Praying with Confidence: Aligning with God's Will

well let me say to Conor that at age 72 I wonder if I will go to my grave without having come to a satisfactory answer to this question I circle back to this question again and again because of the texts that both call us to confidence that we will receive from the father what we ask when we ask in faith like Mark 11 23 and 24 and texts that give the Lord Jesus for example as a model who as the perfect preyer said after he made his request nevertheless not my will but yours be done Luke 22:42 [00:00:47]

jesus said in Matthew 7 ask and it will be given you seek and you will find knock and the door will be open to you for everyone who asked receives and the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks it will be opened or which of you if his son asks for bread will give him a stone or if he asks for a fish will give him a serpent if you then hear this this is really important for understanding our Father's heart in prayer if you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him [00:02:47]

it has been a great encouragement to me over the years that that last verse verse 11 seems to promise not that God will give exactly what a foolish child sometimes asks but will always give him good things how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask so one of the pieces in the puzzle of Prayer seems to be that we should always pray not with the qualification that God will withhold good things nevertheless not my good will but your bad will be done that's not that's not the point of that qualification [00:03:28]

rather we should pray with the confidence that what he gives may be different from what we ask and yet good even better so the certainty of our faith may not be for the precise thing we think is best but our certainty of faith should rest on the goodness of our father who always does what's best for his children now underneath that confidence is what I call the logic of heaven from Romans 8:32 he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all [00:04:29]

so God surrendering his son to die in our place he who gave him up for us all how will he not freely give us all things with him in other words because of the blood of Jesus God has secured guaranteed purchased made certain all things will he not graciously give us all things and I'm gonna interpret that to mean all things that we need to do his will all things that we need to glorify him all things that we need to be eternally happy in the Fellowship of God forever [00:05:11]

that this is the assurance that we can have when praying for good in the lives of God's people another piece in the puzzle that's implied in what we we just saw I think is that assurance in prayer must rest upon revelation that God has given we don't honor God by assuming we know what's best in any given situation we need a revelation from him in order to have complete confidence that what we're asking for is his best and what he has promised explicitly in Scripture [00:05:56]

this is the revelation we have in Matthew 7:11 is that he will give good things to those who ask so the question now is how do we bring our requests into alignment with what he regards as a good thing the good thing he aims to do through our prayer in this situation and here's where another piece of the puzzle comes in in 1st Corinthians 12 8 and 9 Paul describes spiritual gifts of the Spirit that not all believers have he says in in verses 8 and 9 of first good news 12 [00:06:38]

for to the one is given through the spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge and according to the same spirit to another faith by the same spirit to another gifts of healing by the one spirit hmm now think about that and the implications that has that faith is called a spiritual gift and healing is called a spiritual gift and Paul says explicitly that not all believers have these all the time [00:07:06]

now doesn't that necessarily teach that some will be able to have faith to pray for healing at points where others will not and yet it's not a sin not to have a spiritual gift the Bible teaches that it's not appointed for everybody to have these all the time the fact that there are gifts of faith gifts of healing may go a long way I think to explaining what's going on in James 5:15 where James speaks of the prayer of faith that will heal the sick man [00:07:41]

perhaps that's the gift of faith given in that moment to one or more of the elders who are praying now there are other pieces of the puzzle of prayer that need to fit into the picture but the these are enough maybe to give you something to work with over the years decades so my answer to Connor specific question here's what he asked how to rightly pray in confidence with authority on someone's behalf or healing while remaining in full submission to the mystery of God's will [00:08:37]

that's his question so here's what I say we should rest our confidence and our authority on the promise of Jesus in Matthew 7:11 the promise of Paul in Romans 8:32 that because of the death of Jesus every good thing that God's elect need has been purchased for them infallibly by Jesus and that our heavenly father always gives from that storehouse of what is good for his children when we ask he gives them good when we ask him [00:09:14]

yes we should remain open and receptive and eager to receive a spiritual gift of faith at any given time that might fix our confidence on a specific outcome but let's not assume that this is the way every prayer should be made really good question in response the key Pastor John and thanks for listening to the podcast over our online home you can explore all of our episodes and our archive of about 1300 episodes to date there you can see a list of our most popular ones refle transcripts and submit questions you might be wrestling with yourself [00:09:58]