Prayers That Work

00:00:00.000 | Well, we all want our prayers to work.

00:00:06.760 | So what prayers are guaranteed to work?

00:00:10.160 | In discovering which prayers are effective, we can start with Jesus' astonishing promise

00:00:14.220 | to all of us in John 15, 7.

00:00:16.880 | Here's his pledge to his followers.

00:00:19.320 | "If you abide in me," Jesus says, "and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish,

00:00:26.680 | and it will be done for you.

00:00:28.680 | Ask whatever you wish."

00:00:31.000 | What an astonishing, open-ended promise to boost our prayer lives.

00:00:35.440 | But it's given parameters by what makes for an effective prayer life.

00:00:39.560 | Did you catch that?

00:00:40.920 | If my word abides in you.

00:00:44.480 | John Piper preached a sermon on this text back in the early weeks of 1993 in a sermon

00:00:48.560 | fitly titled "Ask Whatever You Wish."

00:00:51.440 | It led to this great clip where he explained the key to an effective prayer life.

00:00:55.720 | Here's Pastor John about 30 years ago.

00:00:59.920 | Prayer is for granting us the joy of seeing God's will executed through us as it becomes

00:01:07.280 | our will.

00:01:08.540 | The only joy in life that lasts is when our desires are drawn from his desires, and those

00:01:14.700 | desires are the ones that have the promise made, "Ask and it will be given you."

00:01:19.640 | Here's the way John put it in chapter 3, verse 22 of his first letter.

00:01:25.800 | "Whatever you ask, you receive from him because you keep his commandments and do the things

00:01:31.200 | that are pleasing in his sight."

00:01:33.280 | Prayer is not for gratifying natural desires.

00:01:36.960 | Prayer is given as a gift for the joy and the satisfaction of those people whose heart

00:01:41.720 | is so in tune with God that they keep his commandments and do what is pleasing to him.

00:01:46.160 | If you have no interest in obeying God, in bringing your whole of life, your attitude

00:01:51.680 | from morning to night into conformity to his values and getting your desires from his desires,

00:01:57.960 | prayer is not your business.

00:02:02.440 | James put it like this, "You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives

00:02:11.240 | so that you may spend it on your pleasures."

00:02:15.960 | And then he calls them adulteresses in the next verse.

00:02:18.880 | Know why?

00:02:20.600 | Adulteresses, picturing the church as a wife, God as the husband, and prayer as asking the

00:02:28.120 | husband for money to pay the paramour down the hall with which he sleeps.

00:02:34.200 | That's a pretty ugly view of prayer, isn't it?

00:02:38.720 | Prayer is to bring our lives into conformity with the desires of our husband, God, not

00:02:49.640 | to ask him for the wherewithal to consort with the world.

00:02:55.600 | Prayer is not for the satisfying and gratifying of natural desires until those natural desires

00:03:03.040 | come into the service of the hallowing of God's name, the seeking of God's kingdom,

00:03:08.720 | and the doing of God's will.

00:03:10.900 | The words of Jesus abiding in us prepare us for fruit-bearing prayer.

00:03:17.720 | The words of Jesus abiding in us prepare us for fruit-bearing prayer.

00:03:24.300 | If prayer is not for the gratifying of our natural desires but for fruit-bearing for

00:03:30.680 | God, then the major challenge before us at the beginning of 1993 in prayer is becoming

00:03:37.600 | the kind of people who are not dominated by natural desires.

00:03:41.600 | That is the major challenge in prayer, becoming the kind of people who are not dominated by

00:03:47.760 | natural desires but who are dominated by spiritual desires, what Paul calls ceasing to be a natural

00:03:55.920 | person and becoming a spiritual person or growing beyond being carnal people to being

00:04:01.040 | spiritual people, people who of course we want to eat, of course we'd like to succeed,

00:04:06.560 | of course we want clothes on our back and a roof over our head and education for our

00:04:10.640 | children.

00:04:11.760 | But if those things are not subordinate in our lives to the big issues that make us tick,

00:04:17.680 | then we're not going to pray with success.

00:04:20.400 | We're not.

00:04:22.000 | Prayer is going to be so worldly, so earthly, so unspiritual, God will wonder what does

00:04:27.040 | it have to do with Him.

00:04:30.720 | If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you will become that kind of person and whatever

00:04:39.220 | you wish, it will be done for you.

00:04:42.520 | Let me give you some examples of how the Word of Jesus abiding within makes you that kind

00:04:53.520 | of person in order that you might pray.

00:04:57.320 | First John 1.10, "If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word is not in

00:05:05.240 | us."

00:05:06.240 | Meaning, if His Word were in us, we'd know ourselves a right.

00:05:12.040 | The key to a humble, proper assessment of who we are before God comes one way, by the

00:05:19.400 | Word of God dwelling within.

00:05:22.560 | And without that proper self-assessment, we will not be in tune with God and know how

00:05:26.960 | to pray according to His will.

00:05:29.400 | Number two, John 17.8, Jesus says, "They have received My words and have truly understood

00:05:37.520 | that I came forth from thee."

00:05:40.560 | In other words, the Word received and abiding is the key to unlock not only a true knowledge

00:05:47.720 | of ourselves in humility, but an exalted knowledge of God and His Son, Jesus, coming from Him.

00:05:53.720 | And we cannot pray a right until we know Jesus as He is.

00:05:57.680 | We can't pray a right until we have an exalted view of the meaning of the coming of the Son

00:06:05.080 | into the world.

00:06:07.040 | Number three, 1 John 2.14 says, "I have written to you, young men, because the Word of God

00:06:12.560 | abides in you and you have overcome the evil one."

00:06:17.720 | Unless the Word of God is abiding in us, Satan will dominate, he will control, and he will

00:06:24.280 | deceive and bring us into odds with God rather than being in tune with God.

00:06:30.700 | In order to pray in tune with God, Satan must be defeated, and he was defeated in the young

00:06:35.880 | men in Ephesus and the other churches by the abiding of the Word of God.

00:06:44.240 | Number four, John 14.24, "He who does not love Me does not keep My words."

00:06:53.520 | Which means that the words of Jesus define the path of love.

00:07:03.480 | We cannot pray fruit-bearing prayers until we know the path on which the fruit is born,

00:07:12.200 | and the fruit is always born in the path of love and not outside that path.

00:07:16.900 | If you want to know the path of love along which prayers are answered, namely the path

00:07:21.340 | of love, you must have the Word of God abiding within you.

00:07:24.560 | You can't know what love is any other way than by the Word of God.

00:07:29.800 | John says, "By this we know that we love God when we keep His commandments."

00:07:36.960 | You may think you're loving God by not checking into the Bible at all.

00:07:41.360 | How many articles, how many books do I read today where the concepts of mercy, compassion,

00:07:48.120 | and love are used as criteria with no defense that that's the way God sees things at all?

00:07:55.680 | No defense that this is God's view of love, God's view of mercy, God's view of compassion.

00:08:00.220 | You just take the word right out of the mouth.

00:08:03.160 | Since it's a politically correct word, it works.

00:08:06.380 | It doesn't really matter whether it comes from God.

00:08:09.160 | If you want to know the path of love, you must have the Word of God abiding in you,

00:08:15.000 | because many things look loving which are not loving.

00:08:19.640 | Chapter 5, John 8, 47, "He who is of God hears the words of God."

00:08:27.200 | Note that.

00:08:28.200 | "He who is of God hears the words of God.

00:08:34.480 | For this reason you do not hear Him because you are not of God."

00:08:41.900 | What that means is, if you hear God, receive the words of God, and have His Word abiding

00:08:47.320 | in you, it is evidence that you are of God, that is chosen of God, born of God, elect.

00:08:54.440 | In other words, the whole issue of assurance is riding on this word.

00:09:00.920 | When you go to pray, one of the great hindrances to prayer and faith and hope in prayer is,

00:09:07.000 | "Am I of God?

00:09:09.960 | Am I born of God?

00:09:11.200 | Am I in the family?

00:09:13.160 | How do I know I'm in the family?"

00:09:16.280 | This text says you know you're in the family if you hear the Word of God, if you receive

00:09:20.800 | the Word of God, if the Word of God comes home and finds a place in you that receives

00:09:26.000 | affirmation and a "yes" and an "amen."

00:09:31.800 | And finally, John 15, 3, "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken

00:09:40.980 | to you."

00:09:41.980 | And John 17, 17, "Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth."

00:09:46.440 | So we have cleanness and we have sanctification coming to us through the Word.

00:09:52.560 | There are a lot of other examples of how the Word abiding in us fits us to pray, but here

00:09:59.520 | are six.

00:10:00.520 | A humble view of ourselves, an exalted view of the Savior, triumph over the devil, knowledge

00:10:06.200 | of the path of love, assurance of our election, and the power of holiness.

00:10:12.400 | Those six and many more come to us by having the Word of God abide with us, abide in us,

00:10:20.280 | and therefore fit us for being the kind of people who will pray in tune with God and

00:10:27.080 | hear the promise, "Whatever you ask, it will be done for you."

00:10:30.680 | So powerful.

00:10:31.680 | And notice again, put in the negative, "If you have no interest in obeying God and bringing

00:10:37.280 | your whole life into conformity to His values and getting your desires from His desires,

00:10:42.800 | prayer is not your business."

00:10:45.280 | Wow.

00:10:46.280 | "Pray according to His will, thy will be done."

00:10:51.080 | That was from John Piper's sermon on John 15, 7, titled, "Ask Whatever You Wish."

00:10:55.880 | He preached it on January 10, 1993.

00:10:57.880 | Well, if you have a sermon clip to share with us, email me.

00:11:02.080 | Give me your name, current city, the sermon title, and timestamp of where the clip happens

00:11:06.280 | in the audio, and tell me how it impacted you.

00:11:08.200 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

00:11:13.680 | That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

00:11:16.800 | Well, are rich Christians commanded to downgrade their living standards?

00:11:24.560 | Are rich Christians commanded to downgrade their living standards?

00:11:29.340 | It is a really great question.

00:11:30.680 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we are Rejoined in Studio with Pastor John.

00:11:33.720 | For that on Friday, we'll see you then.

00:11:35.600 | [END]

Prayers That Work

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