Finding Confidence in Prayer | Todd Explores 1 John 5:14-15

Join Todd as he delves into 1 John, Chapter 5, focusing specifically on verses 14 and 15. In this thoughtful discussion, Todd shares insights on developing confidence in prayer and the assurance that God hears and answers prayers. He talks about the importance of believing that God is concerned with our daily lives, the nature of genuine prayer, and the reasons why we sometimes lack confidence in our petitions to God. This episode is part of a larger series on the book of 1 John, aimed at instilling confidence and assurance in believers. Don't miss this insightful and encouraging session.

00:00 Introduction and Opening Remarks
00:27 Setting the Context: First John Chapter Five
01:44 Confidence and Assurance in Prayer
04:29 The Routine of Prayer and Genuine Connection
06:59 Struggles with Belief and Dependence on God
17:00 Jesus' Example of Dependence on the Father
21:01 The Importance of Praying for Others
25:35 Conclusion and Invitation

Transcript

If you would get out your Bibles with me to the book of open 'em up to the book of First John. First John, chapter five is where we're gonna be at this evening. And if you would please get out your Bibles. There's not gonna be a PowerPoint or anything. And, and also. It's not gonna be a super in-depth sermon and we're not got a lot of places that we're gonna go. And so I think I maybe have one or two scriptures that we may reference. So if you will turn there to First John chapter five. It will be helpful in you following along with the thought process that we're gonna be talking about this evening.

So first John, chapter five is where we are going to be. So kind of where this lesson is coming from, the, the place that, that I preach at on Sunday mornings. We have been going through the book of First John. First John is, is full of all of these statements of of confidence and assurance. A big part of his purpose in writing this book is to give us confidence as believers in Christ.

And so that's what we've been doing where I'm preaching at the last. Several Sundays is going through the book of one John and, and looking at all of these things that John wants us to be assured of and have confidence in. And today's statement comes, is found right here in one John chapter five in verse 14, where he says, now this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

And if we know that he hears us. Whatever we ask. We know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him. John wants us to have confident, he wants us to have assurance that God hears and that God answers our prayers In my series, going through First John and talking about all these things, I think this is.

Sermon number eight. And I still have at least one more to go eight sermons, maybe nine or, or now. A couple of sermons, I think had multiple points within them. So there's just these, there's just a ton of things in there that, in this book that John has been going through, all of these assurances and confidences.

John is just, he spent most of this book. Trying to assure us, assure us of our salvation, assuring us that we know God assuring us that God knows us that we abide in him, that he abides in us, instilling all of this confidence that we should have about our relationship with God. Yet look around and we don't really see him.

We don't really hear him. We pray we talk to him, but he doesn't really answer us back, at least not in the way that we are accustomed to be answered back. There is no immediate response to us from God as we would have in a, a normal type of conversation that we would have with someone else. Here in First John chapter five, verse 14 and 15, John assures us he's addressing that issue that, that despite the way that it appears, he does hear you.

He is listening. He cares for you, and he does answer your prayers. He had made a similar statement earlier in the book in one John chapter three in verse 22, when he said, in whatever we ask, we receive from him. God wants us to have that assurance that God is listening to what we're saying to him. God is listening to the questions and the petitions that we are asking, and whatever we ask, we will receive from him if we ask anything according to his will.

He does hear us. So the question that I want to ask you today is, do we, do we really have that kind of confidence when we pray? The kind of confidence that says, you know, I have a need and so I'm going to the one whom I know will provide. Do we really have that type of confidence? You know, our, our prayers.

Can become so routine at times, they can easily become very redundant and impersonal. I find myself praying a lot of times praying just to pray, saying words, just to say words. I, I've got this. So I like, I'll start a lot of my prayers with, you know, dear father you know, I thank you for this day.

I thank you for all that you've given me, et cetera, et cetera. There's like this, this list of common prayer phrases that I, I just go through and it's like, I'm just, I'm just, I'm not even thinking about 'em. I just started a prayer and I just start saying all these little statements. Right. Anybody ever done that?

Yeah. Okay, good. Not just me, right? I mean, I'll, I'll be through it sometimes and I'll just stop myself and I'll say, oh, cut out. I'm not thankful for any of those things. I don't even know what I said. Like, this isn't genuine. I'm not, I'm not being real with you. And I, I think that that partly we do that and partly I do that because I'm not really keen to the fact that I'm, I'm actually having a conversation with God.

I'm just, I'm just saying a prayer, you know, if God were standing directly in front of me. Where I can see him, I know he is like where I can see him, I can touch him like there he is. My prayers will be totally different than many of the prayers that I often pray. And my question is to myself, and if you experience the same thing, why is that?

I can't answer for you, but I know that for me sometimes it's because of a lack of confidence, a lack of confidence that God is actively listening and involved in the conversation that I'm having with him. Prayer often just feels very one-sided, and I'm afraid that that lack of confidence, it comes from a few different places.

The ones I wanna share to you tonight are really, I'm sure there's several places which that lack of confidence come from. But the ones I wanna share with you this evening are just my observations that I've observed from my own self and from others that I have talked to. But I see it coming from a couple different places.

First of all, I think that many of us, and this is kind of an issue that I struggle with for many of us, I think it's really hard to to believe that God. God actually chooses to be active in those things, that he really concerns himself with my cares and my problems. I mean, to me, sometimes God just, he's just too big for that right?

To be concerned with my little day and those things that are going on in my life and, and I think that's a big part of what John is addressing here. Believe it or not, he does care about those things. So I think that's an issue and another reason I think that we make these requests of God. We ask God of things, but deep down we don't really need God to help us with them.

Oh, we, we'd like for God to be active in our lives and intimately involved with all of our cares and concerns, but really, really, we don't need him. After all, we've got good jobs, good health, good friends, good family retirement plans, all those kinds of things. So I think that is an issue as well. So I wanna talk to you a little bit about those.

This evening about those two problems regarding our lack of comp confidence. Again, those are just my observations. And then I wanna close with a third issue that John addresses here in our text, and so we'll talk first of all about that first problem. The one that I kind of struggle with believing that God would actually concern himself with the affairs of my life.

Of course, all of us would agree that we, we believe he can. Do the things that we ask. We believe he can concern himself with our lives, but, and that's not usually where we have this problem. Our problem is usually believing that he will. And again, like I said, I think that's really the issue that John is tackling here.

That, that you don't believe that God would hear your prayers or maybe you think that you are not important enough for God to listen to. Well, God does hear your prayers and you are. Important enough, but, but it's not really because of your importance. It's not because of who you are, but he hears them because of who Jesus is, because of your relationship with him.

If we back up in our text here, we see that that is the basis for John's argument. That all of this, all of our confidence is in him. It's because of him. It's for him. He said there we're back up to verse 11, he says, and this is the testimony that God has given us eternal life and this wife is in his son and who has the son has life, he does not have, the son does not have life.

These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. It's just over. No, it's just all about Jesus. It's all about him. This confidence, this assurance that God hears our prayers and concerns himself with our requests and our petitions, it really doesn't have a lot to do with us.

It has everything to do with him. And so yeah, if it was just about you, if it was just about me and my request to God, yeah, probably God would not be interested in my petitions and in my concerns, but John is. John is writing to Christians. He's writing to those who belong to Christ, the people whose lives are not about themselves.

Whose lives are all about him, all about crime, and as those who belong to him, our cares and our concerns are for him and for his things, and therefore, all those positions, all of those desires, those problems, these things that we're asking God of, they are, or at least they should be a reflection of our concern for him and for his thing.

Not a reflection of our concern for our own thing. That is of course, who we are supposed to be in Christ, people whose lives are now centered around him. We were buried with Christ through baptism into death, and raised the walk in this newness of life. Colossians chapter three and verse three tells us that our lives are, they're now hidden with Christ in God.

Two Corinthians 15 or five 15, he says that we're no longer to live for ourselves, but for him. So that means that our lives aren't, aren't about us anymore. And all of those petitions that we would be, that we are making should be revolving around him. And if that's the case. If that describes you. I mean, if you are living for him, if your life is all about him and given over to him, then let me assure you, let not let me assure you, let John assure you this evening that God is most definitely concerned with every single aspect of your life and why not 'cause everything you do affects your ability to live for him.

So your problems, your concerns, they are God's problems and God's concerns, and we need to have confidence in that no matter how minor, no matter how insignificant it may seem. I think that's really where I kind of struggle, right? I think sometimes my problems are just so insignificant. We need to have confidence that no matter how insignificant, insignificant they may seem, if it's important to you, then it is important to God.

Tell him about it. Ask him about it, and trust him to respond to it. That is, of course, if you are no longer living for yourself and in fact are living for him. But if you are, we should definitely expect God to not only care, but to be involved in our lives. That's problem number one. But the, the other reason that I fear really short.

Sort of stifles our confidence in prayer is really that, that lack of dependence upon God that we don't really need. God, as I mentioned earlier, you know, often deep down we, we don't really feel like we need God and we have to kind of admit that our day and time and culture and the country that we live in.

And, and so I think our prayers often just really aren't that real. They're not that general af, I mean, genuine. After all, we, we all have, we got good jobs. We got health, we got good friends. We've got, I mean, we need food. We got restaurants. We got grocery stores. We got life insurance. Health insurance, car insurance.

House insurance. I mean, we got backup plans for our backup plans, right? Almost everything we need for life is. It's so readily available to us in this time and place in which we live. Thank God for that. But comes at a pride. And of course when it comes to guidance and direction for life, we don't really need God for that very much either.

Right? We got podcasts and YouTube videos and books and I mean, you don't, you wanna know how to fix something, just Google it up and you'll have, you'll have a. 10 different videos on how to fix the problem that you have. So without realizing it, we stop depending upon God in so many ways because we have built a life where functionally we, we don't really need him.

So our prayers become more of a spiritual formality instead of the desperate plea that they are supposed to be. That plea for guidance and that plea for help. Just becomes this thing that God wants us to do and so we do it. But that is not what prayer is meant to be. Prayer is not a ritual that we are performing for God.

Prayer is the avenue that we get to use to communicate our needs to him. Verse 15 said, he said, we know that these, these petitions, these requests that we have, petitioning him, requesting of him, that's a big part of what prayer is all about. And that's, that's not a duty, that's an awesome and powerful privilege.

A time that we get to ask God for the things that we need in our life. For help, for answers, for wisdom, for guidance. The direction, but first we've gotta actually need him. That's why I think Jesus began that great sermon that he preached on the mountain in Matthew chapter five, with blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

That word that Jesus used. There is a word that really used to describe a beggar. It finds someone as defined as, as lowness or neediness. Poor helplessness. So when Jesus talks about those who are poor in spirit, he's talking about those who are able to recognize they're helpless. If they need God, blessed are you.

He says, because those who recognize that those who are poor in spirit recognize their desperate need for God. They don't see prayer as an obligation or a duty, but they see it as a necessity. Because they need, you know, and I think that's where so many of us really, if we're honest, we find ourselves, we need to ask ourselves, do you really need God?

You know, even Jesus recognize his need for the Father. If you'll turn over in your Bibles to the Gospel of John, gospel of John in the fifth chapter, John chapter five in verse 30. Jesus says there in John chapter five in verse 30, he says, I can't of myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is righteous because I do not speak my own but the will of the Father who sent me, I can't of myself do nothing.

Jesus said that Jesus Christ. I can't of myself do nothing. You know, you would think Jesus would be a pretty self-sufficient independent guy. I mean, he was the son of God, right? You would think that, that Jesus didn't need a whole lot. You know, maybe you think Jesus needed only God for, for the big stuff in his life, not the every day, not the little bitty, but, but no, Jesus says, he says, I don't do anything.

I, I can't do nothing of myself. You think if anybody understood the limitations of the human experience, experience or the human existence, rather, how truly helpless and dependent upon God we are for everything. Everything. If anybody knew that and understood that it would be Jesus. He understood how truly helpless we are in this human condition.

He knew he had to rely upon the Father for everything. You think about this as well, maybe kind of goes back to the earlier point. Think about this in regard to Jesus's dependence upon the father. Jesus was here he was here on a, a mission, right? He had a purpose a purpose that he had with the father, right?

They were united together in the purpose of his life, right? They were Jesus's life. I mean, the father was all about Jesus' life. They were together in what they were doing and what they were trying to accomplish. And so everything that Jesus did, it mattered to the Father and it included the Father. Every step that Jesus took, every word that he spoke, he was working.

All of those things, all of those details of his life, he was working those out with the father. And we too, we're not much different. We too, here are. With a A. We're here on this earth with a mission and a purpose that we also have and we share with God and with Jesus. And so every step that we take, every word that we speak, it matters to God and we need to be including him and everything that we do.

I believe that's what the Apostle Paul is talking about when he says in several different places that we need to just. We need to be talking to God all the time. Romans chapter 12 and verse 12, he says that we need to be constant in prayer. Ephesians chapter six and verse 18, he says that we need to pray at all times in the Spirit.

Verse Thessalonians five 17. He says, simply pray without ceasing. Why? Because we can't do anything without God. And guess what? Most of us are always doing stuff right? I'm always doing something. And if I can do nothing of myself and I'm doing something, I need to be talking to God about it. You know, if we thought about the happenings of our lives and the way that Jesus thought about his, we'd be running everything by God.

So we need to be doing that. We need to be talking to God about everything, all of the time. And then I told you there's, there's another problem. A third problem I think hinders our confidence in prayer. Maybe not so much our confidence, but for sure, I think our effectiveness in prayer, and it's one that we find here in the context of one John chapter five.

So if you wanna turn back over there to First John, chapter five. I think that problem is, is that we are focused often in the wrong direction, focused in inward when we ought to be focused outward. If you've turned back there to First John, chapter five. I wanna look at what John says. We talked about this.

We need to be praying to him. We need, we need to be having this confidence that, that he hears our petitions. I want us to notice what it is that John says we ought to be praying for with these petitions, with these requests. Let's read our texts again. Verse 14. He says, now this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

If we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him. Verse 16, if anyone sees his brother sinning a sin, which does not lead to death, he will ask and he will give him life. For those who commit sin not leading to death, there's a lot to get into with whole sin leading to death.

I wanna just kind of scratch the surface here, right? That who's he saying that we're praying for? This promise that he's give, that he gives, that God hears our prayers, that God that we have, the petitions that we've asked. John here says that that is assurance that when we pray for one another, God will respond.

You ask for your brother and God will give him. James said something similar in James chapter five and verse 15, and when he says, we're supposed to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another, he says that you may be healed. And he says, the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

That prayer of that righteous man avails much in that context as well. Not, not so much for himself necessarily, but for the people that he prays for. You know, there's that little praise there in verse 14. I've jumped over it several times. If we ask anything according to his will, you know, when we think about God's will for us, what is, what is God's will for us?

What is God's will for our life? How we spend our life here on this earth? Is it not serving others, loving others, encouraging one another, taking care of the needy? Preaching the gospel to others, shining our lives, being salt of the earth, those sorts of things. God's will and God's purpose for my life is that I spend it in service to others.

And so if I am praying according to his will, as John talks about here, then my prayers would most often be aligned with that purpose, would they not? The focus of my prayers. Really should be no different than the focus of my life should not be inward, but rather outward. Now, I'm not suggesting that we don't pray for ourselves and I don't believe that John is either Philippians two, verse four, or Paul says that this way says, let each of you look out not only for his own but also for the interest of others.

Now we do still have concerns and needs for ourselves that we do need to look to God to fulfill. Pretend that we're only concerned about others and never pray about ourselves, that's that would also be disingenuine. But in life and in prayer, we are seeking to turn that focus away from self as much as possible to where our deepest desires are for the work, for the people of God.

Now, this is the confidence that we have in him. If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. If we know that he hears us. Whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him. What a beautiful promise that he has made to those who belong to him. If you do not feel that you belong in that category this evening.

You belong to him and you feel that you are missing out on these tremendous promises. We would love to help you with that. If you need to give your, get your life right with God and we can help you in any way, now is the time. All you gotta do is just come forward as we stand and offer our invitation.