You have a picture and you have never described it to anybody, and I suspect you have never fully described it to yourself.
In the picture, a prayer goes up. It arrives somewhere. And at the point of arrival there is a sorting, in which the believing part of the prayer is separated out and taken through, and the rest is set aside.
Not thrown away exactly. Nothing in your picture is punitive. Just set aside, because it cannot be acted on.
Which means, in the picture, that when you pray about the one thing you have been praying about for six years, the honest half of it never gets past the door, and what goes through is a fraction, and the fraction is small.
You would not put it that way in a class. If somebody asked you the doctrine you would give them the right answer without a pause.
But that is the picture, and the picture is what runs when you actually pray, and there is a gap between those two things that has been widening for a while.
Before anything else, hear me.
I am not correcting you.
You have not been teaching error. Your doctrine is sound and your students are on solid ground, and I am not going to treat a private picture as though it were a public position.
I am saying I know what the picture looks like. That is all.
What the hearing rests on
Here is the sentence, and I want you to read what the confidence is anchored to.
And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.1 John 5:14-15
If we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us.
The condition in that sentence is about the content of the request, not about the state of the person making it. According to His will. That is the filter, and it is the only filter named.
There is no clause about the proportion of belief in the asker. There is no second gate at which the request is separated into a believing part and a doubting part. John, who was writing to people he was worried about, does not include one, and if the sorting you picture existed, that letter is exactly where you would expect it to be mentioned.
So let me turn and speak straight at you, in that doorway with the music coming out behind you.
You are heard on the basis of what you asked rather than on the ratio of how you asked it. Not one day, not once the honest half firms up, not when the fraction gets bigger. Right now, greeting a family at a door on a warm evening, you are inside a sentence where the confidence rests on the will of God rather than on the composition of the person praying. That is not my opinion. That is what is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a written line and lays it on a real woman in a real doorway.
Now, where did the picture come from?
I would guess it was assembled rather than taught. Nobody stood up and described it to you. It got built out of half sentences over years, the way most private pictures do, and it has never once been said out loud where you could look at it.
That is why it has survived. Your doctrine has been examined by a hundred people. This has been examined by nobody, including you.
And hear this, because it is settled and not still open. You have a whole prayer arriving whole, and no sorting takes place at any door. The word says he heareth us, with no partition in the sentence and no fraction taken off, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real hall on a real evening with the children pushing past your legs.
Six years of prayers went in complete. Every one of them. There is no pile of set aside halves anywhere.
So we are going to put the picture next to the letter.
Not repent of anything. There is nothing to repent of, and a private picture that was never taught is not a false teaching.
We are going to say out loud, once, that the sorting does not happen, and let the whole of the prayer go in, both halves, undivided.
And the way we are going to do that is the way it was done in Mark by a man who said both halves in one breath in front of a crowd and had the whole of it received.
If it feels too easy, that is normal and it is not a failure. A picture that has run unexamined for years makes the truth feel like a shortcut.
So let it be spoken over you before you speak. You are heard on the content of the asking rather than on the composition of the asker, and that has been the arrangement through all six years; 1 John 5 was written long before this picture assembled itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who lifts what is written and sets it down in a real hall, on a real evening, with the music going inside.
And you do not have to feel differently for it to be true. This is not about producing confidence in a doorway. It is about a teacher putting her own picture next to the text at last.
Declare this over yourself
Say these where you are standing. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that has been true through all six years of the picture; the authority in these words is His, delegated to you and carried in His Name, and what is written is made live in a real mouth by His Spirit. And however He answers about the one thing, and He answers in His own way and His own manner, you are inside the promise the whole time He is doing it.
- Picture of a prayer sorted at the door, you are not doctrine, and you are not what happens when I speak in the name of Jesus. 1 John 5 says if we ask any thing according to His will He heareth us, and the only filter named there is the content of the request.
- Gap between what I teach and what runs when I actually pray, you have been unexamined for years and you are being examined tonight. The Holy Spirit has carried six years of whole prayers, and there is no pile of set aside halves anywhere in this.
- Lord, this is the confidence we have in You, and Your word puts it on Your will rather than on my composition. Both halves are going up together this evening, undivided, exactly as they are.
1 John 5:14
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.