UNANSWERED PRAYERS

 

Some weeks ago, I raised the consciousness of my readers to the power of prayers; showing you how Jesus already put Himself forward to seeing that petitions made to God in His name are answered. That is how much power a believer has.

 

“And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it” John 14:13-14

 

Now, this suggests without any doubt that a believer cannot pray in the name of Jesus and the prayer will go unanswered. As you can see from that scripture, it is the glory of Father that what you request in prayer through the Son is granted. This would be a dent on the image of the Son of God, who has put His word and name on the line if there is a thing as an unanswered prayer for a child of God.

Having established this truth from the scriptures, a reader was concerned about the position of a portion of the scriptures about this truth which needs some clarity. This is what I want to help you see this week to engage the power of prayers the more.  

 

“Now this is the confidence we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” 1John5:14

 

This scripture is clear, however, has some inference that suggests that a believer can pray and not be heard of God if it is not according to His will. The question then is how this line of thought is consistent with what we have seen earlier.

 

So, let’s start from the place of explaining the context of the scripture above. John was explaining what the will of God is without calling it the will of God in his description. Reading through the first verses of the same chapter, he opened up his children to see how powerful it is when a man receives Christ as that automatically makes the man a child of God.

“If you believe that Jesus is the Christ- that he is God’s Son and your Savior- then you are a child of God…”

The conversation is exclusive to those who are of the household of God. This then implies every other thing he had to say in that verse. The prodigal son who was rebelling against the father never asked for what wasn’t in the possession of the father even though he was so engrossed in a life of luxury. He is prodigal, but he still is a son. The father granted his request. The son didn’t ask for what the father couldn’t give because he knew the father. His mind could only capture what his father had. When a man dies and writes a will, the children would not expect to have what their father never had; it is natural knowledge.

 

So, as sons, there is a natural knowledge of the will that makes it impossible to ask outside of his will because you are the will yourself. The will cannot ask outside of the will.

Let’s break it further now to what exactly is the will of God to have a grasp of the context at which John wrote in that scripture.

“Jesus told them, this is the will of God, that you believe in the one he sent” John 6:29

The will of God is clear; believing in the Son and it is on this premise John explains the answering of prayers of the saint. Let’s get back to that scripture.

 

“I have written this to you who believe in the Son of God so that you may know you have eternal life. And we are sure of this that he will listen to us whenever we ask him for anything in line with his will.” 1John 5:13-14

 

John had explained what the will is in verses 13, “believing in the son of God” which is the gateway to eternal life and it is on this the following verse rests on. Now, you can rewrite that scripture this way:

“And we are sure of this that he will listen to us whenever we ask him for anything in line with believing in the son of God, Jesus”.

What this does explain is that prayers are first answered in the formation of the word of God in your heart before it becomes a word in your mouth. Asking without believing in your heart is the issue and not what you asked for as a child of God. It would only take a man outside of God to ask for things as the death of another human; you cannot carry the spirit of God and ask what is outside of His will. It’s impossible!

 

With the new life in Christ, nothing is called unanswered prayers. Just like I wrote to you before, the answers may come in two ways; grace and actual result. You either receive grace for strength to hold on or the miracle is delivered. Your prayers will never go unanswered.

I hope you understand this!

 

Be Innovated

Olufemi Ibitoye