1 John 5:14
[14] “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:”
Learning to pray is a blessing, but learning to pray with confidence is an even greater blessing. Every believer faces battles in prayer. If we are not careful, we will get discouraged in our praying, and lose confidence. This causes us either to abandon the prayer closet altogether, or pray defeated prayers that never amount to anything.
God not only wants us to pray, but he wants us to pray with confidence. He is not talking about confidence within ourselves. This confidence comes from the assurance that we belong to him. The assurance of our salvation will give us the confidence we need to come before him, and pray. He wants us to know that we are his child, and that he wants us to commune with him. He desires each of his children to bring their needs before him. This assurance builds the confidence that God is listening to us when we pray.
We can have confidence, not only because we are saved, but because we are praying according to his will. I believe this is the lifelong lesson of prayer. The more we pray, the more we see God use prayer to shape our will to his. When we first begin to pray, we pray for everything that we think we should be praying for, and praying about. The longer we pray, we begin to see the Lord teaching us to pray according to his will, and not our own. We learn his mind, and his desires and we learn to pray according to the will of God.
Jesus prayed according to God’s will. Remember, in the garden when he prayed about the cup, he sought God’s will, not his. When we ask for God’s will to be done, we can have both assurance and confidence that he has heard us. Answered prayer in our lives is one of the great evidences that we are a true child of God.