We return to the Sunday series on John 15, “Life on the Vine.” And we come to the question of the nature of prayer. The beginning and the end of all conversations about prayer must, biblically and, therefore, necessarily, be centered on “life in Christ.” Your life in Christ may begin with your recognition of your condition: “I am helpless without God.” That place in life causes you to cry, “Help, Lord.” That is enough. In. fact, that is a very good place to start. It is minimal. It is a lost son barely home from the hog trough. He still smells of the pigsty. But in that moment of existential desperation, the boy is home. So, whether you are at the front door of your Father asking to be saved from life apart from Him, or you are living in His home but feel disconnected, or led to leave, or in some other place, this is a message for you. Come and consider “The Open Invitation.”
The Lord grant you the ears to hear and the eyes to see and a heart to understand.
Yours faithfully,
Mike
“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).
“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:7,8).
The Larger Setting
Text without context leads to confusion. Take the verse before us:
Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4).
Taken out of its setting, that promise can leave us disillusioned—or worse, disappointed with God Himself. We have all felt the weight of unanswered prayer: a loved one not healed, a child longed for but never given, a parent taken too soon. Taught wrongly, verses like these become theological cruelty.
Yet the promise is real. It is powerful. And it must be heard in its larger biblical context.
Psalm 37 does not stand alone. It opens with the command, “Fret not yourself because of evildoers.” It calls us to trust, to dwell, to befriend faithfulness, to be still, and to wait patiently. The invitation to delight is joined to the discipline of waiting. The two are not in conflict; they are complementary.
The New Testament presses the same truth further. John writes, “This is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14). Prayer is not a blank check. It is communion within the will of God.
Then Jesus speaks in John 15.
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples” (John 15:7–8).
When Prayer Feels Confusing
Prayer is not a blank check. It is communion within the will of God.
We have all wrestled with this. Larry Crabb, the noted Christian counselor, recalled hearing this very passage as a six-year-old. He went home and decided to put it to the test. He wanted to fly like Superman. So he prayed, “God, You said ask whatever you wish. I wish to be Superman.” He bounded up about half a foot off the ground and moved a foot down the driveway. He tried again. The same result. A third time. Nothing more. That moment, he later said, began “a 50-year journey of some confusion about prayer.”
I can do one better. Around the same age, I heard the same promise and invented my own superhero. I climbed atop a ten-foot outhouse, fastened a cape, jumped—and broke my arm.
These childhood stories are funny now, but they point to something deeper. We grow up and the stakes change. We pray for someone we love, and they are not healed. We pray for someone we love, and they die. Infertile couples sob softly in the night because the child never comes. A child lies awake wondering why God took his daddy. I was that child. For people in such places, this passage—taught wrongly—becomes theological cruelty.
SIDE THOUGHT: This—the careful interpretation and application of the inerrant and infallible Word of the living God—is why every one of us who opens the Scriptures, especially those among us called to teach, must “study to show [ourselves] approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Approved for what? To do the gentle, faithful work of soul care among the people of God. As one of my professors so memorably charged us: Don’t mess with the text. We must never misdiagnose or misapply the living Word to the deep spiritual wounds and needs of human beings. To sin by misappropriating the words of God for those who are looking to Him for help is a crime of cosmic proportions. For this reason, those who teach will be judged with greater strictness (James 3:1).
What the Passage Is Not Saying
This is not a divine guarantee that God must give us whatever we demand. God is not a celestial Santa Claus, nor is He the slave of our whims. Even a good earthly father does not simply grant every request of his children.
Neither is the opposite error true—the quiet fatalism that says, “Since God already knows, why pray?” God has ordained both the ends and the means. He works through the prayers of His people. The prayer of a righteous man avails much.
Context: Abiding in the Vine
The setting of the promise is the Vine and the branches. Life flows only through union with Christ. Apart from Him we can do nothing. When we abide, His life moves through us. Fruit appears. The Father is glorified. The world sees that we are His disciples.
Affirmation:
When we abide in Christ and seek more of Jesus for our lives, the open invitation to “ask whatever you wish” is answered with fruit that brings honor to the Father in the world.
Condition: Word and Union
The promise begins with an “if.”
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you…”
There must be an organic union. The Word of God must soak into the soul until it shapes desire. John Piper captured it:
“More saturated by the Word,
more surely will our prayers be heard.”
For some of us this means repentance from a hurried, surface religion. For others it means a fresh recommitment to the means of grace—Word, sacrament, and prayer. For still others it means receiving Christ Himself by faith for the first time, so that true abiding can begin.
Affirmation:
When the Word of Christ abides in us and our lives are joined to Him in living union, the invitation to ask whatever we wish becomes the pathway of prayers that God delights to answer.
Clarity: Conformed Desires
When we abide, our wills are gradually conformed to His. Our wishes begin to align with His wishes. We do not use the name of Jesus as a mantra. We come to know His nature, His lordship, His kingdom purposes.
Paul prayed three times for the thorn to be removed. God did not remove it. Instead He answered, “My grace is sufficient for you.” Paul, the great preacher of grace, had to experience that grace in weakness so he could preach it with authority. The prayer was answered—not by removal, but by deeper fruit.
We still pray for healing. We still ask for provision, for open doors, for the desires that weigh on our hearts. Yet as we abide, another prayer rises alongside the first:
“Lord, give me faith to trust You in the midst of this.”
“Lord, work patience and humility while I wait.”
“Lord, teach me gratitude even for what I already have.”
A. W. Pink wrote,
“Real prayer is communion with God so that there will be common thoughts between His mind and ours. What is needed is for Him to fill our hearts with His thoughts, and then His desires will become our desires flowing back to Him.”
Affirmation:
When our desires are reshaped by abiding in Christ, the invitation to ask whatever we wish is fulfilled as His will becomes our will and His glory becomes our greatest joy.
A Living Witness
I walked recently with a young woman and her husband in our congregation through serious illness. After surgery and further treatments still ahead, she wrote:
“God is so good as He has shown my husband and me His love, mercy, and provision as we journey through this. We continue to pray that He will be glorified and that Satan will not get a foothold… We are in His hands.”
Is God answering her prayers? Is fruit appearing? Is the Father glorified?
Yes.
The Redemptive Invitation
This is Christ’s open invitation—not through religion but through relationship, not through duty but through grace, not merely for then but for now, not only for others but for you.
Wherever you are and whatever you face, the Lord Jesus stands ready. He is the true Vine. Come to Him. Abide in Him. Let His words take root in your heart. Receive Him by faith if you never have. Return to Him if you have wandered. Trust Him if you are weary.
Ask whatever you wish—not as a demand, but as a child who is learning the heart of the Father. He will answer. He will produce fruit. And by this the Father will be glorified as you prove to be His disciple.
Follow the Lord Jesus. He alone is the way into the life that prays and the life that is answered. There are no tricks, no insider prayer technique to learn. It’s just life in God, life on the Vine.
Folks, this is the bottom line: When your will, your internal guidance system, is changed to accept Jesus as Lord, you begin to “will” in new ways, with a different level of intimacy, with love and gratitude for His mercy. Augustine said, Love God and do what you will.1 The same is true of prayer, and this is precisely what the Lord Jesus is teaching us: Abide in me and pray what you will.
Today, this is your open invitation.
O DEAR HEAVENLY FATHER: As Thy Son, our Savior, is the Word made flesh, so bring this living Word from John 15 home to our hearts today, that our prayers may rise from lives transformed—for Thy glory and our eternal good.
And in the mysteries of Thy providence and care, when the desires of our hearts seem met with silence, grant us the patience and trust of true children, not foreigners; of family, not strangers; of those who come to a Father, not a transactional deity. For in the sorrow of loss, in the anguish of unanswered prayers, in the midst of spiritual warfare waging all around us, Thy love abideth still. In this Truth we put forward our burdens, our longings, our wounds, and our wishes.
This is our prayer. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
SoulWork
For personal reflection and small-group discussion
1. Where have you felt the tension between God’s promises about prayer and the reality of unanswered requests? How has that tension shaped your view of God?
2. Psalm 37 joins “delight yourself in the Lord” with “wait patiently.” Which of those two commands feels more difficult for you right now, and why?
3. Jesus places the promise of answered prayer inside the larger reality of abiding. In practical terms, what does “abiding in Christ and letting His words abide in you” look like in the ordinary rhythms of your week?
4. Can you recall a time when God answered a prayer differently than you asked—yet the answer produced deeper fruit in you or others? What did you learn about His ways?
5. The young woman’s testimony centers on God’s glory and being “in His hands.” What would it mean for you to shift the primary aim of a current prayer from “getting the outcome I want” to “bearing fruit that glorifies the Father”?
6. Where might the Lord be inviting you today—toward repentance from hurried religion, toward deeper commitment to the means of grace, or toward receiving Christ Himself by faith for the first time?
A Song
This song, “A Promise Is Stronger,” rises from the doctrine of adoption: that we who were once far off have been brought near and made sons and daughters of the Most High through faith in the resurrected and reigning Lord Jesus Christ. When we feel like cosmic orphans, we have a place—and a Father—to come home to.
“A Promise Is Stronger”
Words and Music ©Ⓟ 2012 Michael Anthony Milton (Bethesda Music Group, BMI)
Available on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, and wherever you listen to music.
Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Tractate 7.8.
