The True Vine, Part 10
Whatever I wish?
John 15v7
29th November 2014
In His teaching on the True Vine, Jesus said:
John 15v7
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.
Our ninth question from John chapter 15 is "Do I really believe that if I remain in Christ and His words remain in me then I can ask whatever I wish, and it will be given to me? This gives us a bit of a problem because:
- Jesus said it, so it must be true.
- Some of the things we've asked for have not been given to us.
Every Christian can remember times when deeply heartfelt prayers were not answered the way we wanted. We've prayed for health for people who died, for salvation for people who died without faith, for marriages that broke down, for children that went astray, and so on.
It seems to me that it's important to understand that Jesus's promise is conditional. He said IF you remain in me AND my words remain in you THEN ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. If the condition was fully met, then the promise would be fully delivered.
Since this promise is the infallible word of God, spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ, and since we don't always receive what we ask for, then we must be failing (at least in part) to meet the condition. So let's look carefully at Jesus's words.
What does the word remain mean? What does it mean for us to remain in Christ? What does it mean for Christ's words to remain in us? The best understanding I have is that remain means continue to live.
For us to remain in Christ, then, means more than to remember an occasion some years ago when we gave our live to Christ; it means to continue to live in Him. If we continue to live in Christ, then we will grow. We will bear more fruit for Him. We will find our character more and more conformed to His. We will find increasingly that our desires align with His.
And for His words to remain in us means more than that we read the Bible from time to time. It means that we study, and meditate, and live in accordance with what we read. We will increasingly live and think the way the Bible teaches us to.
If some of what we pray for doesn't happen, then it must be true that EITHER we're not completely living in Jesus OR the word of God is not living completely in us. And that's true, of course. Like every Christian I've ever met, I live partly in Jesus and partly in worldliness, partly for Him, partly for myself and partly for others. Like every Christian, I read the Bible sometimes, and I listen to sermons sometimes, but I don't fully believe (or even understand) every word of the Bible, I don't remember everything I've learned, and I don't allow everything I do remember to change how I live, how I think, or how I act.
In short, I remain partly in Christ and His words remain partly in me. So some of my prayers are answered, and some are not.
And if I want more of my prayers answered, I know what to do. I can choose to live more completely in Christ - give myself more to prayer, Bible study, worship and the church - and allow the word of God to live more completely in me - meditate on scripture, memorise it, believe it and obey it.
If I lived more completely in Christ, and if His words lived more completely in me, my will would be more conformed to His. What I wished for would become more like what God wishes for. I would pray for different things. I would seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and I would pray less for practical and financial things because I would trust that, as I seek the kingdom, those things will be given to me as well, as Jesus promised in Matthew 6v33.
But what about my sick friend, or my unsaved neighbour? I have three answers. They're not totally satisfactory, but I hope they help:
Firstly, I believe that every time I pray for anybody, it does some good.
Secondly, the more I live in Jesus, and the more His words live in me, the more I will know about how to pray for others and what to pray for.
Thirdly, the more I live in Jesus, and the more His words live in me, the more I will grow in righteousness, and the less my sin will impede my prayers.