The Process of Always Answered Prayer (Part 3)
We all experience unanswered prayer. According to Jesus, it doesn’t have to be that way…
Everyone has experienced unanswered prayer. Yet, Jesus promises five times in the gospels that we can have every prayer answered. His promise points to a massive untapped potential in our prayer lives. The power of this promise is so great that Matthew and Mark both link its fulfillment to the coming of the Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven” when Jesus returns.
In part 1, we looked at the promises of always answered prayer in Matthew and Mark. Then, we looked at the three promises in the gospel of John. Today, we’ll look at the similarities and differences between the passages before finally addressing the question, “How can we pray prayers that God will always answer?”
Similarities between Matthew/Mark and John
First, in all three gospels, Jesus clearly promises always answered prayer. These passages really do belong together.
“And everything you ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.” Matthew 21:22
“…all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.” Mark 11:24
“If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” John 14:14
“…ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you…” John 15:7b
The context of each promise is Passion Week, the final days and hours before Jesus goes to the cross. Each of the promises is conditional. If our prayers are truly unanswered, we should assume we have not met the conditions. While the conditions are described differently, both Matthew, Mark, and John include faith and belief as a key condition.
Mark and John also highlight our treatment of one another as a major factor. Forgiveness of everyone is required if we expect God to hear our prayers.
“Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions.” Mark 11:25
John has a similar condition: “love one another as I have loved you.”
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love…This is my commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you.” John 15:9, 12
Always answered prayer is conditioned, not only by our relationship with God, but by our relationships with one another.
In both sets of Scriptures, Jesus predicts that His disciples will do greater things than He has done.
In Matthew/Mark, he prophesies “greater things” through the comparison of the mountain being cast into the sea and the withered fig tree. Mountains are bigger than fig trees. Jesus is saying to His disciples, “You’re amazed at the withered fig tree, but you can do even greater things through believing prayer.”
In John 14:12, Jesus tells His disciples plainly,
“he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.”
It is extraordinary that Jesus, the greatest miracle worker in human history, predicts we will do even greater things than he did by the power of always answered prayer.
Differences
While the core promise in all the passages is the same, there are significant differences in context and language.
In Matthew and Mark, the immediate context is God’s judgment on nations. This passage references both the soon-coming judgement on Jerusalem (the fig tree, 70 A.D.) and the end of the age judgement on all nations (the mountain, day and hour, unknowable). It is connected to the stories of the triumphal entry and the failed inspection of the Jerusalem temple. The perspective is world-historical and epic. Just as Jesus is partnering with the Father in his judgment on Jerusalem, so His disciples will use the prayer of faith to participate in God’s end-of-the-age judgments and usher in the Kingdom, “on earth as it is in heaven.”
In contrast to Matthew and Mark’s panoramic, wide-lens perspective, John’s account is intimate and personal, a close-up shot where every detail, every movement of the eye, is significant. Here, the promises are given around a table, a secret shared among friends, part of Jesus’s ultimate self-disclosure to his disciples. Jesus shares the promise of always answered prayer in the context of communion.
Matthew and Mark focus on the external, the epic, the world-historical. John’s gospel focuses on the internal, the personal, the intimate. While John’s account includes similar language and concepts to Matthew and Mark, it also uses many new words and descriptions. Praying “in Jesus’ name”, “abiding”, “love”, “the new commandment”, “joy”, and “desire” are all connected to the promise of always answered prayer in John.
Finally, John’s gospel repeats the promise three times, giving it a larger place of priority than Matthew and Mark. He wants to make sure we don’t miss it. After all, what Jesus is saying is a really big deal.
The Panoramic View and the Intimate Portrait
I believe the gospel writers are giving us two complementary perspectives on the same reality. Our vision is incomplete without both perspectives.
Matthew and Mark give us a sweeping, panoramic view of always answered prayer. We can see how God’s people will participate with Him in casting mountains into the sea as they pray prayers of faith. However, nothing is said in these passages about how to walk in “faith that moves mountains[1].”
John’s is a close-up, intimate view of always answered prayer. He is less concerned with the world-historical implications and more focused on the conditions that produce always-answered prayer. From our position as those who are just learning to pray, John’s gospel provides something we desperately need — a kind of “how-to” manual for always-answered prayer.
To put it another way, Matthew and Mark tell us that the “prayer of faith”[2] exists, is incredibly powerful, and will change the world. John, however, gives us step-by-step instructions on how to pray always answered prayers.
The Process of Always Answered Prayer
John 15 gives us the clearest teaching on how to pray always answered prayer. This passage encourages us to think of always answered prayer as the end result, or fruit, of an agricultural process.
“I am the true vine…my Father is the gardener…you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit…If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit…I have told you this…so that your joy may be complete.” John 15:1-11 (partial)
Jesus is a vine, God the Father is the farmer, and we are branches living in the vine. The Holy Spirit is present as the sap, the inner life of Jesus, flowing into us as branches. Always answered prayer is the fruit that comes from our union with Jesus. And the fruit is meant to produce wine, that is, joy! The more fruit we produce, the more joy we have, the more glory goes to the Gardener. The Father gets glory from answered prayer!
How to Grow Fruit
Fruit is not produced by focusing on fruit. It comes as the result of an organic process. In a healthy plant, strong connections between vine and branch, proper root depth and structure, right pruning, sun, rain, soil conditions, fertilizer, weather conditions, and time are all required to produce fruit. The Gardener focuses on all these things in His effort to produce the fruit of answered prayer in us.
Sometimes, those who take Jesus’ promise of always answered prayer seriously focus directly on mustering up enough “faith” so they can “believe and not doubt” and receive whatever they ask. By faith, they often mean “mental certainty of an expected outcome.” This is like trying to produce fruit directly out of thin air, rather than seeing fruit as the end goal of a living process.
If we aim directly for always-answered prayer through mustering up “mental certainty”, we will be disappointed. This is not the way to grow faith. Jesus presents answered prayer as a natural effect of abiding in Him. In other words, if we could simply learn to abide in Him, we could have prayers answered as a natural result.
“This is Simple Work”
While the Gardener knows all about how to produce fruit, the branch does not have to worry about fertilization, pruning, or the conditions of sun and soil. The branch only has one job: to remain in the vine. The branch’s job is incredibly simple. “Remain in me, and let my words remain in you…obey me.” To obey means to love one another as He has loved us. It means, whatever you receive from the vine, pass that love along to others. As one of my dear friends, and one of the most fruitful men I have ever met, has said, “This is simple work.”
It is the simple work of abiding that leads to always-answered prayer.
In(side) His Name
Abiding is what it means to “believe in Jesus.” Abiding is what it means to ask, “in His name.” To abide in Him is to be “in His name.” Praying “in Jesus’ name” does not mean repeating a phrase after our prayers. The phrase is really an address, a location from which we are to make our requests. In His Name is a place, a place where our prayers are always answered. In His Name means we are in Him, and He is in us. Praying in His Name means abiding in Him. Fundamentally, abiding means we are receiving the Spirit of Jesus and sharing the love we receive from the Spirit with one another. This is what it means to be a branch.
Along with living “in Jesus” through the Holy Spirit, Jesus’s words must also take up residence in the branch. We need to abide in Jesus, but we also must allow His words to take up residence in us. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. This is how “abiding” connects directly to “faith” or “belief.” When His words take up residence inside of us, this results in faith. His words abiding in us is what it means to have faith.
Whatever You Desire
When we remain in Jesus through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and His words live and abide inside of us, we are changed and transformed through divine union. We are especially changed at the deepest, most mysterious level of our being—at the level of our desires. Changing the desires of a person is notoriously difficult. As Woody Allen said, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” Our conscious mind is aware of our desires, but is not the source of our desires—they come from somewhere deeper inside of us.
Abiding in Jesus while His word abides in us transforms us deep within, at the level of desire. The desires of our heart that spring out of abiding result in prayers that God will always answer. This is the same reality that David touched on in Psalm 37: “O rest in the LORD, wait patiently for Him, and He will give you your heart’s desire.”
From the place of abiding, we are told to ask and receive whatever we desire [want, wish]. So, we must be asking for things we truly desire (not, for instance, things we think we should desire). A key condition of answered prayer is that our prayers must flow from the fountain of genuine desire. The genuine desires of our heart speak much more powerfully to God than words.
A New Creation on the Inside
The act of creation in Genesis 1 begins with the Spirit of God hovering over the waters. Then, as the Spirit hovers, the word of God is spoken, “Let there be light.” John 15:7 is a recapitulation of the Creation of all things in our innermost being. This identical creative process, the partnership of word and Spirit, is what takes place when we abide. The word and Spirit dwell together richly in us, creatively transforming our innermost being, so that the requests that come out of our hearts and out of our mouths are the kinds of prayers that God will always answer.
Just as each of God’s words in creation caused reality to come into being, so, when we pray from the posture of abiding, from the position of authentic faith, our prayers become creative.
The Father Himself receives great glory when every one of our prayers is answered.
[1] Matthew, Mark, and Luke do actually cover “how to” pray the prayer of faith in other contexts, emphasizing the role of perseverance in prayer and its connection to the prayer of faith. This is very similar to the concept of abiding in John’s gospel.
[2] Another way to say “always answered prayer.”