Audio Transcript

We all want our prayers to work. So what prayers are guaranteed to work? In discovering which prayers are effective, we can start with Jesus’s astonishing promise to all of us in John 15:7. Here’s his pledge to his followers: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Ask whatever you wish! What an astonishing, open-ended promise to boost our prayer lives. But it’s given parameters by what makes for an effective prayer life. Did you catch that? “If my word abides in you.” John Piper preached a sermon on this text back in the early weeks of 1993, in a sermon fitly titled “Ask Whatever You Wish.” It led to this great clip where he explained the key to an effective prayer life. Here’s Pastor John, from about thirty years ago.

Prayer is for granting us the joy of seeing God’s will executed through us as it becomes our will. The only joy in life that lasts is when our desires are drawn from his desires, and those desires are the ones that have the promise made to them: “Ask . . . and it will be done for you.” Here is the way John put it: “Whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him” (1 John 3:22).

Prayer Is for Spiritual Desires

Prayer is not for gratifying natural desires. Prayer is given as a gift for the joy and the satisfaction of those people whose heart is so in tune with God that they keep his commandments and do what is pleasing to him. If you have no interest in obeying God, in bringing the whole of your life — your attitude from morning to night — into conformity to his values, and in getting your desires from his desires, prayer is not your business. James put it like this: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3). And then he calls them adulteresses in the next verse (James 4:4). Do you know why? He’s picturing the church as the wife, God as the husband, and prayer as asking the husband for money to pay the paramour down the hall with whom she sleeps. That’s a pretty ugly view of prayer, isn’t it?

Prayer is to bring our lives into conformity with the desires of our husband, God, not to ask him for the wherewithal to consort with the world. Prayer is not for the satisfying and gratifying of natural desires — until those natural desires come into the service of the hallowing of God’s name, the seeking of God’s kingdom, and the doing of God’s will.

“The major challenge in prayer is becoming the kind of people who are not dominated by natural desires.”

The words of Jesus abiding in us prepare us for fruit-bearing prayer. The words of Jesus abiding in us prepare us for fruit-bearing. If prayer is not for the gratifying of our natural desires, but for fruit-bearing for God, then the major challenge before us at the beginning of 1993 in prayer is becoming the kind of people who are not dominated by natural desires. That is the major challenge in prayer: becoming the kind of people who are not dominated by natural desires, but who are dominated by spiritual desires.

This is what Paul calls ceasing to be a natural person and becoming a spiritual person, or growing beyond being carnal people to being spiritual people. Of course, we want to eat. Of course, we’d like to succeed. Of course, we want clothes on our back, and a roof over our head, and education for our children. But if those things are not subordinate in our lives to the big issues that make us tick, then we’re not going to pray with success. We’re not. Prayer is going to be so worldly, so earthly, so unspiritual, God will wonder what it has to do with him. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you,” you will become that kind of person: “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).

Six Ways Jesus’s Words Prepare Us to Pray

Let me give you some examples of how the word of Jesus abiding within makes you that kind of person, in order that you might pray.

1. The word humbles us.

First John 1:10: “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” — meaning, if his word were in us, we’d know ourselves aright. The key to a humble, proper assessment of who we are before God comes one way: by the word of God dwelling within. And without that proper self-assessment, we will not be in tune with God and know how to pray according to his will.

2. The word exalts Jesus.

John 17:8: Jesus says, “They have received [my words] and have come to know in truth that I came from you.” In other words, the word received and abiding is the key to unlock not only a true knowledge of ourselves in humility, but an exalted knowledge of God and his Son, Jesus, coming from him. We cannot pray aright until we know Jesus as he is. We can’t pray aright until we have an exalted view of the meaning of the coming of the Son into the world.

3. The word defeats Satan.

First John 2:14 says, “I write to you, young men, because the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.” Unless the word of God is abiding in us, Satan will dominate, he will control, and he will deceive and bring us into odds with God rather than being in tune with God. In order to pray in tune with God, Satan must be defeated, and he was defeated in the young men in Ephesus and the other churches by the abiding of the word of God.

4. The word bears love.

John 14:24: “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words” — which means that the words of Jesus define the path of love. We cannot pray fruit-bearing prayers until we know the path on which the fruit is born, and the fruit is always born in the path of love and not outside that path. If you want to know the path of love along which prayers are answered — namely, the path of love — you must have the word of God abiding within you. You can’t know what love is any other way than by the word of God. John says, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments” (1 John 5:2).

“The key to a humble, proper assessment of who we are before God comes one way: by the word of God dwelling within.”

You may think you’re loving God by not checking into the Bible at all. How many articles, how many books do I read today where the concepts of mercy, compassion, and love are used as criteria with no defense that that’s the way God sees things at all? There’s no defense that this is God’s view of love, God’s view of mercy, God’s view of compassion. You just take the word right out of context, and since it’s a politically correct word, it works. It doesn’t really matter whether it comes from God. If you want to know the path of love, you must have the word of God abiding in you, because many things look loving that are not loving.

5. The word assures.

John 8:47: “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” What that means is that if you hear God, receive the words of God and have his word abiding in you, it is evidence that you are of God — that is, chosen of God, born of God, elect. In other words, the whole issue of assurance is riding on this word. When you go to pray, one of the great hindrances to prayer and faith and hope in prayer is, Am I of God? Am I born of God? Am I in the family? How do I know I’m in the family? This text says you know you’re in the family if you hear the word of God, if you receive the word of God, if the word of God comes home and finds a place in you. The word receives affirmation and a yes and an amen.

6. The word sanctifies.

John 15:3: “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.” And John 17:17: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” So, we have cleanness and we have sanctification coming to us through the word.

Praying in Tune

There are a lot of other examples of how the word abiding in us fits us to pray, but here are six:

a humble view of ourselves
an exalted view of the Savior
triumph over the devil
knowledge of the path of love
assurance of our election
the power of holiness

Those six and many more come to us by having the word of God abide with us, abide in us, and therefore fit us for being the kind of people who will pray in tune with God and hear the promise: “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

Some truths about God we receive into our minds as we might receive a houseguest, expecting them to behave nicely and generally keep the furniture in place. But then, sooner or later, we hear the sounds of drills and saws. We feel the rumble of a sofa being dragged across the floor. And we discover that we have welcomed not a houseguest but a construction worker.

One such truth, for many of us, is the sovereignty of God. That God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11) struck me, at first, as both biblically plain and experientially sweet. I became a Calvinist almost without realizing it. But then, in time, no truth caused me more mental angst, and even anguish, than this doctrine of God’s total, unstoppable sovereignty. I had imagined myself the calm host of this truth, until my mind became a construction zone.

“Over creation, over history, and over hearts, God reigns.”

Many could testify to a similar experience of mental renovation. Open the door to God’s sovereignty, and walls of supposed rationality may collapse. Stairways of instinct may be turned right around. A whole new floor of possibility may be added. You will emerge “renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4:23), but the process may sometimes feel like a hammer blow.

How Sovereign Is He?

Whatever place God’s sovereignty has in our present mental framework, we may find help from Acts 4:23–31, a passage that has renovated many minds. Perhaps nowhere else in Scripture do we get such a sweeping sense of God’s sovereignty in so small a space.

The early church prays, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them . . .” (Acts 4:24). Their “sovereign Lord” is none other than the sovereign Creator of Genesis 1: star-speaker, mountain-maker, ocean-carver, creature-crafter. And as the rest of Scripture celebrates, the same God who spoke the world into being goes on speaking, upholding “the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). His sovereignty over creation continues every second. Not a blade of grass grows without him saying so.

But his sovereignty doesn’t end with creation. “Sovereign Lord . . . who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain?’” (Acts 4:24–25). The events of Good Friday may have seemed to some like a chaotic tragedy, like innocence caught in the death gears of political corruption, but the believers say, “No, the death of Christ fulfilled the story of David’s ancient psalm. For a thousand years, the threads of history have been running toward the cross.” History, to them, was prophesied, predestined, planned (Acts 2:23; 4:28).

And not just the events of history, but even the desires and impulses of human hearts. “Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27–28). Why did Judas betray his Lord? Why did Herod mock the King of kings? Why did Pilate, knowing his duty, let justice be trampled by the raging mob? On one level, because Judas wanted money, because Herod “was hoping to see some sign” (Luke 23:8), because Pilate feared man. These were “lawless men” (Acts 2:23), fully responsible for their sins. But on another level, on the ultimate level, they acted as they did because this is what God had predestined to take place.

Here, then, is the sweep of God’s sovereignty in the space of a few verses. Over creation, over history, and over hearts, God reigns. And such a reign cannot help but renovate our minds.

Renovation of the Mind

One of the marvelous features of Acts 4:23–31 is that these believers not only affirm God’s exhaustive sovereignty, but they also teach us how to apply it. And oh, how we need such teaching. Countless errors creep into minds and churches when we take true doctrine from Scripture without also allowing Scripture to guide our applications. And few doctrines are more prone to misapplication than the sovereignty of God.

The prayer of Acts 4, repeated, internalized, embraced, would guard us from a dozen dangers and keep us on God’s level path, even if the process brings pain. For truth can indeed seem “painful rather than pleasant” for a time. But like God’s fatherly discipline, “later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

Here, then, are three new rooms (among others) God’s sovereignty builds into the minds of those who welcome it.

1. God is sovereign — so pray boldly.

Remarkably, the high sovereignty we encounter in Acts 4 comes to us not in a treatise, a confession, a debate, or even a sermon, but a prayer. While some hear of sovereignty and wonder what difference their prayers could make, the early church received sovereignty as a reason to pray. Here, they kneel before a “sovereign Lord” (Acts 4:24); they plead beneath his providence.

God’s sovereignty rightly communicates something of his transcendence, his highness and holiness. But the believers in Acts 4 know something else about God: in his transcendence, he remains deeply personal with his people. He speaks and listens, invites us to pray and responds to our prayers — all while somehow weaving everything into his “definite plan” (Acts 2:23).

Rightly understood, faithful prayer depends on both God’s transcendence and his nearness. If God were only transcendent, he wouldn’t bend to hear our prayers; if he were only personal and near, he wouldn’t be able to answer our prayers. But if God is both transcendent and personal, mighty and near, then he can both hear our petitions and act. We don’t need to know exactly how he sovereignly folds our prayers into his plans. It’s enough for us to know that he does.

2. God is sovereign — so take action.

The early believers were heirs, as we are, to Jesus’s promise to build his church (Matthew 16:18). As the kingdom spreads throughout the book of Acts, they know they are not the ones spreading it, not ultimately. Such expansion was the work of the risen Jesus, who had poured his Spirit upon his people (Acts 1:1, 8). Seated upon his throne, he was sovereignly fulfilling his promise to build the church against the gates of hell.

But the church did not for that reason grow passive or complacent. They did not merely wait and watch the Holy Spirit act. At Pentecost, Peter gets up and actually preaches (Acts 2:14). Before the council, Peter and John take a breath and actually obey God rather than man (Acts 4:19–20). And when persecuted, the church prays for boldness and actually continues “to speak the word of God” (Acts 4:31). They trusted God would sovereignly fulfill his promises — and then they acted as if he just might do so through their efforts.

For these believers, a seemingly closed door (“Speak no more to anyone in this name,” Acts 4:17) was no reason to stand back and watch; it was reason to pray for boldness, stand up, and turn a handle. They trusted that the same “hand” that governed history was with them still, ready to “stretch out” not before, but precisely “while” they went forth and spoke (Acts 4:28, 30). So, as you stand before some opportunity for the gospel, even if many obstacles stand in the way, take courage from God’s sovereignty and act.

3. God is sovereign — so draw near.

Amid their affliction, we might have expected the believers to address God as something other than “sovereign Lord” — perhaps “sympathetic Lord” or “merciful Lord” or “loving Lord.” These titles are certainly appropriate, and Scripture proposes them to the suffering elsewhere (Hebrews 4:15; 2 Corinthians 1:3). But this time, in their pain, these Christians drew near to the sovereign Lord. They did so for at least two reasons.

First, they knew that only a sovereign God could take the wrongs done against us and turn them for our good. Sympathy, mercy, and love are precious qualities in our God, but their preciousness runs thin if he cannot actually do something about our pain. But oh, how he can.

“In his sovereignty, he became a Lord with scars.”

The God we serve was able to take the worst moment in the history of the world and turn it into a moment of eternal remembrance (Acts 4:27–28). And the early church knew that if God could do that at the cross, then he could do it anywhere and everywhere for anyone, no matter how black the sorrow or deep the loss. As on the world’s worst Friday, he can take our most shattered days, rearrange the pieces, and make them spell good.

Then, second, who is this “sovereign Lord”? He is not only the God who turned such a Friday good; he is the God who felt this Friday’s sharpest grief. In his sovereignty, God could have stayed aloof from us, working out his plan from his high throne. But he didn’t. Instead, in his sovereignty, he put on flesh and bone. He took the dark prophecies of the Messiah’s sufferings and laid them on his own human shoulders. He received the whips and the nails and the thorns. In his sovereignty, he became a Lord with scars. And therefore he is, and ever remains, the strongest refuge for suffering saints.

Receive, then, this renovating doctrine of God’s unstoppable sovereignty. Watch how it inspires your prayers, emboldens your witness, and then, in the pit of your deepest pain, leads you to the one who once died under sorrow, and now lives forever as Lord over it all.

I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” (Psalm 16:2)

In Psalm 16, David is taking refuge in God. Taking refuge includes David’s prayer for God to keep him. In other words, the prayer “preserve me” (Psalm 16:1) is itself a taking refuge in God. But David doesn’t simply ask God to keep him. He also speaks and declares truth to God. He exults in Yahweh his refuge (Psalm 16:2).

The last phrase of verse 2 is packed with deep theological truth and precious fuel for worship. So, what does David mean when he says, “I have no good apart from you”?

God is the source of all goodness.

Every good that is good comes from the God who is Good. God is the maker and sustainer of all created goods. Thus, in Genesis 1, he creates and then appraises his work: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

“Every good that is good comes from the God who is Good.”

Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), the brilliant medieval theologian, saw in this truth compelling evidence for God’s existence. He noted that everyone agrees there is a great variety of goods in the world. There are physical goods, intellectual goods, relational goods. This is a basic fact of reality. From this fact, Anselm asks, “What makes all of the good things good?” And he concludes that the good things are not independently good. They are not good by themselves. Rather, there must be some ultimate good that makes all the other things good.

In other words, Anselm reasoned there must be a supreme good that is the source of all other goodness. In doing so, he was following in the footsteps of David in Psalm 16. David confesses that there is a Supreme Good that makes all other goods good. And Yahweh is this Supreme Good. Or, as David prays elsewhere, God is my “exceeding joy” — literally, “the joy of joys” (Psalm 43:4). David knows his refuge is the foundational joy on which all other joys are built.

God’s goodness is unique.

All created goods are finite, temporal, and changing. But God is infinite, eternal, and unchanging. The apostle James celebrates this fact: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).

Created goods cast shadows. As good as they are, they are not infinite goods. They are limited, and they fade. But God has no shadow, and he does not change. His goodness is without boundary or limit. His is an absolute and essential goodness.

God is goodness itself.

God’s perfections aren’t just qualities that he happens to have. They are essential to him. They are our human descriptions of his being, his essence, his nature, his very God-ness. This is what it means for God to be holy. His attributes are utterly perfect and wholly distinct from the derivative, dependent attributes of his creatures.

We call a man righteous because he meets the standard of righteousness. We call a man wise because he conforms to the pattern of wisdom. But God is the standard. He is the pattern. He is not merely righteous; he is righteousness itself. He is not merely wise; he is wisdom itself. He is not merely strong; he is strength itself. And he is not merely good; he is goodness itself. Or again, the Lord is not merely righteous, wise, strong, and good. He is the Righteous, the Wise, the Strong, and the Good.

This is what it means for God to be God, for God to be Yahweh, I Am Who I Am. This is why Jesus can say, “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). He is the fountain of all goodness, the source and origin of all pleasure and joy. He is infinite, eternal, unchanging, inexhaustible, self-sufficient and all-sufficient, without limit or diminishment.

God has no need of my goodness.

Because God is the source of all goodness, my goodness does not benefit God in any way. He is above all need and all improvement. As Paul says, “God . . . does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24–25).

“The Lord is all-sufficient, and it is because he is all-sufficient that he can be sufficient for me.”

David in this psalm revels in the fact that he has nothing to offer God but his poverty, his weakness, his need. He has no gift to give to God that he might be repaid. The Lord is all-sufficient, and it is because he is all-sufficient that he can be sufficient for me. It is because he has no needs that he can meet mine. It is because he is the Supreme Good that I can take refuge in him.

Drops and the Ocean

Finally, don’t miss the fact that these weighty theological truths are deeply personal for David. David doesn’t merely confess that Yahweh is the Lord; he says, “You are my Lord.” What wonders are embedded in that little possessive pronoun. The infinite and eternal fountain of goodness somehow, some way belongs to me. In his infinite all-sufficiency, he condescends and allows me to call him “mine.” My Lord, my Master, my King.

And this means that God is not merely the ultimate and supreme Good. He is my Good. And for him to be my highest good is for him to be my greatest pleasure. My ultimate well-being and happiness are found in him and him alone. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) expressed this glorious truth as well as anyone else in his sermon “The True Christian’s Life a Journey Towards Heaven”:

God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper happiness, and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here: better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops; but God is the ocean. (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 17:437–38)