Whatever You Ask

1 John 5:13-15

January 4, 2026 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I’ve kind of made it a habit over the last few years for sermons in January to focus on some form of questions—because people have a lot of questions about faith and God and Christianity today. Some people call it “deconstruction” or questioning their faith and some even walk away from the church altogether because of their questions, at least in part because they don’t get answers that satisfy their soul. The founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, as a 13-year-old famously asked his pastor how God could let children starve. When he was basically told not to ask questions, he walked away from the faith. People have questions and they have doubts. I’ve said it before: there is nothing wrong with doubt. Doubt is not the opposite of faith and questions do not necessarily mean that someone has walked away from Jesus. In fact, many of them still like Jesus; they’re just done with the church because they’ve been told not to ask questions. But our faith—our Jesus—can stand up to questions and doubts. We should never be afraid of the hard questions or of anyone’s doubts. Author Frederick Buechner once said this: “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

I’ve said before from this pulpit the the older I get, the more questions I have. But the questions don’t destroy my faith because, if anything, I find myself clinging more tightly to Jesus than I did when I was certain about so many things. I think when we’re certain, we don’t really think about holding onto Jesus. We have it all figured out. It’s when we question, when we doubt, when the waves are cresting and the winds are blowing that we find we need to grab onto Jesus with everything we’ve got. And so I hope in the next couple of weeks you find yourself doing just that. Questions don’t have to threaten your faith; questions and doubts can deepen your faith. When in doubt, grab onto Jesus.

So we’re going to start this morning with a question that perplexes a lot more people than will admit it. I’m willing to bet the majority of us in this room have asked this question and maybe still struggle with it. Here’s the question: why doesn’t God answer my prayers? I mean, we pray and nothing happens. Or something else happens that isn’t what we asked for. We pray for our loved one to beat cancer and they die anyway. We pray for life to get easier and then the bank forecloses on our loan. We pray for a certain candidate to be elected and the other one wins. We ask God to restore our family and the divorce still goes through. Why doesn’t God answer my prayers? After all, Jesus himself said, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” (John 14:14). That sounds like an ironclad guarantee, and so I’ve asked for things in Jesus’ name, I always end my prayers “in Jesus’ name,” and yet God doesn’t answer. Why not?

It’s a legitimate question, and I don’t know if the people in John’s church were asking that exact question or not, but as he closes his letter to this group of believers, he turns to some very practical questions, one of which is exactly this. What about prayer? Can I count on God to come through when I pray?

The passage we read this morning is a brief one but, in many ways, contains John’s conclusions after a lifetime of reflection on the meaning of prayer. He has written this letter, he says, so that those who receive it “may know that you have eternal life” (5:13). And he’s not just talking about life after death. That’s the way we usually hear it: believe these things, believe the “right” things, and ask Jesus into your heart so that you can be saved and go to heaven and life forever, playing harp while sitting on a cloud. But that’s not what John is saying. Eternal means more than never-ending. Eternal life is the kind of life God himself has, a different kind of life than what we know, and when we put our trust and faith in Jesus, it’s the kind of life he gives us now. “To have eternal life is to have fellowship with God” (Thompson, 1-3 John [IVPNTC], pg. 140). Eternal life is to be in an intimate, personal relationship with the creator of the universe. And yes, it lasts beyond this life but it starts the moment we believe.

And because we have eternal life, because we have a personal relationship with the one who flung the stars into space, we have access to him through prayer. We can “approach” him (5:14). We can talk to him. We can have a conversation with him. And Jesus (and other people in the Bible) says we can ask him for things. John affirms this. The next two verses tell us we can ask. “And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him” (5:15). Christians love to grab ahold of that verse and others in the Bible like it. Whatever we ask. Ask for anything. Whatever you want, if you just ask and believe and beg and wear God down, you can have what you want. Is that what prayer is? Is that what John says? If so, no wonder we get so disappointed and discouraged and even disillusioned when we don’t get what we want. “See?” we might say. “Prayer is useless. God doesn’t answer prayer after all.”

Now I’ve seen the bumper sticks and the Facebook memes that declare, “Prayer works!” And I hear us say things like that when things go our way, when the person we prayed for is healed, or we get that bonus or that promotion at work. Prayer works! And there’s a national tragedy like a plane crash or a terrorist attack and someone shares a story about a person who escaped alive because there was a loved one praying for them and we all share the story and say, “Prayer works!” But what about the person who didn’t escape, the one who died even though someone was back home praying for them, too? What about the person whose cancer didn’t go away even though their family and church prayed night and day for them? Did they just not do it right? Did they somehow get the magic formula wrong? Because that’s what we’re saying when we proudly proclaim that “prayer works.” It apparently works for some and not for others. The idea behind that phrase is that if you just do it right, if you use the right words or, worse yet, get enough people to pray for whatever the need is (and how many are enough? how many does it take to force God’s hand?), prayer “works” to convince God to do it our way. It’s a magic formula. A + B = “prayer works” and we get what we wanted. But that’s not what John is saying. What if prayer doesn’t “work” like that at all? What if prayer, in reality, has a different purpose than us getting the answers we want?

The secret is in the verse just above, one we don’t quote quite as often. John writes, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (5:14). Our confidence comes when we ask according to his will. How often are our prayers prayed according to what we know is God’s will rather than our own? I think most of us, myself included, mostly pray about things that are our will, as if we are the center of the universe. Pastor Craig Groeschel writes, “We need to embrace the reality that God is the star of the story. He does not exist to serve us. We exist to serve him” (Groeschel, The Benefit of Doubt, pg. 66). John is not saying we can ask for anything and expect to get it. There is a qualification: “according to his will.” When we do that, we can approach God boldly and with a startling frankness because we are in the middle of what he wants for us and for our world (cf. McKnight, 1, 2 & 3 John, pg. 146).

It’s following the model Jesus laid out for his disciples and for us. We don’t see Jesus praying a lot in the Gospel of John, but the two times he does we see this principle lived out. One is when he prays for Lazarus to be restored to life. As he stands before Lazarus’ tomb, he prays, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me” (John 11:41). It’s the same language John uses in this letter, God the Father “hearing” us. Jesus, as the Son, has that deep, intimate relationship with the Father, and because he’s standing in the middle of the Father’s will, he knows he is heard and that his prayer will be answered. And later on, on his last night before the crucifixion, Jesus prays for believers then and all throughout history, again with the confidence that he is heard because he is praying in the middle of the Father’s will. He prays that those who believe will be protected from the evil one (John 17:15) and that all believers will be one (17:21). That last one, as I’ve said often, is the great unanswered prayer of Jesus, not because it’s outside of God’s will but because we have to be willing to be made one and we stubbornly refuse century after century (cf. Thompson 141). But here’s the point: “The purpose of prayer is not to get God to do our will. The purpose of prayer is to know God so we can do his will” (Groeschel 66). Jesus set the example for us and John lays out the qualifications. Our natural self-centeredness, I believe, hinders us more than anything else. Prayer is first and foremost not about getting stuff or even our needs met. Prayer is first and foremost about getting to know God.

However, God does delight in his people and, I believe, loves to answer our prayers (cf. Psalm 149:4). The issue of unanswered prayer isn’t really a God problem. It’s an “us” problem. We get in the way ourselves. The Bible talks about a few situations in which we can be a detriment to our own prayers being answered. One is a broken relationship. Jesus said, “When you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive your sins” (Mark 11:25). He also tells the disciples on another occasion that if they are worshipping and they remember (or God brings to mind) someone whom they have something against (or vice versa), they should leave worship to go make it right, then come back to worship (cf. Matthew 5:23-24). In other words, our horizontal relationships here have an impact on our vertical relationship. Earlier in this letter, John says if we’re not loving people, we can’t really love God (cf. 4:20). If you love God but hate a brother or sister, you’re a liar. (Really, John, just tell us what you think!) So our relationships can get in the way of our prayers (cf. Groeschel 68-69).

A second problem could be a wrong motive. This is a big way we get in the way, because we are basically selfish. We want what we want when we want it. Jesus told a parable about two men who were praying out loud in public in the Temple courts. Now, I know we generally don’t do that, but the way they prayed wasn’t the point of the story. It’s what they prayed. The first one, a Pharisee, a man who would have had the respect of the community, someone whom everyone would have thought was a holy and faithful believer, prayed this prayer: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers…I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” It’s almost like he assumed God will be as impressed with himself as he is. The other man, a tax collector, someone who was not well liked in the community, keeps his head down and prays, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Jesus’ conclusion? The second man went home “justified before God,” not the so-called religious expert (cf. Luke 18:9-14). Who do we pray more like? What kind of motives do we bring to prayer? We may hide it better, but very often I think we are like the first guy, hoping God is as impressed with us as we are. We get in our own way of our prayers being answered (cf. Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 204; Groeschel 69-71).

I hesitate to share the third challenge to prayer because I’m always afraid it’s going to be misunderstood, but the Bible talks about it so I think I need to also. Sometimes our prayers might be hindered by our own lack of faith. I am not suggesting—hear me clearly—I am not suggesting a prosperity approach to the Gospel, where if you have enough so-called “faith,” you can get whatever you want—health, wealth, a new jet, whatever. That is not what the Bible teaches and it’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I’m thinking about the disciples at the foot of the mountain, trying to cast a demon out of a little boy and being unable to. When Jesus does it easily, they ask him why they couldn’t and Jesus says, “Because you have so little faith” (Matthew 17:14-21). I’m also thinking of the times in the past when I have stood by sick people and prayed for them, hesitating to ask for healing when it appeared obvious that they were not going to make it. I both did and didn’t believe that God could overcome the illness. The problem was not God; the problem was my image of God. How big is my God? How big is your God? When he was president of Asbury Seminary, Dr. Maxie Dunnam was known for asking this tough question: “What if there are some things God either cannot or will not do until and unless God’s people pray?” “Your faith matters to God” (Groeschel 73). I was reminded by another pastor one time that we always pray for a miracle—always—because we believe in a God who works miracles. And we trust him even if he doesn’t. So I always pray for healing. And I’m learning to trust God when he goes a different way. Even if he doesn’t answer the way we think he should, he is still God (cf. Groeschel 71-73).

Then, fourth: sometimes, God has a better idea. Okay, all the time. There is the famous story of the Apostle Paul who struggled with what he called a “thorn in the flesh.” He calls it a “messenger of Satan.” I think it’s safe to say Paul was not fond of this particular challenge in his life. Most scholars believe it was an eye ailment of some sort, that Paul had poor vision. And he tells the Corinthians that he begged God to take it away, to heal him. And that makes sense, right? If Paul’s vision were healed, he could be that much more effective for the cause of Christ. Three times, he says, he pleaded for God to heal him, and apparently around that third time, God said no. “My grace is sufficient for you,” God told him, “for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:7-8). There was something God could do through and with a Paul who struggled that he couldn’t do if Paul were healed. I’ll confess: I don’t understand that at all. My heart defect was discovered when I prepared to go to college, and one of the most godly women I have ever known prayed for my healing. We believed it would be healed, but it was not. My grace is sufficient for you. Two heart valve replacements, cardiac arrest, pacemaker insertion—and I still don’t get it. Wouldn’t it be better if God had honored the prayer we prayed so long ago? My grace is sufficient for you. I have to believe God has a better idea, a bigger purpose in all this. I just wish I knew what it is. I struggle a lot with that, and like Paul, God just keeps saying, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

So if we’re not guaranteed the answer we want, and if we can even get in the way of our own prayers, should we even bother? I want to come back to what I said earlier: prayer is not about you. It’s not about me. It’s not about getting stuff, and it’s not about always getting the answers we want. Prayer is first and foremost about getting to know God. Prayer is about coming close to a God who loves us more than we can imagine. It’s not about controlling him, or demanding our own way, or telling him how we believe things should work out. It’s about learning to trust that, in the end, God knows what is best. Can we trust him? Can we let him lead?

If you struggle with those questions, you’re not alone. The first disciples did, too, even when Jesus was right there in front of them, in the flesh. On the last night Jesus spent with them, they were arguing about who was the greatest, fussing over seating arrangements, and generally not behaving well. Until Jesus washed their feet and then served them bread and wine. Those simple acts refocused these men who thought they knew what Jesus should be doing and how and when (and often told him so). His body—broken for them? For us? His blood—shed for them and for us? That night, they were confused and unsettled but somehow the bread and the cup brought clarity. No matter what happened next, they would learn to trust him and let him lead. Maybe today, in the bread and the cup, as we remember his sacrifice and the last meal that evening, we can too. Whatever you ask, according to his will, he hears you. Will you pray with me as we prepare to come to the communion table?