Hello and welcome to Beauty - the no-frills, no-nonsense podcast about all things beauty. True Beauty. God’s Beauty. I am your host, Deanna, and today we circle back to confidence. If you’ve been following along with the 1 John study, you know we talked about confidence in week five. In true John fashion, we find ourselves repeating this topic once more. I hope you are seeing how John ties things together for our full understanding. Dig in to 1 John 5:14-17 today - reading and writing these verses and allowing time to think about their meaning.
I listen to several podcasts, one being Becket Cook. Becket is a man who was living in sin at one time in his life. Occasionally, on his podcast, he shares pieces of this and how he came to faith. You can look him up on your own; his story is fascinating and a testament to the grace and mercy of God. I bring him up here because a few weeks ago, he shared how he ended up at a church service and a random person prayed for him. At the end of this church service, they had a time of worship and they invited people to come and pray with someone should they want to. He describes having this internal conflict about going up to someone and asking for prayer. He eventually does, and he says to this person, “Hi, I’m not a Christian and I don’t know what I believe, but I’m here.” The person who prayed for him, of course, prayed, and Becket remembers thinking, “Why does this complete stranger care about me so much?” On his podcast, he and the person who prayed for him both describe their experience and how they saw God move in that moment and in Becket’s life ever since. This is the type of story I think about when I think about today’s verses.
Prayer is powerful - because God meets us in the words and he moves in love.
Verses 14 and 15 start with the reminder that we can have confidence in going to God. As a reminder, God is not a genie in a bottle. We don’t get everything we ask for just because we ask for it. In fact, as we mature in our faith, we stop asking for worldly things and start asking for the things that align with his heart. We learn to pray the promises of God, and of course, we learn those promises by staying near to him. Then John starts to talk about praying for others. He has done this before, but this time he says we should pray for others who are in sin; and we should pray for their heart to be transformed.
I don’t know how to adequately explain what John was saying about sins leading to death, but I do know that sinners can be led to life. When we pray for a friend who is in sin, we have every reason to believe God can choose to save them just as he once saved us. Make no mistake about it - God honors obedience. He will meet us as we stand in the gap for others and he will meet them in ways beyond our expectations. We only need to pray. They only need to receive the invitation.
How do you stand in the gap for others?
D 😀
