This is a really sharp question. If God is sovereign, how do we pray for good things while also honoring God's final decision as the best option? This is a question from a listener named Connor. Pastor John, how much confidence should we voice in petitioning God for physical healing? It somehow feels wrong or cheap to pray, "God, heal this person," but if you don't, that's okay, your will be done.

I feel less genuine in my asking God to move on someone's behalf when I constantly also acknowledge to myself that He might not, and I must acknowledge it. Could you give us an example of how to rightly pray in confidence and with authority on someone else's behalf for healing while remaining in full submission to the mystery of God's will?

Well, let me say to Connor 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 prayer, said after he made his request, "Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done," Luke 22, 42.

Clearly it was not sin for Jesus to add that qualifier. He didn't sin. So let me simply give you the pieces of the puzzle of prayer that I keep rearranging in my mind to try to see the coherent biblical picture, because I know there's a coherent picture. This is the Bible.

This is God's Word. If there's a problem, it's a problem with me, not Jesus. Two of the pieces we've already mentioned, the pieces of the puzzle of prayer. Strong promises from Jesus in John 15 and John 16 and Mark 11 and elsewhere that whatever we ask and believe that we have it, we will receive it.

And the other piece is Jesus' words, "Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done." Now there are a few other pieces of the puzzle, so let me get those out there on the table, see if we can arrange them in an order that might make a picture we can understand.

Jesus said in Matthew 7, "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, 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 fish, will give him a serpent?

If you then," now 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?" 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 the point of that qualification. So let's not assume that we're going to qualify our prayers with saying, "Well, I'm asking for good things, and God might give a bad thing, and so I guess I have to just submit." That's not what he does. He doesn't give bad things to his children.

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. 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 going to 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.

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 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 best. And what he has promised explicitly in Scripture—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 1 Corinthians 12, 8, and 9, Paul describes spiritual gifts of the Spirit that not all believers have. He says in verses 8 and 9 of 1 Corinthians 12, "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. 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.

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 these are enough, maybe, to give you something to work with over the next few years or decades.

So my answer to Connor's specific question—here's what he asked—how to rightly pray in confidence with authority on someone's behalf for healing while remaining in full submission to the mystery of God's will. 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. And 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. Let's not assume that this is the way every prayer should be made. Really good question and response.

Thank you, Pastor John. And thanks for listening to the podcast over at our online home. You can explore all of our episodes in our archive of about 1,300 episodes to date. There you can see a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, and submit questions you might be wrestling with yourself.

For all of that, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Also be sure to subscribe to us in your favorite podcast app. Well, how does my obedience connect with my joy? In fact, how much of our joy in Christ is really only achievable and possible in a state of robust obedience to Christ?

I'm looking forward to that question, which is next. It's on Wednesday when we return. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then. 1 DesiringGod.org Page 1 of 2 Page 1 of 2 Page 1 of 2 Page 1 of 2 Page 1 of 2 Page 1 of 2 Page 1 of 2