The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
June 1, 2003

Boldness in Prayer
I John 5:9-16 

If you could get anything you want, anything at all, just by asking, for what would you ask? A whole world of possibilities is open in before you. Merely ask and you’ll receive. What would you want? Would you be happy once you got it? 

This morning’s epistle reading from First John offers us just that sort of bold possibility. John writes, 

This is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him. (I John 5:15-16)

What an opportunity. God is omnipotent, which is a way of saying God can do whatever God wants to do. We are so wired into God that whatever we ask, God will hear, and whatever God hears, God will do. This is like a divine vending machine. Drop in God’s name. Select your requests and presto, chango, get results. Right here. Right Now. 

To show you what that looks like in action, I have a two-minute video clip from a recent episode of The Simpson’s in which Homer discovers boldness in prayer. 

[Insert clip in which Homer tells his co-worker Carl that he has discovered God doesn’t just answer prayers of professional athletes and Grammy winners. God will also listen to the prayers of a regular guy. Then while driving home from work he prays to discover a new taste sensation. He takes his hands off the steering wheel to pray and command God to do it. Homer’s car swerves in the next lane and he causes a truck filled with fudge to crash. Then a truckload of precooked bacon crashes into it and a piece of fudge covered bacon flies up to Homer’s car and splats on the windshield. Homer peals it off and eats it, thankful for answered prayer. He goes home and we see more prayer. His wife, Marge tells the loudly praying Homer that most people pray silently. The scene ends with Homer saying, “Marge, he’s way the hell up there.”] 

Homer shouts his prayers to a God who is way up there somewhere. God listens and delivers on the spot. That’s Homer’s idea of prayer. Of course, before the episode is over, Homer will learn that prayer doesn’t work like that. Why not? Homer seems to have these verses from First John down pat. Homer’s main concern is that God hears him. If Homer can make God hear him, then whatever he asks is as good as done. Isn’t that what John wrote? 

Not if you rely on the observable facts. Prayer does not work this way. Not all prayers are answered the way we want, if at all. The Christian writer C.S. Lewis wrote of prayer that, “Every war, every famine or plague, almost every deathbed, is the monument to a petition that was not granted.”[1] It’s a fact. Lots of things that people pray for do not come to pass. 

C.S. Lewis writes why he thinks this is so, saying,  

“If an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable ‘success’ in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something much more like magic—a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature.”[2] 

Prayer is not a magic trick. You do not mumble an incantation that will invariably yield results. Instead prayer is the way we share our heartfelt desires with our loving God. The Bible even contains a startling example of unanswered prayer from someone who would surely be in the Prayer Hall of Fame, if there were such a thing. Jesus, arguably the greatest pray-er of all time, had the deepest desire of his heart vetoed by God three times in a row.  

Here’s the scene. Jesus has just enjoyed what we now know as The Last Supper. Judas is off in the night arranging for the arrest. Jesus and the other disciples are in a garden called Gethsemane. Jesus wanders off to one side with Peter, James and John and asks them to pray with him. Then Jesus goes a stone’s throw farther, kneels down, and pours his heart out to God the Father.  

As the disciples sleep a few yards a way, Jesus bares his anguished soul. Jesus has but one simple, bold request, “Let this cup pass from me.” Jesus knows what lies ahead. Before the next day is done, he will have to be obedient to death, a painful and humiliating death on a Roman cross. Jesus, in his humanity, doesn’t want to take this path. Jesus does not want to drink of suffering and death and I can’t blame him.  

Yet prayer is not a command. Prayer is a request and requests may be denied. Jesus even leaves the door open to God denying the request. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus says, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” Jesus asks three times and three times nothing happens. God does not respond in any way verbal or otherwise and moments after his third request, the arrest party enters the garden. Any idea that God is a divine vending machine doling out goodies to all who request was laid to rest fully in Gethsemane. Have you prayed for someone to live and been angered when God did not answer. Join the club. Jesus prayed that same prayer for himself and found his anguished prayer unanswered. 

Yet, what Jesus really wanted was for God’s will to be done. This is the same form of prayer John writes of in his first letter. John writes, “This is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”  

“If we ask anything according to his will.” We pray that God’s will be done not to give God some holy escape clause, an excuse made before the fact. We pray that God’s will be done because anything less will just bring more problems. 

If God really did answer all your prayers on the spot just because you shouted up to heaven, it would be Hell on earth. You and I would take over the God spot. We would become all powerful if God unfailingly did whatever we ask. We would be all-powerful without being all-knowing. I don’t know about you, but if I could get whatever I want, when I want, how I want, I would mess everything up in no time. 

We have to trust God to answer prayers in ways that are best for all concerned, because we are not in a position to determine what is best. Thankfully, God will not answer prayers wrongly just because you ask. God’s freedom to deny your requests actually opens you up to more boldness in prayer. You should let God know exactly what are the desires of your heart. Yet, you need to pray for God’s will to be done in the situation, trusting God’s will to be for the best. You don’t really want anything less than God’s will anyway. 

So Homer Simpson was shouting for nothing. God is not way up there. God is right here with you, listening to you when you pray. But answered prayers are not some magic trick. Prayers are requests made to God, trusting God to make it all work out in the end. Just remember the granddaddy of all unanswered prayers—Jesus in Gethsemane. Jesus’ prayer seemed to go unanswered that night. At least Jesus did not get what he most desired—the cup did not pass from him. Yet, the prayer of Jesus’ heart was answered in an even more wonderful way three days later on Easter morning. That’s the confidence and joy we can have knowing that God really does have the power to make it all work out all right for, 

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia! 

Amen.