When You Don't Get What You Ask For

August 26, 2018

Scripture: 1 John 5:13– :15

When You Don’t Get What You Ask For

Ever asked for something and didn’t get it? 

Ever asked God for something and didn’t get it?

Ted and I’s infertility story…

Unable to have kids though we tried, and nothing was working, and we would see kids who were having kids, and mothers who were not being good to their kids, and kids being abandoned and why God could we not be parent, surely this was in your will…

When we asked for something and didn’t get it.  We usually want the answers to be yes and amen, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way. 

1 John 5:13-15 

Now John who is the writer of John and of the letters 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John writes from a place of intimacy with the Lord as his closest disciple and best friend. He writes themes throughout his first letter, being authentic and real, walking in the light and getting rid of sin patterns in your life, discerning between good and evil and the antichrist spirit, and the love of God and others which we will talk about next week, and then the confidence that we have as a believer.

And that is where we get started this morning.

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 And this is the confidencethat we have toward him, that if we askanything he hears us.15 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. Do you have confidence in Him?

 

Other versions say confidence, boldness, assured confidence, courage

 

Confidence-the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something; firm trust.

 

John first of all has to convince to be confident. Why?  Because he is talking to a people that are not assured and this goes back to the Old Testament.  Not all believers were confident because they were not the leader.

 

An example is Moses and the people. We will stay back.  Let Moses press in.

Another example is the High Priest.  He would go into the Holy of Holies.

But John is saying there is a new way.

 

A better way of reading this passage would be to go back to verse 6 which says.

This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.For there are three that testify:the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son.10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. 13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 And this is the confidencethat we have toward him, that if we askanything he hears us.

You can be confident, because of the finished work of the Cross.

You are his.  Be confident.

My kids are confident that they can approach me because they are my kids.

But they don’t stop there.  Being near me is not enough.  Being confident is not enough.

They have to ASK!!

  1. Are you asking?

And this is where my youngest nails it every single day.  She asks.

Mom can I have a snack.  Mom look at me.  Mom help me. Mom.  Mom. Mom.

She is confident.  If you are confident, you can begin asking? 

Now for my youngest this didn’t happen right away.  For the most part my kids didn’t really talk the first couple of months and they rarely asked for anything ever.  (Sometimes I wish we could go back there