Well, we all want our prayers to work. So what prayers are guaranteed to work? In discovering which prayers are effective, we can start with Jesus' astonishing promise to all of us in John 15, 7. Here's his pledge to his followers. "If you abide in me," Jesus says, "and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

Ask whatever you wish." What an astonishing, open-ended promise to boost our prayer lives. But it's given parameters by what makes for an effective prayer life. Did you catch that? If my word abides in you. John Piper preached a sermon on this text back in the early weeks of 1993 in a sermon fitly titled "Ask Whatever You Wish." It led to this great clip where he explained the key to an effective prayer life.

Here's Pastor John about 30 years ago. Prayer is for granting us the joy of seeing God's will executed through us as it becomes our will. The only joy in life that lasts is when our desires are drawn from his desires, and those desires are the ones that have the promise made, "Ask and it will be given you." Here's the way John put it in chapter 3, verse 22 of his first letter.

"Whatever you ask, you receive from him because you keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight." Prayer is not for gratifying natural desires. Prayer is given as a gift for the joy and the satisfaction of those people whose heart is so in tune with God that they keep his commandments and do what is pleasing to him.

If you have no interest in obeying God, in bringing your whole of life, your attitude from morning to night into conformity to his values and getting your desires from his desires, prayer is not your business. James put it like this, "You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures." And then he calls them adulteresses in the next verse.

Know why? Adulteresses, picturing the church as a wife, God as the husband, and prayer as asking the husband for money to pay the paramour down the hall with which he sleeps. That's a pretty ugly view of prayer, isn't it? Prayer is to bring our lives into conformity with the desires of our husband, God, not to ask him for the wherewithal to consort with the world.

Prayer is not for the satisfying and gratifying of natural desires until those natural desires come into the service of the hallowing of God's name, the seeking of God's kingdom, and the doing of God's will. The words of Jesus abiding in us prepare us for fruit-bearing prayer. The words of Jesus abiding in us prepare us for fruit-bearing prayer.

If prayer is not for the gratifying of our natural desires but for fruit-bearing for God, then the major challenge before us at the beginning of 1993 in prayer is becoming the kind of people who are not dominated by natural desires. That is the major challenge in prayer, becoming the kind of people who are not dominated by natural desires but who are dominated by spiritual desires, what Paul calls ceasing to be a natural person and becoming a spiritual person or growing beyond being carnal people to being spiritual people, people who of course we want to eat, of course we'd like to succeed, of course we want clothes on our back and a roof over our head and education for our children.

But if those things are not subordinate in our lives to the big issues that make us tick, then we're not going to pray with success. We're not. Prayer is going to be so worldly, so earthly, so unspiritual, God will wonder what does it have to do with Him. If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you will become that kind of person and whatever you wish, it will be done for you.

Let me give you some examples of how the Word of Jesus abiding within makes you that kind of person in order that you might pray. First John 1.10, "If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word is not in us." Meaning, if His Word were in us, we'd know ourselves a right.

The key to a humble, proper assessment of who we are before God comes one way, by the Word of God dwelling within. And without that proper self-assessment, we will not be in tune with God and know how to pray according to His will. Number two, John 17.8, Jesus says, "They have received My words and have truly understood that I came forth from thee." In other words, the Word received and abiding is the key to unlock not only a true knowledge of ourselves in humility, but an exalted knowledge of God and His Son, Jesus, coming from Him.

And we cannot pray a right until we know Jesus as He is. We can't pray a right until we have an exalted view of the meaning of the coming of the Son into the world. Number three, 1 John 2.14 says, "I have written to you, young men, because the Word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one." Unless the Word of God is abiding in us, Satan will dominate, he will control, and he will deceive and bring us into odds with God rather than being in tune with God.

In order to pray in tune with God, Satan must be defeated, and he was defeated in the young men in Ephesus and the other churches by the abiding of the Word of God. Number four, John 14.24, "He who does not love Me does not keep My words." Which means that the words of Jesus define the path of love.

We cannot pray fruit-bearing prayers until we know the path on which the fruit is born, and the fruit is always born in the path of love and not outside that path. If you want to know the path of love along which prayers are answered, namely the path of love, you must have the Word of God abiding within you.

You can't know what love is any other way than by the Word of God. John says, "By this we know that we love God when we keep His commandments." You may think you're loving God by not checking into the Bible at all. How many articles, how many books do I read today where the concepts of mercy, compassion, and love are used as criteria with no defense that that's the way God sees things at all?

No defense that this is God's view of love, God's view of mercy, God's view of compassion. You just take the word right out of the mouth. Since it's a politically correct word, it works. It doesn't really matter whether it comes from God. If you want to know the path of love, you must have the Word of God abiding in you, because many things look loving which are not loving.

Chapter 5, John 8, 47, "He who is of God hears the words of God." Note that. "He who is of God hears the words of God. For this reason you do not hear Him because you are not of God." What that means is, if you hear God, receive the words of God, and have His Word abiding in you, it is evidence that you are of God, that is chosen of God, born of God, elect.

In other words, the whole issue of assurance is riding on this word. When you go to pray, one of the great hindrances to prayer and faith and hope in prayer is, "Am I of God? Am I born of God? Am I in the family? How do I know I'm in the family?" This text says you know you're in the family if you hear the Word of God, if you receive the Word of God, if the Word of God comes home and finds a place in you that receives affirmation and a "yes" and an "amen." And finally, John 15, 3, "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you." And John 17, 17, "Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth." So we have cleanness and we have sanctification coming to us through the Word.

There are a lot of other examples of how the Word abiding in us fits us to pray, but here are six. A humble view of ourselves, an exalted view of the Savior, triumph over the devil, knowledge of the path of love, assurance of our election, and the power of holiness.

Those six and many more come to us by having the Word of God abide with us, abide in us, and therefore fit us for being the kind of people who will pray in tune with God and hear the promise, "Whatever you ask, it will be done for you." So powerful.

And notice again, put in the negative, "If you have no interest in obeying God and bringing your whole life into conformity to His values and getting your desires from His desires, prayer is not your business." Wow. "Pray according to His will, thy will be done." That was from John Piper's sermon on John 15, 7, titled, "Ask Whatever You Wish." He preached it on January 10, 1993.

Well, if you have a sermon clip to share with us, email me. Give me your name, current city, the sermon title, and timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio, and tell me how it impacted you. Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Well, are rich Christians commanded to downgrade their living standards? Are rich Christians commanded to downgrade their living standards? It is a really great question. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we are Rejoined in Studio with Pastor John. For that on Friday, we'll see you then.