According To His Will

According to His Will

If we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. 1 John 5:14-15, ESV

MANY BELIEVERS ATTACH AN UNASSUMING PHRASE to their prayers: “If it’s your will, Lord.” The thought is admirable; we don’t want to make requests that violate God’s will. But sometimes this phrase is a reflection of our own insecurity and uncertainty about his will and a ready-made justification for prayers that seem not to accomplish anything. If God doesn’t answer, this is as good a reason as any.

John assures us that we can have confidence toward God and be certain he has heard us—and knowing he has heard us, we can be certain that he will fulfill our requests. But this promise includes the phrase about his will, as opposed to Jesus’ “anything you want” language (John 15:7). John’s words apply to those requests that are God’s will, and they seem to provide that same caveat we add to many of our prayers.

We need to remember two things when we read this passage: (1) As a whole, the New Testament does not give us the impression that God’s will is hard to figure out or is somehow narrower than the work his Spirit is doing in our hearts. (2) Grammatically this verse can just as easily mean, “If we ask anything, which is his will”—meaning it’s the asking that is his will. In other words, this promise does not limit us to some specific will of God that we may or may not be able to figure out; it refers to the fact that believers can know God’s will (much of which has been revealed in Scripture), and we are invited to pray with confidence for God to accomplish his purposes in us, through us, and for us. He is eager to reveal himself and his purposes to us, and he urges us to ask accordingly. That ought to be profoundly encouraging and emboldening to those who pray. We are doing exactly what God wills and can be confident he will answer.

No heart can conceive that treasury of mercies which lies in this one privilege . . . to approach God at all times, according to his mind and will.