Anything We Ask
“Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”
Today’s Text: 1 John 3:13-24 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
How are we to understand teaching like this in those situations where we do not “receive from Him anything we ask?” The logic of this teaching tells us that we do not receive anything we ask because we do not keep His commands and we do not do what pleases Him.
And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.
To “believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ” is to believe everything that the Bible says, because the Bible is the testimony of Jesus Christ. To believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the very foundation of the Christian faith.
And the most fundamental application of the Christian faith—the most fundamental application of believing in the name of Jesus Christ—is to love one another.
If we are not loving one another, we are not exercising faith, because we are not exercising obedience. We do not obey the word of God, because, either, (1) we think that our way is better or justified, or (2) we don’t really believe that what the Bible says accurately expresses the will of God.
Maybe it’s a combination of both. Either way, the result is that we do not love one another in the way that God wants us to love one another. And as a consequence, we do not “receive from Him anything we ask.”
God wants us to love one another because we believe in the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice for all of us. And so how would loving one another look like when loving one another is born of true faith?
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
— Verse 16
I pray to God that I would never have to literally give my life for a brother or sister. But I also pray that if I had the opportunity to save a brother or sister by literally laying down my life for them, God would give me the strength to do so.
Anyway, that statement has more to do with a heart posture. Am I willing to make whatever sacrifice is necessary for the sake of what is best for a brother or sister—based on their terms and not my own?
Throughout the ages, many churches have misunderstood true spirituality as “passionate worship”—along the lines of how sports fans worship their teams, how music fans worship artists.
And personally, I try my very best to bring that kind of passion into worshiping the Lord. I believe that disciples of Jesus should try their very best to worship the Lord with such passion.
However, biblically speaking, true spirituality is this:
… by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
— Philippians 2:2b-4
If we want to see the power of God explode in our lives and in our community, because we receive from Him anything we ask, that is what we need to do.
Father, You are high above. Your ways are high above. Your call to love one another seems so impossible for us. But we know that is Your calling for our lives. Transform our hearts so that we can truly believe in the name of Jesus and truly love one another because of faith. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
