John 14
13 And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
14 If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.

Commentary

Does God hear every prayer? The answer is yes. If the question were: does God respond to all prayer? Then the answer would be no. The "not listening" in what refers to God is synonymous with "not responding", if we take the term "not listen" literally deny the omniscience of God, since he would not listen to requests literally, completely ignoring such requests. John 9:31 And we know that God heareth not sinners; But if anyone is God-fearing, and does his will, he hears. The "not hearing" sinners in this verse indicates that God does not respond to their requests, but obviously he listens to them. In this verse the one who was blind is defending Jesus. The dispute is that the Pharisees said that Jesus was a sinner. John 9:24 And they called the man that was blind again, and said unto him, Give glory to God; We know that man is a sinner. So the ex-blind man answers that it was not possible because God heard him (Jesus) when I pray for him, and God does not listen (responds) to sinners which he did with Jesus. Obviously believing in God means being a believer is then the first ingredient for God to hear a prayer; The psalmist tells us this in Psalms 91:14, and 15 [because he hath set his love in me, I will also deliver him, he shall ask me, and I will answer him]. But Micah 3: 4 and proverbs 1: 8 contrast what Psalm 91 says by stating that God does not respond to the sinner

In addition to being a believer, the second ingredient is to humble ourselves before God. The haughty request will not be heard by God. Many say I am a child of God and therefore are obliged to respond. God is not bound to anything. The one who believes that God is subject to him to answer a petition forgets who he is, a mere human being and more precisely he forgets who God is as sovereign. Let us note how gold Daniel, Daniel 10:12 Then he said to me, "Daniel, do not be afraid; Because from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humble yourself in the presence of your God, your words were heard; And because of your words I have come. His prayer was one of humiliation before God, if anyone could pray as one who claims or demand was Daniel because he is one of three men of which the Bible says nothing negative and more than this is someone whom God himself recognizes as a righteous man (Ezekiel 14:14). We see a completely humiliated prayer from Daniel, Daniel 9: 8 O Lord, our confusion is the face, our kings, our princes and our fathers; Because we have sinned against thee. In addition to this, does not the Bible tell us that the heart that is sorry and humiliated will not despise God? Psalm 51:17 So that being humble before God is essential for God to hear or respond to our supplication.

Another no less important ingredient is faith. At the moment of praying we must certainly have faith in God, even if we are believers and humble ourselves but we have faith is worthless. The Bible is specific in this regard. James 1: 6 But ask with faith, not doubting anything; Because he who doubts is like the wave of the sea, which is drawn by the wind and thrown from one part to another. Then James tells us 1: 7 Do not think then whoever does, who will receive anything from the Lord. That is, he who asks doubting (without faith) will receive nothing from God. Over and over again we see Jesus saying, "your faith has healed you," "as you believed it is done," "he who believes all things is possible" these statements of Jesus have something in common: faith. Last but not least is that our request has to be according to the will of God. It sounds like a discouragement that we are believers, humble ourselves, have faith, but if it is not the will of God, we will not receive what we ask for. In reality, this should not be discouragement, but rather joy, since, do we really know what suits us? The answer is no, God knows. 1 John 5:14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. So if we ask for our delights we will not receive because we are asking for wrong, because this is not the will of God. Finally when we have these 4 ingredients we must make every request to the Father in the name of the Son for the glory of God.

Written by Robert Pool
Translated by Bruno Smith