Joy in Answered Prayer
Part 5
“Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” John 16:24
“And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” Matthew 21:22
I want to ask you a question and I want you to be honest with me. Not the Sunday morning answer. The real one. When was the last time you prayed for something and actually EXPECTED God to answer? Not hoped. Not wished. Not crossed your fingers and tacked on “if it be Your will” like a spiritual insurance policy just in case nothing happened. I mean genuinely expected – with the same certainty you have that the sun is going to come up tomorrow – that the God who made everything out of nothing heard your prayer and was going to DO something about it. If you had to think about that for more than a few seconds this post is for you.
The Verse Most People Only Half Read
John 16:24. Jesus is in the upper room with His disciples. This is the night before the cross. The last supper. The most important conversation He will ever have with these men. And in the middle of it He says “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” Now I want you to catch something here because most people miss it. He does not say ask and you will receive so that your NEEDS will be met. He does not say ask so that your PROBLEMS will be sorted out. He says ask and you will receive SO THAT YOUR JOY MAY BE FULL. Jesus directly connects answered prayer to joy. FULL joy. Overflowing joy. The kind of joy that has no room left in the glass. Which means if your joy is running on empty right now one of the reasons might be staring you right in the face: you stopped asking. Or worse – you kept asking but you stopped expecting.
Why We Stopped
Let me tell you what happens to most Christians and their prayer life because pretending about it is not going to help anyone. We start out on fire. We pray for everything. We pray for parking spaces and healing and wisdom and for that difficult person at work. And some of those prayers get answered and it is AMAZING and we tell everyone. But then we pray for something big. Something we really need. Something desperate. And it does not happen. Or it does not happen the way we wanted. Or it does not happen when we wanted. And that unanswered prayer sits in our chest like a stone and quietly whispers “See? It does not work. Not for you anyway.” And from that moment on we start hedging. We pray with one eye open. We add qualifiers to everything. We lower our expectations so that we will not be disappointed and we call that maturity when really it is just self-protection dressed up in spiritual language.
I have been there. It is a miserable place to live. And it is not where God wants you.
What Jesus ACTUALLY Said
Here is the thing about Jesus and prayer. He was not vague about it. He was not careful. He was not diplomatic. He said things about prayer that should make every one of us sit up in our chairs. “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do” (John 14:13). “If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14). “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). Whatever. Anything. Whatever you wish. Those are not careful words. Those are BOLD words. And Jesus said them on the most important night of His life knowing full well what they meant. Now I am not saying God is a vending machine. Put in a prayer get out a blessing. That is not what this is. But I AM saying that Jesus intended prayer to be a place of POWER and JOY and encounter – not a religious duty you tick off your list between breakfast and checking your phone. Smith Wigglesworth said “I do not ever go to God and come away on the same level as I went.” THAT is what prayer is supposed to be. You go in one way and come out another.
Let Me Tell You What Happens When God Answers
I want you to think about a time when God answered a prayer for you. Maybe it was big. Maybe it was small. Maybe you had almost forgotten you even prayed it. But then something happened. A friend you had been praying for called and said something shifted in their life. A cheque arrived in the post that you were not expecting. You prayed for wisdom about a decision and a conversation with someone – maybe even a stranger – gave you the exact clarity you needed. You prayed for your child and you saw something change in their eyes. Do you remember what that felt like? It was not just relief. It was not just gratitude. It was JOY. The deep holy kind of joy that makes you want to laugh out loud and cry at the same time because you realise HE IS REAL. HE IS LISTENING. HE IS MOVING. And that joy does something inside you. It feeds your faith. It makes you want to pray again. It makes you want to pray BIGGER. And then THAT prayer gets answered and the joy gets deeper and the faith gets stronger and the cycle builds – prayer leads to answers, answers lead to joy, joy leads to more prayer, more prayer leads to more answers. That is the engine God designed to keep your spiritual life running hot. HOW COOL IS THAT?!
And what happens when you stop praying? The engine cools. The joy fades. You are back to running on fumes and wondering why the Christian life feels so flat. It is not complicated. If your joy is empty check your prayer life. They are connected and Jesus said so Himself.
But What About Unanswered Prayer?
I know what some of you are thinking. “But I DID pray. And God did NOT answer.” I hear you. And I am not going to dismiss that with a bumper sticker. Unanswered prayer hurts. It really does. But let me offer you a few things to think about because I have been on both sides of this and I have learned some things the hard way.
Sometimes what looks like an unanswered prayer is actually an answered one that you did not recognise. God said yes to something BETTER than what you asked for but you were so focused on your version of the answer that you missed His. Let me tell you a quick story. I used to pray for specific things and when God gave me something different I would put it aside like it was the wrong order at a restaurant. “That is not what I asked for.” But God is not a waiter. He is a Father. And a good Father gives His children what they NEED not always what they WANT. Any parent understands this. Your child wants to play with the sharp knife because it is shiny. You say no. Not because you are mean. Because you can see what they cannot. If you have ever said no to your own child for their own good then you already understand how God works. You just have not applied it to yourself yet.
Sometimes God’s timing is not your timing. And I know that is frustrating. Believe me I KNOW. Abraham waited twenty-five years for Isaac. Joseph waited thirteen years between the dream and the throne. David was anointed king and then spent years living in caves running from a man who wanted to kill him. God is not slow. He is thorough. And His thoroughness works for your good even when it does not feel like it. I once heard someone say that God is never late but He sure does miss a lot of good opportunities to be early. That is how it feels sometimes. But looking back – and it is always looking back – you can see that His timing was perfect. Every single time.
Start Asking Again
Here is my challenge to you and it is simple. Start asking again. Not the safe hedged insurance-policy prayers where you have already talked yourself out of expecting anything before you have even said amen. REAL prayers. Specific prayers. Bold prayers. The kind that scare you a little because if God does not come through you are going to look foolish. GOOD. That is called faith. And “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6). Not difficult. IMPOSSIBLE. He wants you to ask for things you cannot produce on your own and then trust that the God who spoke the universe into existence can handle your request.
And when He answers – and He WILL answer – do not just move on to the next request like you are working through a shopping list. STOP. Thank Him. Celebrate. Tell someone what He did. Write it down somewhere you will see it again. Let the joy of that answer sink deep into your bones so that the next time you pray you pray with the confidence of someone who has SEEN God move. Because you have. And He will move again. Read the Gospels. Read the book of Acts. Read the life of Smith Wigglesworth or Rees Howells or George Müller and tell me that God does not answer prayer. He does. He always has. The question is not whether He is listening. The question is whether we are asking.
Jesus said “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” He did not stutter. He did not add a footnote. He said it and He meant it.
Ask.
A Prayer
Father, I confess that I have stopped asking. Or worse I have been asking without expecting. Forgive me for treating prayer like a formality when You designed it to be an encounter that fills me with joy. Rekindle my expectation. Remind me of the prayers You have already answered that I forgot to celebrate. And give me the courage to ask again – boldly, specifically, and with the kind of faith that makes the enemy nervous. I want full joy Lord. Not half. Not some. FULL. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
— — —
“I do not ever go to God and come away on the same level as I went.”
– Smith Wigglesworth
“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer IS the greater work.”
– Oswald Chambers
Always i-CH