Confidence After Unanswered Prayer (1 John 5.13-15)

This sermon was preached on June 1st, 2025.

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 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.

I grew up in the age of the action figure and in the age of Saturday morning cartoons, and my favorite was probably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It felt like every time I got ahold of $5 I was begging to go to Wal-Mart so I could get another TMNT action figure. 

When I got older, all of those got stored in an old book bag, and I didn’t see them again until a few years ago when I opened the bag. And as I looked through my old collection, I remember thinking 1) these would be worth some money if they were in pristine condition and 2) these aren’t anywhere close to pristine condition. 

Then I also remember thinking: I used these exactly how they were meant to be used. No one at the toy company designed and created this thing to stay in a box, untouched—to put on a shelf and just look at. They were meant to have the hands of a little kid tear into the packaging and pull the arms and legs, and scuff the paint and all the rest. These toys weren’t made to be delicate art pieces. They are toys. 

Sometimes I think we can treat our faith like a collectible. It’s a treasure, after all. We can like looking at it and thinking about it. We can like the fact that its ours. And we can put it on a shelf to admire it, afraid that its value would somehow decrease if we let it out of the box.

But our faith is something that is meant to be lived out in the real world roller coaster of our experience in this broken world. The gospel—the good news that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus God has brought forgiveness, transformation, and hope to our world—this is meant to out of the box and put to use. Of course, our faith is not a toy to be used and manipulated. It is something given to us by God—something that can withstand whatever gets thrown at it, if we are willing to wrestle with God in the middle of valleys of the shadow of death, in the middle of this journey that is leading us somewhere but is not yet there. 

The letter of 1 John is written to a bunch of people for whom the treasure of their faith in Jesus has been damaged in some big ways. They’ve looked at their faith and realize that the arm has been pulled off and the paint is chipped and they’re trying to get their bearings, asking some important questions. What does it mean to be children of God when our faith collides with the real-world realities and disappointments of life? 

The last chapter of 1 John touches on three areas in particular: unanswered prayer, the death of those who seem to have wandered far from God, and the depth of spiritual darkness in our world. This morning we’ll look at the first of those: Prayer.

John begins in v13 by speaking of why he’s writing: so that “those who believe in the name of the Son of God may know that you have eternal life.” In a sense, this could be part of the mission statement for all of Scripture. It’s written so that may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that what he has done is definitive for us. So that we may put our trust in Jesus and what he has accomplished, and so that our confidence will be that what he has won for us will be given to us by God. 

That’s what John means when he says that we may know that we have eternal life. Eternal life is not just long life. When it says “eternal” it’s pointing to the quality of the life that we receive from God. Yes, it’s eternal in that it lasts. But it’s also eternal in the sense that we are receiving life from the God who is life—the God who is love. It’s an abundance of life—a worthiness that is ours that will not go away. 

But living out this reality in the in-between world of Jesus’ victory and the full application of that victory can be difficult, and for many of us it will means having our preconceptions shaken. Which is why John doesn’t stop at verse 13, but keeps writing. 

“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.

I believe that the people John is writing to had just gone through a season when their prayers were unanswered. Where they had prayed for good things—unity among those who are followers of Jesus. And instead of a supernatural intervention of God to mend the relationships in the church, a huge traumatic split had happened. 

So they started trying to make sense of it. And their brains went where a lot of ours go when our prayers seem to go unanswered: “God must not hear me. Either I have sin that is keeping God from answering me or he doesn’t really have his ear turned toward me or he has more important stuff than me to worry about. Whichever of those it may be, it definitely means I can’t have confidence as I pray.” 

I know this personally. There have been many times in my life when I prayed hard for things that did not happen. And I don’t mean I prayed to win the lottery or prayed to get my favorite car. I mean times when I prayed for good things. Prayers that should have been answered “yes.” 

My senior year of high school, my dad got very very sick and spent a good chunk of that year in the hospital. I remember praying for him—hours and hours of prayer. Prayer alone. Prayer with my family. Prayer with my church. And…he died. 

I remember I was actually at church when it happened, and one of the leaders of the church drove me to the hospital. 

I was silent, and I guess he was uncomfortable with the silence, so he started talking. It wasn’t a long drive, but I remember one thing distinctly. He said “I don’t know what happened, Tim. I could have sworn God was going to heal your dad. I guess we didn’t pray hard enough.”

That moment is when the simplicity of my faith shattered. Because I knew that wasn’t true. I knew we had prayed hard enough. We had prayed hard enough and then some. And that began a season of wrestling and is still going on. But it also began a season of me dealing with the real God in this real world, and not the God of my imagination in a world where everything works out. 

I share all of that to say that I don’t repeat these words of John with any callousness or with thinking that it’s truly simple. And that wasn’t John either. He’s a man who knew much suffering and loss in his life. Lots of things that did not work out and, I’m sure, lots of unanswered prayers. That’s true of Scripture as a whole. The human authors of Scripture were absolutely not people for whom everything was great. They were people who had experienced great suffering in their lives. 

That’s the man who writes here that we can have confidence in approaching God. That we are heard, that we can pray according to his will and that he will answer. But how can he say this? And how can I believe it, after so many prayers unanswered? 

I think it’s only because of the reality of Jesus. John had been there for the whole of Jesus’ ministry. He had heard Jesus pray and seen healing happens. He had also heard Jesus pray the night before his crucifixion that he wouldn’t have to face the agony of the cross, and then entrust himself to the will of God. He had seen Jesus face the agony of the cross and die. And he had seen the Lord Jesus raised from the dead in victory. 

For Jesus, the prayer that his suffering may pass by him was answered “no”—but only because a great vindication awaited. And Jesus was not handed over to an unending despair and suffering. He was vindicated in resurrection. 

Prayer is communication with God—God who is present and loves to hear his children’s voices. And when we think of prayer, it is less a formal us coming into the presence of a king that we don’t actually have a personal relationship with, and more like family talk about important things. Prayer is family talk about our shared life with our Father, where we are being trained as his children on what it means to be a part of this family. That’s what this passage means when it talks about praying according to God’s will. Prayer is not pulling the lever on a slot machine or buying a lottery ticket. 

Confidence in prayer is speaking to God knowing that we are asking a Father who gives good gifts to his children and who is at work in this world, not simply to give us a best life now, but is at work to make all things new. And he is wrestling among the nonsense of sin and suffering, joining us in it. And he does not leave us alone in it, but until all who are going to be set free are set free, until the earth is filled with his love and renewal, he remains with us. 

I’m not saying this makes the suffering any easier. Yet I think it gives us a perspective on the temporariness of our lives. Here’s what I mean—we live in a broken world. And when we pray for healing, we are praying for a temporary thing. For everyone that Jesus healed in the gospels died. He raised Lazarus back from death, but Lazarus died again. All of those healings and the raising of Lazarus were signs pointing to a greater healing and a greater resurrection. A healing and resurrection that is complete and whole, and unending. Not just life, but eternal life—life abundant in the experience of it and never ending.

I’m not saying that we stop praying for healing. Or we stop praying for temporary things. We continue to pray. But I say we take the long-view. And again, I know this is cold comfort in the middle of suffering, so I’m not saying we should be exceedingly glad about this. It’s part of the wrestling. 

But I’m saying this: God’s YES to our prayers of healing and restoration are so much more grand than individuals being healed and temporary things being restored to temporary life. It’s the undoing of all that is wrong. It is the healing of all that is wrong. So that all the “no” answers to our prayers await an emphatic YES, spoken by God in Christ. 

In this life, you’re going to have things that you pray for—good things that you pray for—where the answer seems like no or the answer seems like silence. And when this happens, don’t disengage. Don’t despair. Wrestle with God. Get angry. Be sad. And bring all of that to him. Follow the pattern of Scripture, which is able to be much more honest with God than we tend to be. God would much rather have us wrestling with him than running. Fight. Struggle. Doubt, and do not fear. 

God has given us a glimpse in Jesus of his purposes for us. And there is nothing that can separate us from his love for us, which is the most permanent thing in the entire universe. Throw yourself on that love, and do not let the temporary “nos” to our prayers cause you to despair and give up. He will not fail. He will not lose you. You are not your own, but you belong to God—and he will fight ever bit of the nonsense of sin and suffering and death until it is not only defeated but destroyed. And he will have the final word. Not a temporary word that makes a good thing happen for a season, but the final word, which we overhear when we turn to the end of Scripture, the last chapters of Revelation—he who is the alpha and omega, first and last, the resurrected and enthroned Jesus says “Behold! I am making all things new.” 

I say this to myself, and I struggle with it. Because I’ll tell you today, as a 41 year old, I’d rather have my dad with me right now. But I don’t think I’ll feel that way forever. 

Hate the wrong of this world and cling to this promise here. Continue to pray, for God has established prayer as a way that he works through us in this world. And do not give up. Every unanswered prayer awaits the great YES of God’s renewal of all things.