REVIEW
FLIP CHART: SOM’S KEY VERSE, GOAL, MOTTO
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness ….” (Mt. 6:33a).
The law sends us to Christ for justification; Christ sends us back to the law for sanctification.
FLIP CHART: Show new “Perfect Righteousness” chart explaining steps to coming to Christ (As a worm, mourning, meek, spiritual hunger/thirst with the result of legal righteousness). Explain: moral righteousness, immediate moral change at conversion, gradual change through life’s challenges and speeding up moral change via CCRC (Concentration, Choice, Reflection and Confession/Thanksgiving). Key verse, “By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:14).
FLIP CHART: John Stott’s outline of SOM.
This then is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:7-13)
REVIEW:
Jesus has already given us two standard prayer requests of highest priority that should be prayed for daily:
(1) That the Triune God be honored and revered throughout the world
(2) That His kingdom would come throughout the world.
God has chosen to govern the world through a partnership and thus as a “kingdom of priests” we are co-laborers, fellow-workers with Him. (I Cor. 3:9; II Cor. 5:20, Rev. 1:6)
Prayer is one of God’s gifts to us. It is His way to honor us, and to show us His love for it enables us to play a role in the outcome of events, even the evangelization of the ends of the earth.
Prayer is talking to God about what we are going to do together. (Dallas Willard)
We need to reorient our prayer life so that it focuses on prayer points that are Bible priorities. This will mean a much greater focus on praying for spiritual blessings over against physical blessings.
Jesus and the Biblical authors provide us with many good prayer requests that are always in the will of God.
OUTLINE FOR TODAY:
1. If God Answered All Our Prayers
2. Parsing a Sweeping Promise
THE WILL OF GOD AND SWEEPING PROMISES!
INTRODUCTION
ILL: Ask the question: Is everyone here? Ask it several times until someone says that everyone is present. Then ask if Rich Hendrix is present? Ask if President George Bush is present.
I. IF GOD ANSWERED ALL OUR PRAYERS
QUESTION / FLIP CHART: What would happen if God answered all of our prayers? How would that affect us, His children? How would that affect non-Christians? Pagans? What reflection would that have on Him, our Father? Why doesn’t God answer all prayers?
ANSWERING ALL PRAYERS TURNS PRAYER INTO MAGIC
“The essence of a request is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable ‘success’ in prayer would not prove Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something much more like magic.” (C.S. Lewis in Prayer, P. Yancey, pg. 234).
Praying would be the saying of a magic formula … Open Sesame; Abracadabra!
ANSWERING ALL PRAYERS WOULD BE EVIL
“A God that should fail to hear, receive, attend to one single prayer, the feeblest or worst, I cannot believe in; but a God that would grant every request of every man or every company of men would be an evil God – – that is no God, but a demon.” (George McDonald in Yancey, Prayer, pg. 152)
Even if a prayer request were not evil it may be off the mark and not the best solution to a problem or the best benefit for an individual.
ANSWERING ALL PRAYERS WOULD MEAN GOD IS ABDICATING HIS RULE
“By answering every possible prayer, God would in effect abdicate, turning the world over to us to run.” (Prayer, Yancey, Pg. 228)
It would be as if He is going to let the inmates run the asylum.
ANSWERING ALL PRAYERS WOULD FEED OUR SELFISHNESS
If any characteristic is obvious in humankind it is selfishness. This is the sin that drives capitalism and a consumer driven economy.
ANSWERING ALL PRAYERS WOULD MEAN THAT WE WOULD DETERMINE WHO WILL BE SAVED ETERNALLY
All we need to do is prayer and God will answer. So we pray for a child, neighbor etc. they are automatically saved. Our prayers then would determine their eternal salvation.
QUESTION: What about legitimate prayer requests? Prayer requests that fit into what appears to be the Biblical will of God? How do you explain why those requests are not answered?
Healing of a marriage? Providing daily bread? Healing relationships within families? Relationships between individuals? Character traits, victory over sins like anger, procrastination, critical spirit?
God has not removed sin from the world. He has given us free will and thus the will to make choices. God honors and protects our free will. Sometimes bad situations happen because of our stupidity, sometimes because of our hard-heartedness and stubbornness. We live in a broken world.
II. PARSING ONE OF THE SWEEPING PROMISES
DISCLAIMER: I got most of the following ideas and comments from a sermon by John Piper that he delivered in 1996. Of course I changed it somewhat, adding some illustrations, verses, ideas etc.
. . . your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Mt. 6:10b) . . . . If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you (John 15:7)
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24).
The great challenge for us is pray according to the will of God and yet we have great promises that seem to indicate that our will (wishes) are crucial and will be honored when we pray.
How many people have held firmly on to a promise like John 15:7 but did not see their prayer answered. In faith I held on to Mt. 7:7-8 as a promise for the healing of my marriage: Ask and it will be given you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
The promise in John 15:7 is tremendous, is wonderful …. WHATEVER YOU WISH!!!
WHATEVER DOES “WHATEVER”MEAN?
All words get their meaning from their usage. You always need to look at the context.
ILL: I asked at the beginning of the class, “Is everyone here?” Some said that “everyone” was here even though we all know that “everyone” was not here. Hundreds of people are over in the worship center, in other classes, running around Arizona, in other states etc. But we all know that, because of who is asking the question and where and when it is being asked that “everyone” means everyone that generally attends World Community. We all interpret the meaning of the word “everyone” in the light of the context in which it is used.
ILL: Often Gloria will ask me what I want to eat and I will respond with “Whatever!” She has not yet filled my plate with rocks, sand, dirt, pencils, erasers and cardboard.
If I said I had faith, persevered in prayer, “named it and claimed it”, then would “whatever” mean “whatever?”
If I took “whatever” outside of the context of all the other conditional promises, and God’s character then I could have a house in Malibu, my own 747, a trip to the moon, ten billion dollars etc, etc.
James 4:3 limits “whatever” – “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
“No, we do not get everything we ask for and we should not and we would not want to. The reason I say we should not is because we would in effect become God if He did everything we asked him to do. We should not be God. God should be God. And the reason I say that we would not want to get everything we asked is because we would then have to bear the burden of infinite wisdom which we do not have. We simply don’t know enough to infallibly decide how every decision will turn out and what the next events in our lives, let alone in history, should be.” (John Piper)
Piper also writes, “It is a mercy to us and to the world that He does not give us everything we ask.”
WALL CHART: “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers” (Oscar Wilde).
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you (John 15:7)
ILL: John 15:7 says that Christ’s Word must “remain” in us. The Greek word “meno” here means “dwell.” Lydia, the seller of purple cloth from Thyatira who lived in Philippi and was Paul’s first convert in that city asked Paul, Timothy and Luke to come and “stay” or “dwell” or “remain” in her house. As they lived in Lydia’s house so Christ’s Word must remain in / live in our hearts.
QUESTION / FLIP-CHART: Why is it so important that Christ’s words remain in us as a condition for answered prayer?
God’s Word dwelling in us performs three functions that assist us in praying so that our prayers are answered.
GOD’S WORD IN MY HEART BUILDS FAITH
“ . . . faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).
The multiple promises of God is His Word build our faith. The examples of God providing for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the prophets etc. build our faith. The multiple experiences of the Apostles build our faith.
“Yet he [Abraham, when promised a child in his old age] did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised (Rom. 4:20-21).
“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.” (II Cor. 1:20)
Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. (II Cor. 1:20-21, The Message)
GOD’S WORD IN MY HEART LEADS TO HOLINESS
“If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Ps. 66:18).
“. . . your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” (Isaiah 59:2)
“I have hidden your Word in my heart that I might not sin against your” (Ps. 119:11).
“Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17)
Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us. (II Tim. 3:16, The Message)
ILL: I am not an artistic person and not much for decorating a house. When Doug and I purchased a house together in Gilbert I looked at those big, empty spaces. I had a small bed, a sofa and a table plus an office desk and chair and two poorly made bookshelves. Doug had only a bed. Yet we had purchased a house with 5 bedrooms, a large rec room and living room, 2600 SF in all. Fortunately I had a woman working for me. I gave her my credit card and told her to purchase furniture, pictures, flowers etc. She chose the décor she wanted. She started by repainting the kitchen and purchasing whatever was needed. She did invite me to look at the sofa she wanted to purchase. She asked me what I thought and I said great. But there were about 100 choices for colors so she asked me what I thought. I asked her what she thought. She said she had two colors that she thought would be okay and asked me what I preferred. I asked her what she preferred and she told me. I said that is what we want.
When Gloria and I got married I thought she would change everything but she thought what Vonnie had put together was okay. But little by little over the years things have changed, a flower here, a plant there, a picture over there, a new paint job on the walls, different blinds, different fans etc. The fact is as long as Gloria remains in the house I am to expect changes, improvements!
That is the way it is when God’s Word stays, dwells, remains, lives in our hearts. There will be changes made. The Word must be living and active in our hearts. Gloria is alive and therefore affecting the house. If the Word of God is dead in your heart, e.g. you are not interacting with the Word, changes towards holiness will not happen. But if the Word is “actively alive” in your heart, you will grow in holiness.
GOD’S WORD DWELLING IN MY HEART GUIDES ME TO PRAY IN THE WILL OF GOD
“All Scripture is God-breathed ….” (II Tim. 3:16).
When a person speaks he aspirates, breath escapes from his mouth and nose. But the words he speaks first are chosen in his mind. We talk about people “speaking their mind.” In a very real sense our words reveal who we are.
ILL: If you do a search on Google for Ernest Hemingway you come up with about 4.7 million results. Many of these are books about Hemingway. If a person writes a biography on Hemingway he will read carefully all of his books, e.g. all of the fiction he wrote to discover things about him, to determine what he felt, thought. Most people accept the adage that all fiction is biography. They will read anthologies of all his correspondence. They want to get inside his head and learn what he believed, felt, thought. Those books and letters, they came from Hemingway’s mind …. You could say they are the “mind of Hemingway.” You come to understand Hemingway’s likes and dislikes etc. by reading his letters and books.
God has revealed His mind to us through historical and poetic works, through biography and letters. By studying carefully these documents we learn what is on His mind, what He is thinking, what is priority to Him.
The Bible is called “The Word of God.” It is composed or words, ideas, thoughts, principles that flow from the mind of God. By studying carefully the Word of God we get inside His head, so to speak.
“And here’s something I’ve found over the years. The more time I spend in . . . learning about God from His Word, the more my passions start to conform to His interests and desires. Selfishness is replaced by a real desire for what He wants. And the things that matter most to Him start to matter more to me. And as my interests start to align themselves with God’s interests, the power of prayer becomes more evident and the results of my prayers increase.” (David Hoke)
God’s Word dwelling / staying / remaining in my mind guides me in praying according to His will!
So God’s words remaining in me strengthen my faith, separate me from sin and guide me in praying according to God’s will.
This brings us back to our “Spiritual Disciplines” or “Acts of Righteousness” and those relating to the Word of God. You may not be getting answers to prayer because you are not spending adequate time in the Word in order to strengthen your faith, grow in godliness or learn the mind of God, e.g. what to pray for.
READING FROM JOHN PIPER:
ILL: In Prayer Week of 1987 we did a survey at Bethlehem and asked, “How much time per week do you spend reading the Bible?” 255 people took the survey. 21% said fewer than 15 minutes (a week!). Another 25% said 15-30 minutes a week. So 46% of our people in 1987 were spending fewer than five minutes a day reading God’s Word. When asked about time spent in focused prayer, 62% said they spent fewer than 30 minutes in prayer each week—fewer than five minutes a day. (John Piper)
Is BCC any better than John Piper’s church?
I would venture to say that many of these people harbor some deep resentments toward God for not answering their prayers. So the question arises: is there anything in their lives—or in my life—that corresponds to John 15:7—”If the Word of God abides in you . . .” Is reading the Word of God five minutes a day what Jesus was referring to when he said, “If my words abide in you”? My own suspicion is that Jesus had something in mind vastly more extensive and more life-shaping than the quick five minutes glances at the Word of God.
. . . This is not legalism. We are not talking about doing x-number of minutes of Bible reading to earn x-number of answered prayers. We are talking about living out what we value.
ILL: For example, suppose a coach prepares a steak dinner for his football team every day and spreads it before them freely, without cost, and says to them: eat and enjoy this rich meal every day and you will have strength to win the championship. And suppose that half the team instead goes to the candy store and the bakery, and week after week eats sweets and pastries. They start to lose games and the coach finds out they are not eating his free steak dinners and rebukes them. Some of them become indignant and say, “Hey, we don’t want a legalistic relationship with you. We want to relate to you in freedom and do what comes more naturally for our appetites.” (John Piper Sermon on John 15:1-8, Dec. 29, 1996)
SO WHAT???
1. There are some good reasons God doesn’t answer all our prayers. By not answering all our prayers He avoids being evil, abdicating, turning prayer into magic and feeding our selfishness.
2. We must be careful to interpret the Word of God in context, even such a word as “whatever.”
3. We must focus on our Bible Study, meditation on and memorization of the Word of God. By so doing we feed our faith, avoid sin and know the mind of God.
Discuss and list other keys that enable a person to pray according to the will of God.
Make a list of things that strengthen your faith, the faith of a believer besides the study and memorization of the Word of God.
4. Knowing the Word of God enables us to know the mind of God and thus pray according to God’s will!