Hi, my name is Eric. I'm a designer in Seattle. I've been a ministry partner with Desiring God for 12 years. You are listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Piper. Thank you, Eric. We're gonna talk with Eric at the end of the episode, but first, today's question is from a listener named John.

John writes in to say, "Hello Pastor John. Thank you for this podcast. Recently out of curiosity, I read a name it and claim it book. In it, John 15 7 resurfaced over and over again. It's the place where Jesus tells his followers, 'If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.'" It's a bold and open-ended promise.

Based on this promise, the book said that Christians should not be timid, but boldly name and claim whatever you wish, and it will be done for those who ask in faith. "Is such a worldview theologically sound? Is it biblical? How do you respond to the name it and claim it theology?

And how should we understand Jesus's promise in John 15 7?" My guess is that Christians who blow off such promises, like ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you, those who blow that off have an uneasy conscience that they're not really taking Jesus seriously. Something's amiss.

And my guess is that those who build their whole approach to prayer and life around that promise, as if any failure to get what we wish is owing to a failure of obedience on our part, also have an uneasy conscience that they really are taking seriously other parts of the Bible that call such a view into question.

So I don't want to treat Jesus' words as though they were not a radical call to go beyond where I, we, presently are in our experience of prayer. I want to get closer into the heart of Christ than I've ever been, and I don't want to treat the totality of Scripture—not just that verse, but the totality of Scripture—as though this were the only verse.

And if you like it, a little handful of verses like that, which inform the way I think about answers to prayer. So let's look more closely, just for a moment, at 1 John 15 7 and see how unqualified it is. So here's 1 John 15 7. Jesus says, "If you abide in me and if my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish.

It will be done for you." So the big condition is, do Jesus' words abide in you? What words in particular of Jesus, by abiding in us, would shape our prayer life? How we pray and what we expect when we pray? What is he talking about? What do you mean your words abide in us and thus become the condition of the answer to this prayer?

So take, for example—this is probably the most urgent one for most of us— take, for example, praying for lost people to be saved, family members, friends. Jesus said in John 6 37, "His words, if my words abide in you," he said, "all that the Father gives me will come to me." And then in John 17 6, Jesus says, "Father, yours they were and you gave them to me." In other words, according to the words of Jesus that are to abide in us and become the shaping and the governing of our praying, according to the words of Jesus, God the Father has chosen a people for himself.

They belong to him before they come to Jesus. Then he, sovereignly, gives them to Jesus. John 6 44, "Nobody comes to me unless it is given to him from the Father." John 65, "They hear his voice when the gospel is preached and they come to Jesus. No one comes apart from the Father's drawing because they already belong to the Father and he brings his own sheep to the shepherd." So we don't ultimately decide who will be saved by our wishing.

God decides. God ultimately decides who will believe and be saved and who will not. That is really clear in the Gospel of John. Nevertheless, we are called to go and bear fruit in evangelism. That's the context in John 15, and we're to do it by prayer. Prayer has to do with fruit bearing in John 15 7.

But now we know that the words of Jesus, abiding in us, inform us and shape us so that we do not pretend to be God, as though we can dictate by our wishes who will be saved and who will not be saved by wishing. Whatever you wish will be done for you by wishing that people be saved and then asking that people be saved, as though we had the final and ultimate say.

God decides ultimately who will be saved. Not ultimately our wishing, and it's Jesus himself. Not John Piper, not any theologian. Jesus himself, in his own words, abiding in us, who prevents us from thinking that way about prayer. So, this seemingly unqualified promise is not unqualified, because it says if Jesus' words abide in you, then they will govern how you formulate your wishes as to who will come to God in prayer, through prayer.

In Gethsemane, Jesus, because God's Word was abiding in him, Jesus formulated his prayers like this, "If it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." God's words were abiding in Jesus. He knew from the Father that God had a sovereign plan, and so he submitted his will to God's will in his praying.

That's what happens when the Word of Jesus abides in us. It governs our thinking about praying, and it keeps us from thinking that we are God and have the final say about how to run the universe by our wishes or determining who will be ultimately saved by our wishes.

So, let me point to just a few other texts that confirm that we need to be very careful not to treat whatever you wish will be done for you without qualifying it with the words of Jesus abiding in us. So, for example, Paul's prayers for his kinsmen in Romans 10.1.

He wished, he said, that his kinsmen would be saved. He'd be willing to lay down his eternal life for them in Romans 9.2. And then it says in 10.1, he prays for them that they would be saved, even though most of them are in fact not saved and not going to be saved because he says, "Our hardness has come upon the people of Israel until the full number of the Gentiles come in." Or consider 1 John 5.14.

If you ask anything, according to his will, he hears us and we have our requests from him. God's sovereign will shapes how we pray. Or consider the ministry of Jesus and how few people he raised from the dead. Three. And now we are gonna read again and again how many he healed, but he didn't heal all.

Did he not want people to be raised from the dead? Did he not want all people to be healed? Well, in a sense he did. He's a God of love. He doesn't enjoy seeing people suffer, but he didn't heal everybody, didn't raise everybody. Why? Because God's words abided in him so that he knew this was not the time for the general resurrection from the dead.

There's a certain timing for when things will happen and it isn't now. Or consider the difference between faith that all of us have who are Christians and the gift of faith in 1 Corinthians 12.9. The gift of faith, gift of miracles, gift of healings, these all imply that some people are able to ask for things and receive them in a special way, a more effective way, a more consistent way than the rest of us.

Otherwise the gift would make no sense. We'd all have it if you took John 15 7 that way. And there are many, many other passages in the Bible that we could point to like this. Perhaps the bottom line counsel for us would be this. Expect, I'm quoting William Carey, "Expect great things from God and attempt great things for God and submit everything to God." Keep on asking, keep on trusting that he is at work doing great things, good things for you and in this world, whether you can see it fully or not, and that it is owing significantly to your praying.

John Bloom wrote an article on this. I looked at it before I thought about this and John ended the article. I'll end right here with what he says. He says, "God does aim to move mountains for you, but he will move the mountains he once moved." Well said. Thank you, Pastor John.

And that article by John Bloom can be found at DesiringGod.org. It's titled "Unanswered Prayers are Invitations from God." Speaking of the broader ministry of Desiring God, before we end, I want to talk with Eric. You heard him at the beginning of this episode and he's on the phone with me right now.

Eric, it's an honor to talk with you for just a moment because you're not only a ministry partner making DG's work possible, like this podcast right now, but you're a friend of the ministry and an encouragement to so many of us at DG. So tell us, what was it that put you over the edge where you said, "You know what?

I want to become a partner with Desiring God." I was a rabid consumer of all the materials and especially with the website, it got to a daily kind of habit. And it was really enjoyable. And then with APJ becoming an app, that was really nice for my commutes in the morning.

And I kind of had this, like early on we were light supporters, not really expecting DG to need much support. And then the more we learned about just the scope and the scale and what the needs are and how it's funded, we were really moved to participate and start giving.

But right around like consuming APJ on a daily basis, I kind of just thought to myself and did the math in my head of like, you know, I have these other daily rituals with like coffee, you know, every morning and oftentimes getting like craft coffee on the way to work and what I pay for that and what it does for the rest of my day versus, you know, consuming one APJ and what it does for me and the rest of my day and also the lives of other people that I bump into.

And that it just seemed wrong that that value wasn't being conveyed monetarily. You know, we have a lot of listeners who listen to the podcast who are not donors to the ministry. Maybe they've been blessed by the resources that we've produced over the years. They go to the website often.

But they've never thought about the fact that, yeah, it takes a lot of money to do big scale ministry like what we do at Desiring God. So what would you say to somebody who has been a consumer of the content and now maybe they have the means to give a recurring gift, maybe a small gift, $20 a month or whatever it is, whatever the coffee budget is, what would you say to them?

Totally. I think that Desiring God is an amazing resource. We live in a very special time in which the Internet has afforded us the ability to connect to a resource of this type, of its quality, but also its breadth and depth. We should be doing everything we can as people who enjoy it to extend it and spread it to as many other people as possible while we can.

Because, you know, no technology is guaranteed forever. And this window of access, we should be doing the most to, you know, kind of reach the ends of the earth, as you will, with this opportunity and these resources. So I would say support, not just for the opportunity of supporting, but also like the blessing of knowing that dollars are going to something that is 100 percent of positive value to the world and to others.

And the way DG is managed and how funds are used are like incredibly above board. Like as far as ministries go, the ethics and the stewardship is off the charts. Good. It's a great vessel for, you know, just kingdom investment. But I really think people should not take it for granted.

We kind of just said that, but like the quality of resources and the just the almost complete lack of friction to those resources is very special and very unique. Just 50 years ago, having access to a certain book of a certain topic required a lot of effort, a lot of legwork.

With DG, you have resources that span, you know, almost the entirety of the Bible and all kinds of topics, both pastoral and theological. And they're accessible anywhere in the world, like anywhere you can connect to the Internet. You have access to these resources. And that's a really special thing.

I think it's a moment in time that we should really be taking the most of and like encouraging one another to take the most of. It's almost the equivalent of the Roman road system where people were like, wow, this really changes things. Like what we have now is desiring God and the Internet.

This really changes things. And we should enjoy it while we can. The Roman road. That's a great connection, Eric. Thank you for your time and thank you for supporting Desiring God. We can't do what we do without you. And if you want to join Eric to help us make and spread new gospel resources around the world, you can do that right now.

Go to DesiringGod.org/donate. That's DesiringGod.org/donate. We really appreciate it. I'm Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here next time on Wednesday. Bye.