1 John 5:14-21
Pray, holliness and a Savior
Prayer
1 John 5:14–15 (NIV)
14 This
is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according
to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we
ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.
·
We
are talking about prayer
·
One
of the great benefits and blessings of being a Christian is the ability to pray
and knowing God hears us through Jesus!
Now some of you have
a real misunderstanding of prayer, so I want to clear some of the
misunderstandings of prayer.
·
I prayed and God
didn’t do it that means prayer doesn’t work.
a. God’s, God’s like a
good parent and sometimes when a child comes to a parent the answer is, “Yes.”
Sometimes the answer is, “No.” Sometimes the answer is, “Later.
The
promise here is that God hears Us. God hears all your prayers. You can ask him
about anything. You can talk to God, respectfully make inquiry of him about
anything, and he hears. If you’re a believer he hears and answers! Sometimes, He
answers, “Yes,” Sometimes, he answers, “No,” he answers, “Sometimes, later.”
·
The drive –thru effect
(like driving pray into the box and go to the window and get your blessing!
a. There is no way to
pay for your prayers
b. There is now
manipulating God in to what we want
c. God is a Good god
and good Dad and its “His will be done”
Paganism
says that God’s up here, we’re down here and that God’s not going to be good to
us unless we manipulate him. That’s not
how God works! We have to stay in God will, follow His plan! It’s not about us,
it’s about Him!
The
key in all of this, though, there’s the little phrase in here I’ll point out.
“If we ask anything according to his” “WILL”
Sometimes
prayer is about us speaking to God and him responding, but oftentimes it’s
about him speaking and us just listening. And sometimes prayer’s whole purpose
is not to move the hand of God, but to change the heart of people. Sometimes
God answers and sometimes it’s about learning in the quietness of God. It’s
about His will and purpose, It’s about us conforming to Him and learning to
Stay in His will. It’s called justification where we become like Jesus, Not God
taking orders from us.
Intercessory Prayer
and letting go!
1 John 5:16–17 (NIV)
16 If
you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you
should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin
does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying
that you should pray about that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, and there is
sin that does not lead to death.
·
As Christians our
prayer life isn’t just selfish, where we pray for ourselves. It’s also about loving,
and praying for other people too. It’s called intercession.
o You ever just have
folks that drive you crazy
o The ones you just
want to talk about
o The ones who, have
sinned and you just can’t get through to?
o Don’t talk about
them, pray for them
o
What
do you do with your frustration? Well, you don’t gossip. You intercede. If you
have to talk about the person, talk to God.
Intercession
is where people who drive us nuts are not an opportunity for us to join them in
sin by sinning against them through gossip, anger, or bitterness. It’s a way of
bringing God into the relationship so that it’s not just between us and them,
but that God is involved and we trust God to work on the heart. One of the
great benefits of the Christian life is prayer. It’s one of the effects of
eternal life. Eternal life is a life where we don’t have to fix everything. We
don’t need to know everything. We don’t need to do everything. We Just have to
give it to God and let God sort it all out!
Letting Go! The Sin that leads to Death!
One
of the hardest things about preaching the bible is verses like these. I tried
to figure out a way to slide right past what sin leads to death. It was apparently just a known fact when he
wrote this “an ancient colloquialism”. But now it’s left for all of us to
figure out and the theologians have been busy on this verse. So I’m going to
give you a couple of them and my opinion of what he means!
1.
Really
bad sins, which is like really wet water. The Catholics will teach you there’s
mortal and venial sins
2.
Apostasy,
that somebody was a Christian but they had reversible jersey and then they
denied Jesus and they flipped the shirt over and “BAM” Satan.
My
opinion!
Matthew 12:31 and 32, Jesus says, “I can forgive any
sin. There’s only one sin I can’t forgive. That’s the sin of, of unbelief. It’s
the sin of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit,” which is if you learn
about Jesus and you see the works of Jesus, you hear the words of Jesus, you
know all about Jesus, and you look at him and you say, “You know what? He’s not
God. He’s Satan. He does all his powerful work by Satan.” What Jesus is
saying is this: he can forgive every sin for those who believe and repent, but
he can’t forgive anyone who has unbelief and un-repentance
You
know the person; they live in sin, Day in and day out. You talk to them you
pray for them and nothing changes. They continue to hurt you, or maybe people
you love. They may even be hurting themselves. You pray and you pray, you
worry, it effects your health, your home, other relationships. You spend your time and resources on this one
person. And I think what he is saying here is sometimes you just have to let
go. Here’s the cold, hard, reality. Not everyone you know is going to heaven.
Not everyone you love will love God. Not everyone that you care about will
change. Not everyone that you want to fix will be straightened out. Some people
will die from their sin; some people will die in their sin; and I believe that
is the sin that leads to death.
Emotionally
this is ultimate act of faith. God, your will be done. You pray and your give
them over to God!
Holiness!
1 John 5:18 (NIV)
18 We
know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of
God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them.
·
We
know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin.
·
This is habitual, ongoing practice.
·
His
point is simply this: That a Christian and sin may meet, but never marry.
·
The
one who was born of God”—that’s Jesus—“keeps him safe – that’s us- and the evil
one”—that’s Satan—“can do him no harm.”
1 John 5:19 (NIV)
19 We
know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control
of the evil one.
Here
is the picture you need to have: you and I are like kids and Satan is a predator—he’s
a predator. That what Satan does is what every predator does. What every
predator does is he puts out all the things that kids like so they will come
over to his house.
·
If
you want sex,
·
if
you want money,
·
if
you want fame, i
·
f
you want power,
·
if
you want knowledge,
·
if
you want control,
Satan
will be happy to give that to you. If you want to sin, he’ll give it. Smile at
you. His whole goal is to draw you near so that you’ll trust him
·
All
your sin is just bait to get a hook in your mouth so that he can reel you in.
·
You
need to know this about your sin. You need to know this about your enemy. You
need to take this to heart.
The
hero in all of this is the Lord Jesus, He is the hero and go on in Verse 20
1 John 5:20 (NIV) We know also that the Son of God has
come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true.
And
we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God
and eternal life.
And
the Lord Jesus Christ gets off his throne and he comes into human history. And
he shows up and he wakes up the children of God. And he takes them by the hand.
And he runs them back to the Father. And he saves them from themselves. This is
eternal life. It’s in Jesus Christ. Every life, apart from Jesus Christ, is
just eternal death, sleeping in the arms of the enemy
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