Sermon - Rogate - John 16:23-33

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Do you actually believe that prayer works or that it does anything? What good is your praying? For that matter, if you do believe that prayer works, do you actually pray? Because if you don’t pray, then that kind of implies that you don’t believe prayer works or does anything, otherwise you would spend more time in prayer.

As a society we mention prayer fairly regularly. We complain about not getting to pray in schools or other places. After a tragedy, I hear people say “thoughts and prayers” or “#praying.” But does that mean we’re equating our prayers with our thoughts, placing them on the same field of importance. As if somehow our positive and healing thoughts are going to magically fix a broken situation. 

Thinking is a good thing, I highly recommend it, however just thinking about something isn’t going to accomplish anything. It might make you feel better, but that’s about it. Or, when we tell someone they’re in our thoughts and prayers, are we just saying that and not actually praying or thinking about them. Because if that’s the case, we’ve not only failed to help them, we’ve also lied to them in the process.

So I would gander a guess that we generally don’t pray very regularly because we don’t consider prayer to be such a powerful thing at all. So let me encourage you today to, by faith, pray in Jesus’ name, because our Lord promises to hear you and answer your prayers. Christ our Lord says “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He will give it to you… ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”

Right there, plain as day, no uncertainty about it, Jesus tells us to pray and He promises that the Father will give it to you. Jesus’ promise alone should be enough to cause us to pray for all the things that we have need of in this life. The promise that God answers prayer is the foundational premise upon which all supplications are made. Because God promises to hear your prayers and to answer them, you should do it! 

It’s for that reason that Jesus chastises His apostles, saying “Until now you have asked nothing in my name.” How embarrassing, the Apostles, those closest to Jesus, failed to pray. Perhaps because they were bodily present with Jesus they just didn’t see the need to pray. But now that Jesus is preparing them for His ascension, He instructs them to pray so that their joy may be full. Let Jesus’ chastisement fall upon our ears as well today so that we would be awakened to the promise of prayer.

God is ready to answer prayer, He’s prepared to listen and to give us the things for which we have need. Yet we can be so lazy, that we would rather spend our time in other matters that we neglect to pray to our heavenly Father who loves us and loves to answer our prayers.

Prayer is like this remarkable treasure, by which God grants us the things we ask of Him, and yet we spend so much time just grumbling and complaining to our friends when we should have spoken to our heavenly Father first. We dream about finding a genie in a bottle to fulfill three wishes, when we already have our God who promises to answer all our prayers. Why do we do this? God’s made a promise to us, so why do we so quickly forget His promise? 

Perhaps it’s because we don’t have faith in the promise. Perhaps it’s because we feel like we’re unworthy to pray. Why would the almighty God listen to us and answer our poor prayers? That’s a good question, and it’s a good point: we’re unworthy. But Jesus doesn’t talk about our worthiness, about us being good enough, or having good enough prayers. Jesus simply tells us to ask. The thing that makes our prayers worthy isn’t us, but it’s God’s promise to hear our prayers and answer them; God’s promise is what makes our prayers worthy. 

So pray with faith in God’s promise. What does that look like? The apostle John explains this in his first epistle, saying “And this is the confidence (faith) that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”

Thus how do we pray in faith? Quite simply, we pray not worrying about how our prayers are being answered, but simply trusting that because God hears our prayers, they must be answered because God promises to answer our prayers. Jesus doesn’t explain how and when God answers our prayers, He just promises that He does answer them. If Jesus doesn’t concern us with the how and when, neither should we. Instead we ought to trust in God faithfully to answer our prayers in His own way and time. 

The only way that we can pray to God in faith, is by praying in the name of Jesus. As Christ says “whatever you ask in my name, He will give it to you… In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you.” What does it mean to pray in Jesus’ name? Well, it means more than saying “in Jesus name, Amen” at the end of our prayers. It means relying upon the righteousness of Christ which makes us worthy to pray, as Paul explains in Romans: “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

When we pray in Jesus’ name, we are depending on Jesus’ righteousness instead of our own. If we pray in our own name, God will not hear us. So if we think that if we pray hard enough or we pray long enough with just the right words to make God listen to us, we are terribly mistaken and God won’t hear our prayer. But if we pray in Jesus’ name, not our name, then He promises to hear us and answer us. 

Because you have been baptized into Jesus’ name, since you receive Jesus’ body and blood into your own body at the sacrament of the altar, your prayers are spoken in the name of Jesus by virtue of Jesus coming to you and making you a part of Him. Since we are by nature sinful and unclean, poor miserable sinners, unworthy and unholy, lazy and slothful in Christian living, Christ’s love brought Him to die in our place and atone for our wickedness. He applies His holiness and perfection to you and creates in you a clean heart. Christ has formed you into a Christian, a little Christ, and God now listens to you because Christ has made you worthy. 

This worthiness really is your own, you are worthy because Christ has made you worthy. In fact, the Father listens to you and answers you not because Jesus is speaking to the Father for you, because you are speaking to the Father and “the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved [Jesus] and have believed that [Jesus] came from God.” Jesus loves you, the Father loves, and from this love you love God as well. This love from the Father makes your prayers just as valuable and important as the prayers which Jesus prays. 

But if you are still hesitant to pray for whatever reason, even after Christ has chastised you and shown you the promise to hear your prayer, then be reminded of your great need to pray in this life. Jesus says “In the world you will have tribulation.” There will never be an end of reasons for why you ought to pray, for this life is filled with tribulations, both your own and others.’ We have a prayer list printed in the bulletin if you can’t think of who to pray for.

Or if you’re hesitant to pray because you just don’t think God answers your prayers, then here again Christ answers this objection, saying “In Me you will have peace… take heart; I have overcome the world.” God does answer your prayers, just not necessarily in the way that you always think He should. Because this life is always going to be filled with tribulation, as much as God takes away, there will be more. The only peace and rescue you will have from this world’s tribulations is given to you in Jesus who overcomes this world and its horrors. 

Yes, oftentimes the answer to your prayers has already been given to you. The cure for your cancer, the medication for your pain, the comfort for your depression, the strength for your tests, the endurance for your day to day struggles, the miracle for your terminal illness, all of them are found in Christ Jesus who was crucified for you. In His blood He rights all of your wrongs, heals all your diseases, and reconciles all of your relationships. For in Christ, all things are made new and perfect again. Maybe you don’t see it today, maybe not even tomorrow or the next, but trust Christ who promises that your prayers are answered. And one day you will see the fruits of these prayers as you are gathered around Jesus in paradise.

Jesus doesn’t promise that your tribulations will be taken away immediately when you pray, but He does promise that they will be taken away. And in Christ they are taken away. So look to Jesus who is lifted high upon the cross for you to see, look to His body from which you are counted worthy to pray and which answers all of your prayers. Look to Jesus, and when you pray, don’t take your eyes off of Him. Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!