging truths especially for moms. Those truths are revealed in the home life of a mother named Eunice. This is a free digital download that you can download from our website. Go to wisdomonline.org forward slash mom for information. There's a link on the home page that will direct you as well. We do have a print version of this booklet and we can give you information about that. But the digital version is free today and is available at wisdomonline.org forward slash mom. Please take advantage of this opportunity for a free resource and then join us next time on Wisdom for the Heart.