Exploring 1 John: He Hears Us
1 John 5:13-15 - We come before Him with confidence according to His Will.
“These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence which we have before 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 which we have asked from Him.”
1 John 5:13-15 NASB1995
John follows on to the marvelous words in verses 11-12 with more assurance for the believers. He is writing these things (most commentators believe that means the entire epistle) for those who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that they may know that they have eternal life. This gives us the confidence we should have before Him.
I am a nervous person, one who is startled by loud and sudden noises or other unexpected things. I used to fear the phone calls in the night when the parents were still living but having health issues. I have probably suffered from anxiety my whole life and sometimes the Great Wall of Expectations for the saved looms above me, causing more queasiness, anxiety and uncertainty. Well, yes, I’m certainly justified because I believe, but now there is the work of sanctification. Am I doing enough? Am I giving enough? Am I learning enough about the Word? Am I listening to the will of God?
We recently saw Inside/Out 2, the new sequel to the wonderful movie Inside/Out that came out a few years ago from Disney/Pixar that explores the internal emotions of a young girl (Riley) who likes hockey. It was very cute (not as good as the original), but I can certainly relate to the new emotional character Anxiety, who seems to dominate the control panel in Riley’s emotional responses as she becomes a teenager. I am also a perfectionist, which is not a good thing to pair with anxiety but I’m also a natural sloth and laziness beckons when I feel like I need to be doing something. I also stubbornly cling to a few things in this mortal life that I like, like traveling. While researching this verse, I found a PERFECT Sermon from Charles Spurgeon that I must share in its entirety (the link was on Precept Austin in commentary for 1 John 5:13):
Among my early hearers at Waterbeach was one good old woman whom I called “Mrs. Much-afraid.” I feel quite sure she has been many years in Heaven, but she was always fearing that she should never enter the gates of glory. She was very regular in her attendance at the house of God, and was a wonderfully good listener. She used to drink in the gospel; but, nevertheless, she was always doubting, and fearing, and trembling about her own spiritual condition.
She had been a believer in Christ, I should think, for fifty years, yet she had always remained in that timid, fearful, anxious state. She was a kind old soul, ever ready to help her neighbours, or to speak a word to the unconverted; she seemed to me to have enough grace for two people, yet, in her own opinion, she had not half enough grace for one.One day, when I was talking with her, she told me that she had not any hope at all, she had no faith; she believed that she was a hypocrite.
I said, “Then don’t come to the chapel any more; we don’t want hypocrites there. Why do you come?”
She answered, “I come because I can’t stop away. I love the people of God; I love the house of God; and I love to worship God.”
“Well,” I said, “you are an odd sort of hypocrite; you are a queer kind of unconverted woman.”
“Ah!” she sighed, “you may say what you please, but I have not any hope of being saved.”
So I said to her, “Well, next Sunday, I will let you go into the pulpit, that you may tell the people that Jesus Christ is a liar, and that you cannot trust Him.”
“Oh!” she cried, “I would be torn in pieces before I would say such a thing as that. Why, He cannot lie! Every word He says is true.”
“Then,” I asked, “why do you not believe it?”
She replied, “I do believe it; but, somehow, I do not believe it for myself; I am afraid whether it is for me.”
“Have you not any hope at all?” I asked.
“No,” she answered; so I pulled out my purse, and I said to her, “Now, I have got £5 here, it is all the money I have; but I will give you that £5 for your hope if you will sell it.”
She looked at me, wondering what I meant. “Why!” she exclaimed, “I would not sell it for a thousand worlds.” She had just told me that she had not any hope of salvation, yet she would not sell it for a thousand worlds!
I fully expect to see that good old soul when I get to Heaven, and I am certain she will say to me, “Oh, dear sir, how foolish I was when I lived down there at Waterbeach! I went groaning all the way to glory when I might just as well have gone there singing. I was always troubled and afraid; but my dear Lord kept me by His grace, and brought me safely here.”
She died very sweetly; it was with her as John Bunyan said it was with Miss Much-afraid, Mr. Despondency’s daughter. Mr. Great-heart had much trouble with those poor pilgrims on the road to the Celestial City; for, if there, was only a straw in the way, they were fearful that they would stumble over it. Yet Bunyan says, “When the time was come for them to depart, they went to the brink of the river. The last words of Mr. Despondency were, ‘Farewell night, welcome day.’ His daughter went through the river singing.”
Our Lord often makes it calm and peaceful, or even joyous and triumphant, for His departing timid ones. He puts some of His greatest saints to bed in the dark, and they wake up in the eternal light; but He frequently keeps the candle burning for Mr. Little-faith, Mr. Feeble-mind, Mr. Ready-to-halt, Mr. Despondency, and Miss Much-afraid. They go to sleep in the light, and they also wake up in the land where the Lamb is all the glory for ever and ever.
[C. H. Spurgeon, C. H. Spurgeon's Autobiography, Compiled from His Diary, Letters, and Records, by His Wife and His Private Secretary: Volume 1, 1834-1854, 239-40 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009). A bit of editing done by the person at the link (shape, not content) to enhance readability.]
Ok, I don’t know about you, but those words are just ringing in my ears. I’m probably Mrs. Much-Afraid Independent-minded Doubtful Unconfident Stubborn Melancholic if I had a name, but Spurgeon just shook me out of my navel-gazing with that powerful, powerful sermon!! I will cross from night into day, from darkness into light and I should be singing! But then I see a meme like the photo below and the vicious cycle starts again…
John says that if we ask anything in His name He hears us. We should have this confidence in Him. Let’s do a word study on “confidence”. This word comes from the Greek word παῤῥησία or parrhēsía with the following Biblical usages; Strong’s G3954 is used 31 times in the New Testament:
freedom in speaking, unreservedness in speech
openly, frankly, i.e without concealment
without ambiguity or circumlocution
without the use of figures and comparisons
free and fearless confidence, cheerful courage, boldness, assurance
the deportment by which one becomes conspicuous or secures publicity
So we should boldness and assurance, a cheerful courage, when we pray for something in His name. Well, I don’t know about you, but I often have prayers that go unanswered or the answer is “no”. A friend fighting cancer dies instead of being healed or a family with a strained relationship with their daughter continues to have the problem and it is not resolved or a prayer for a peaceful resolution to a conflict is not answered or a prayer for salvation is not heard (at least it seems that way). I often reflect that perhaps my Earthly life interferes too much with my life in His Presence or perhaps I’m not praying as earnestly as I should or could or I don’t understand His Word and His Will.
Well, I must share this commentary that found on Precept Austin from Pastor Steven Cole on this passage; he finds these verses to be among the most difficult in 1 John:
God is a prayer-hearing God (Ps. 65:2). But at the same time, I can’t gloss over the tremendous difficulty that our text creates for my prayer life. It is simply not true to my experience. John, who is echoing here the repeated promises of Jesus (Mk 11:22-24; Jn 14:13-14; 15:16; 16:24), says that if we ask anything according to God’s will, He will answer favorably. “No” is not an acceptable answer. It must be “yes” every time! Over the years, my “prayer batting average” is pretty low.
I have prayed for the salvation of people who have not gotten saved. I have prayed for the restoration of sinning Christians, who have not repented and been restored. I have prayed for the reconciliation of many Christian marriages that have broken up. Some try to get God off the hook by saying, “He gives people free will.” But if God cannot subdue a sinful person’s will, then He can’t do anything! That means that sinful man, not God, is sovereign! And it means that prayer is useless and impotent.
If God promises to answer our prayers, then He has the power to answer them! I’m sure that the fault is with me, not with God’s promise! I am probably lacking in understanding God’s perfect will and lacking in faith. But I could not find any preachers on this text who admit to having the difficulties that I have. So this has not been an easy message to prepare, because if I’m honest, I have to expose my own failures in prayer to you! My prayer has been that perhaps by sharing my struggles, you will be motivated to keep “swinging” in your prayer life. Maybe we’ll all improve our batting averages!
I think Pastor Cole is being remarkably honest in his assessment of this confidence that we have before God. His entire sermon can be found Here. So I found a different, and quite good answer, to this dilemma from Enduring Word:
If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us: In this, we see the purpose of prayer and the secret of power in prayer. It is to ask; to ask anything; to ask anything according to His will; and once having so asked, to have the assurance that He hears us.
First, God would have us ask in prayer. Much prayer fails because it never asks for anything. God is a loving God, and a generous giver – He wants us to ask of Him.
Secondly, God would have us ask anything in prayer. Not to imply that anything we ask for will be granted, but anything in the sense that we can and should pray about everything. God cares about our whole life, and nothing is too small or too big to pray about. As Paul wrote in Philippians 4:6: Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
Next, God would have us ask according to His will. It is easy for us to only be concerned with our will before God, and to have a fatalistic view regarding His will (“He will accomplish His will with or without my prayers anyway, won’t He?”). But God wants us to see and discern His will through His Word, and to pray His will into action. 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, and we can ask what you desire, and more and more be asking according to His will. Then we see answered prayer.
If something is God’s will, why doesn’t He just do it, apart from our prayers? Why would He wait to accomplish His will until we pray? Because God has appointed us to work with Him as 2 Corinthians 6:1 says: as workers together with Him. God wants us to work with Him, and that means bringing our will and agenda into alignment with His. He wants us to care about the things He cares about, and He wants us to care about them enough to pray passionately about them.
We know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him: When we ask according to God’s will, when we pray the promises of God, we have this confidence; and so pray with real and definite faith.
Prayer should be so much more than casting wishes to heaven. It is rooted in understanding God’s will and promises according to His Word, and praying those promises into action. For each prayer request, we should mentally or vocally ask, “What possible reason do I have to think that God will answer this prayer?” We should be able to answer that question from His Word. [my emphasis added].
The most powerful prayers in the Bible are always prayers which understand the will of God, and ask Him to perform it. We may be annoyed when one of our children says, “Daddy, this is what you promised, now please do it,” but God is delighted when we pray His promises. It shows our will aligned with His, our dependence on Him, and that we take His Word seriously.
It is not necessarily wrong to ask for something that God has not promised; but we then realize that we are not coming to God on the basis of a specific promise, and we don’t have the confidence to know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.
I think it may be time to revamp some of our prayers of supplication to match those concerns with His Word and promises! Don’t get me wrong, we have had many prayers answered, but we have also had many others that seem to have no answer, or perhaps the answer is in a much longer timeframe than I can see. We should always ask the question: What possible reason do I have to think that God will answer this prayer? Once again, I have to share a snippet from Steven Cole in Precept Austin:
The idea of 1Jn 5:15 is that we know that we presently have whatever we have asked in accord with His will. We may not actually see it for many years, but it’s as good as done. Abraham prayed for a son and God promised to give him that son. But it was 25 years before Abraham held Isaac in his arms. There is much in Scripture about waiting on God. So we would be mistaken to think that God is promising that if we pull the prayer lever, all the goodies instantly come out of the chute. Sometimes in His purpose and wisdom, God delays the answers to our prayers for years. Yet, in another sense, He has already granted the requests. Usually, we should continue praying until the request is actually granted (Lk 18:1-8). At other times (I can’t give you a rule for this), you should stop praying and begin thanking God, even though you haven’t yet received what you were praying for.
My next devotional examines 1 John 5:16-17 - A Sin not Leading to Death
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - I thank You so much for the work of the Holy Spirit that is slowly chipping away at my selfish heart. I thank You for the confidence that we have in bringing our petitions to You according to Your will. Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
The Blue Letter Bible was accessed on 6/23/2024 to review the lexicon for confidence.
Precept Austin was accessed on 6/23/2024 to review commentary for 1 John 5:13-15.
Enduring Word commentary by David Guzik is used with written permission.