When I was young, I believed in God (in a kind of generic sense) but none of my prayers got answered. I remember thinking that I knew I was supposed to pray, but it bothered me that nothing happened. Eventually that started to undermine my childish faith. For some time I thought, “Well, I’m not sure if God’s there, but I’ll believe so I don’t go to hell.”
Finally even that became inconvenient. At one point, while in Jr. High, I wanted to tell a lie, and someone asked me if I “swore to God.” At that point I decided that I didn’t believe in God any more and thus I told the lie.
At least I had the courage of my convictions. I immediately told my friends that I didn’t believe in God anymore. I had one friend who was an atheist, and I told him that he had been right all along. I continued like this until my senior year in High School. I was convinced that there was no God, and I even wrote my reasons in my journal.
After I heard the good news of Jesus Christ and accepted him into my heart, I started praying again. I found that these prayers got answered. Not always the way I wanted — sometimes I distinctly heard God say “No” when I prayed. But at least I had a heads-up as to what I should do. But more important was that God answered. I was conscious of his presence. And from time to time he would answer prayers in spectacular fashion — spectacular to me at least. At any rate I can honestly say that I believe God answers prayers.
So how do we understand the difference? I believe the straightforward wisdom of James can get us started.
[Of course the minute I start looking at this more closely, I realize that part of this passage has apparently been translated somewhat misleadingly by the ESV. Again KJV seems to be better. But I’ll just translate it myself.]
From where do battles and fights among you come? Is it not this: from the pleasures that war within your members?
You desire and do not have so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain so you fight and battle. You do not have because you do not ask.
You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your pleasures.
– James 4:1-3
James says here that prayers aren’t answered because they are asked for simple selfish pleasure.
Moving on from this we continue to 1 John 5:14-15. He says,
And this is the assurance we have toward him: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears what we ask, we know that we have the requests that we ask from him.
So what is the difference here? Well, the most obvious difference is that in one case we’re asking for things for our own cravings, while in the other we are asking according to God’s will.
So how does it work? Is John just giving a ready-made excuse for when God doesn’t answer prayer: “Oh, it just wasn’t his will…”? Or do we view God as playing a kind of guessing game, as if he were some kind of cosmic slot machine? Put in the prayer, pull the lever … nope, not that time.
I believe John is talking about an experience of walking in God’s will so that our prayers are answered on a routine basis.
John sheds light on this in his gospel. In John 15:12-17 he tells us that Jesus says the following:
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
We see here that Jesus proposes a new kind of relationship between him and those who follow him. That is “friendship.” Friendship is characterized by openness — “all that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you.”
So John doesn’t envision a guessing game when we pray. Rather, he sees openness between Jesus and the one praying. We talk about being “on the same page.” And that “page” is love for one another.
If we walk in the kind of love Jesus had when he laid down his life for us, we are Jesus’ friends; we understand his will and pray accordingly, and the Father will give us what we ask.
For many people, spirituality is a way of gaining control or power. It is another resource we can tap into, another way of self-actualization. Now indeed God is the one who can make us wholly who we are, give us our true identity. But for Christians that way is on the other side of death: “Whoever would find his life will lose it, but whoever loses it for my sake will find it.”
That is, Christian spirituality envisions a life with God that begins with surrender. We lay down our lives, our claims on ourselves, our will-to-power, our desire to have it our own way. We surrender all that and cast ourselves on God and his mercy and love.
The result is that we start walking with Jesus. And we start understanding what he is up to. And suddenly everything opens up. And indeed it’s not so much that our prayers are answered, but that we know the true and living God and can have assurance before him. This is true spirituality, and in this state we are promised that our prayers will be heard and answered.