WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Introduction

Title. WHAT do YOU WANT? Various ways to ask. Popular question. Asked a lot in our culture. Whatcha, whatcha, whatcha want? I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want…but alas, we’re reminded you can’t always get what you want. But today, we’re going to talk about prayer…and about two times when Jesus asked people, “What do you want?” And try to understand how the Bible tells us we can always get what we want. We find that God cares what we want. He asks us what we want. He wants us to search our own hearts to confront what it is we truly want. I think we’ll see that asking “What do you want?” can help us focus our passion for God, our purpose for living. To want is to desire. And God wants us to desire the good he intends for us. C.S. Lewis said,

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures…We are far too easily pleased.” Are you happy with the world around you? Are you happy with the state of all your relationships? Are you happy with your own walk with God? John Eldrede wrote, “Christianity has nothing to say to the person who is completely happy with the way things are. Its message is for those who hunger and thirst—for those who desire life as it was meant to be.” Our study continues in 1 John today…we’ll pick up ch. 5, v. 13

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 14This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

John writing to believers, not deceivers. Effects of eternal life…gifts…

Usually invitation at end of service. We have to do this right now…because there are a few listening to this message that don’t have eternal life. If you’re not a Christian, this message isn’t for you. Only Christians have these promises.

God welcomes us, God hears us, God answers

V. 14 John 16:26-27—pray clearly to the Father and He hears because he loves you! Confidence

I john 3

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 •Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.

“Health and wealth” prosperity gospel gives “two dangerous extremes. On the one hand, it can sanctify materialism and greed by cloaking the objects of worldly desire under a divine blessing; on the other hand, it can engender deep guilt and remorse in those whose prayers are not answered, under the logic that God is not listening because one’s faith is insufficient. John would reject both conclusions.”

Actual sense “whenever (i.e., if) we ask anything according to his will, then he hears us.”

V. 15

James 4 You do not have because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

4You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?

Jesus says in Mark 11:24, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” The present tense “we have” (echomen), and not the future (“we will have”), indicates that God grants our requests immediately, even though his answer may not be immediately revealed. As Plummer notes, “Our petitions are granted at once: the results of the granting are perceived in the future.”

1:20-5:17

MARK 10

35Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”

36 “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.

37They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”

38 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

39“We can,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with,40but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”

46Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging. 47When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

48Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

49Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”

So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” 50Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.

51 “What do you want me to do for you?”Jesus asked him.

The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

52 “Go,”said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.”Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

To “ask according to his will” (v. 15), then, means that we should ask for things that God wishes to achieve; it doesn’t mean that God wants us to have whatever we ask for.

Pray to care about unseen world more than seen

Pray for the seen world to bring God more glory in the unseen

Pray wrong prayers

Pray things you assume God doesn’t care about

Pray journal

John 15:5, 7–abide and fruit comes naturally, prayers and answers come naturally

5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.6If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.8This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

Psalm 27 one thing I seek...what do you want?

Don’t beat yourself up, just turn your heart to him AND ask him to sustain you with that love

Pray right prayers

Always for suffering to go away? John 9

God always answers your prayers in precisely the way you want them to be answered if you knew everything he knew. Tim Keller

John Stott “It is by prayer that we seek God’s will, embrace it and align ourselves with it. Every true prayer is a variation of the theme ‘your will be done.’”

Prayer right...still not answered?

James 5:16—Prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

Are you right with God? (Not perfection…but awareness and confession)

Disobedience (1 John 3:21-23)

Lifestyle of sin (Psalm 66:18)

Unforgiveness in relationships (Mark 11:25)

Disrespect in relationships (1 Peter 3:7)

Wrong motives (James 4:3)

Pride (Luke 18:10-14)

Unjust living (Isaiah 58:6-8)

Danny will continue on prayer next week. Praying for each other…when we ask or when we don’t ask.

Luke 19:46

Most phsycally violent thing Jesus did…overturn the money-changers tables in temple. Why? “My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.”

A dynamic praying church must be built from the inside out, employing all four levels of prayer: the secret closet, the family altar, the small group praying, and finally, the congregational setting. Richard Burr

Leonard Ravenhill

“No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.”

The first secret of getting what you want is knowing what you want. anon

The distance between what you want and what you get is what you do.

Desire gives fervor to prayer…Strong desires make strong prayers…The neglect of prayer is the fearful token of dead spiritual desires…There can be no true praying without desire. E. M. Bounds