1 John 5:14-15–Confidence to Come Towards God

1 John 5:14-15: "And this is the confidence that we have toward 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 the requests that we have asked Him."

This is an amazing passage but it is often misrepresented.  We hear the "whatever we ask, we know that we have," but we neglect the more important, "if we ask anything according to His will He hears us.  In case you missed it (I am, of course, speaking to myself too), the pertinent part of our asking is that it is according to His will.

While we can easily ignore this it is the most important part of coming to God with requests: that our desires and appeals that we bring before God run according to His will.  This is essential.  We can not and should not expect that God would condone or even support sinfulness in any sense.  This includes, at the very least, greed, lust, wantonness, et al.

It is as we are being sanctified that the utter requests of our heart begin to run inline with the will of God.  This is what sanctification is all about and there is nothing more beautiful than that!  Amen that God would see fit to provide us the desires of our hearts as He transforms our hearts' desires to be His!