More Than Three Wishes, Part 2

As we continue through our study of 1 John chapter 5, there are some significant implications to verse 14 and 15 regarding prayer. So you get to the end of these two verses where John is developing in us confidence, reminding us of the condition, and then telling us that there are things happening daily that we have no idea are happening. Where do you think John's leading us?

I think John would be leading us to say at the end of something like this, you know what? I need to pray. Do you ever struggle with your prayer life? Do you ever wonder if you're praying in just the right way? Perhaps you've wondered from time to time if your prayers really matter that much to God. Does he want to hear from you?

Does he care about what you have to say? Prayer is something that all Christians know they should be doing. It's also something that most Christians don't think they're doing well. Stephen wants to help you today. Today, Stephen Davey returns to his study of 1 John 5. He's calling this message, More Than Three Wishes. 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, that's 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 year, for say five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 30 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, you know, and you're thinking, oh, please. Eventually it kind of, you know, gets a little bit more concentrated. And they also choose the wrong colors.

You know, so you have purple people and 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, OK, 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 Genusco 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. We would all go home and say boy John, wow, I wish I had his apostolic role.

Maybe we feel a little bit more alike as we think about our prayer life like that preacher's kid who was out with his family for dinner, Pastor Brian Wilkerson, I came across his writing not too long ago. He says they were seated at one of those themed restaurants for kids. All the way around that restaurant there were TVs mounted on the walls playing cartoons. Volume was turned down but you could see the sights and Brian writes, our youngest son who was about four years old at the time, his eyes were glued to the TV screen above him where he was introduced for the first time to Roadrunner cartoons.

He watched a continuous loop throughout dinner as Wile E. Coyote strapped on rocket propelled roller skates, shot himself out of cannons, launched himself from giant slingshots in pursuit of that elusive Roadrunner. After watching intently for nearly an hour without taking his eyes off the screen, he announced to our family no matter what he does, he's never going to get that chicken. Never going to get that chicken.

Maybe that's how you feel. No matter what I pray, no matter what I say, I just never get that dream. I never get that result. I don't seem to get that promotion. I don't get that desire.

I'm never going to get that chicken. 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.

In fact, I want you to notice one other thing. John uses the present tense in verse 15. Look at the last part again. We know that we have right now present tense the requests. In other words, one of those four answers, we've already got it. It's just not going to show up perhaps until later. But as it relates to the answer specifically referring to the one related to the request we've made, John says you've already got it. You already have it.

This is stunning confidence. Present tense. We have right now the requests we've made of him.

What does that mean? That means that whatever and whenever you are praying in a way that aligns with the will of God, you have right now his answer even though it might not arrive for weeks or months or years or maybe your lifetime. Are you willing to say thy will be done even in that? John says with great confidence, you pray according to the will of God, it will happen. In fact, in the mind of God, it already has.

It just hasn't reached you yet. And in that, God deepens our faith. I mentioned George Mueller earlier, a man who ran orphanages in England. Some of you are familiar with him, caring for several thousand orphans in the mid 1800s. They reached a point and they often did where they were out of money and in great need. On one occasion, they had reached that point again and they prayed and nothing happened and so they began selling furniture that they could do without.

And then a woman showed up at the orphanage who had decided four days earlier to deliver enough money to cover all their bills and more. Mueller and his staff had been praying for four days and she had already made the decision. Mueller would write the following observations in his journal and I quote, since the money had been so near the orphanage for several days without being given is proof that it was in the heart of God to help us all along. Furthermore, God evidently delights in the prayers of his children. Further, God allowed us to pray so long to try our faith but to make the answer so much sweeter. I'm afraid we too easily reach the conclusion that God must not be involved or interested or caring or maybe we're not saying it the right way. Well, he's answered us in the way we've wanted.

It hasn't arrived for four days, four months, how about 40 years, about a lifetime. Can I tell you here a personal testimony that I'm here effectively because of the gospel of the grace of God through the line of immigrants stretching back four generations who settled in Minnesota. My dad calls me, as you know, every morning at seven to make sure I'm up and I asked him about this and he confirmed the details because it had been swirling around in my mind. Way back there in the family tree, I have a great grandmother who was a believer married to an unbeliever. She prayed for her husband to come to faith. She even gave him a Bible now some 100 years ago and after praying for his salvation for 40 years, he accepted Christ. It became obvious to everyone he saw his children come to faith.

One of his sons is my grandfather, my father's father. In fact, my father told me this morning he can remember seeing his grandfather reading that Bible at their kitchen table on the farm. My father further told me, and I didn't know this, he has that Bible. It is a keepsake that reminds him of the grace of God but the persistence in praying. Her request was within the lines of the will of God, and yet God didn't allow that request to be experienced for 40 years, perhaps among a number of reasons, not only to God, perhaps one of them is that we would learn the value of persisting in praying. So you get to the end of these two verses where John is developing in us confidence, reminding us of the condition, and then telling us that there are things happening daily that we have no idea are happening. Where do you think John's leading us? I think John would be leading us to say at the end of something like this, you know what? I need to pray, right?

I need to go pray. Our confidence isn't for the sake of intellectual bravado. John isn't removing our doubts about prayer so that it will just become a little smarter.

I think he wants us to be a lot more serious. This has been very convicting to me, I can tell you that. This is such a glorious union with our Lord that delivers so much and always finds an answer, guaranteed. We struggle with it perhaps because it isn't easy. It's work. In fact, we don't fully understand the mystery of how prayer works. We know that prayer works, but we really know that prayer is work, right? Let me encourage you, I'm going to close by reading a chapter out of the writings of J. Sidlow Baxter.

I want to encourage you as I have prayed for myself and for you, this exhortation I trust will be both convicting and encouraging. J. Sidlow Baxter, by the way, was a pastor in the early 1900s. He was a prolific author. He was an expositor as a pastor. In fact, Baxter graduated from Spurgeon's Pastors College in London and went on to be used greatly in his generation on both sides of the pond. In fact, his life spanned the 20th century. Born in 1903, died in 1999.

Anything he writes is worth having. He struggled with prayer as a pastor. He let his schedule get in the way of private communion and I'm encouraged he admitted that. You'd think pastors would have it all buttoned down.

We don't. One morning he says, I took a good look into my heart and I found that there was part of me that didn't want to pray and a part that did. The part that did not want to pray were my emotions.

The part which did want to pray was my intellect and will. He writes, as never before, my will and I stood face to face and I asked my will a straight question. Will, are you ready for an hour of prayer? Will answered, I am.

I'm quite ready if you are. So Will and I linked arms and turned to go for a time of prayer. At once, all the emotions began pulling the other way and protesting, we are not coming. I saw Will's stagger hesitate just a bit. And I asked, can you stick it out, Will?

And Will replied, yes, if you can. So we did, Will and I, we went and began to pray, dragging those wriggling, unruly emotions along with us. It was a struggle all the way through. At one point, when Will and I were in the middle of an earnest intercession, I suddenly found one of those traitorous emotions that snared my imagination and had run off to the golf course.

It was all that I could do to drag that wicked rascal back. A bit later, I found another of my emotions and sneaked away with some off-guarded thoughts and there I was in the pulpit, two days ahead of schedule, preaching a sermon I hadn't even finished. At the end of that hour, if you'd asked me, was it a good time of prayer, I would have replied, no. It was a wearying wrestling with contrary emotions and a truant imagination from beginning to end. That battle continued for weeks and weeks.

If you asked me at the end of any of that period, have you had a good time in your daily praying, I would have had to confess, no. At times it seems as though the heavens were brass, at times it seemed God was too distant to hear, at times it seemed the Lord Jesus was strangely aloof, and at times it seemed my prayers were accomplishing nothing. Yet, something was happening. For one thing, Will and I were teaching emotions that we could act independently of them. In fact, one morning, just when Will and I were going for another time of prayer, I overheard one of the emotions whisper to the other, come on you guys, it's no use wasting any time resisting, they're going to do it just the same. And that morning, for the first time, even though the emotions were completely uncooperative, at least they were quiet.

Then another few weeks later, what do you think happened? During one of our prayer times, when Will and I were no more thinking of emotions than of the man on the moon, one of the most vigorous of the emotions unexpectedly sprang up and shouted, hallelujah, at which all the other emotions exclaimed, amen. And for the first time, the whole of my being, intellect, will and emotion, was united in the coordinated operation of prayer. It is our directive, it is to be our delight, and praying is much more than three wishes or more that you hope you get right with a genie who never does stick around. It is face to face communion with almighty God, who at least changes, if nothing else, us.

No doubt about it, John writes. God hears, God answers. So let's go pray. Father, thank you that as you have led, John, by your Spirit to address issues that believers struggle with, you didn't leave out one that we all struggle with, and that's praying to you.

There are few subjects where once announced create an immediate agreement of conviction, a desire, a willingness to confess to you that we don't come into your presence, as it were, not nearly often enough. We thank you that we have been taught today by your Word that our confidence in going to you, even now, that you are open and available, not because of our past, our present experience, because you've declared it so. Thank you for the mystery of your grace, which so quickly and easily condescends to commune with us. To voice the puritans of old, we would say it too, we pray, O God, that we would pray like we ought.

You've reminded us of so many reasons why. We do thank you that even though we say we love you, we realize that that's faltering and stumbling. You love us dearly, deeply. But as an assembly, Father, it's such a privilege to be able to voice our love to you and to pray together to come into your presence face to face as a church family and have your fullest attention. I hope today's time in God's Word has encouraged you and given you a deeper understanding regarding prayer. This is Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen Davey is the president of Wisdom International and your Bible teacher for this daily time in God's Word.

This current series is called Without a Doubt. We have a few more lessons to go in this series and we'll bring you those in the days ahead. I also want to make sure you know that each of these lessons is posted to our website. One of the reasons why that's helpful is because you might have a friend or a loved one who struggles with prayer and would be encouraged to hear this message. Why not share it with them?

You could simply share the link to this message in an email to your friend or share it on your social media feed. That actually helps more people find this Bible teaching ministry. Visit wisdomonline.org and on the home page you'll find the direct link to each day's lesson. And in our free resource section you'll find the archive of all Stephen's teaching. All of his full-length sermons are there as well as our second daily program called The Wisdom Journey. Stephen is teaching through the Bible in three years on that wisdom journey, so if you haven't listened to that check that out as well. Join us back here next time as you discover more wisdom for the hearts. you