John 16:12 - 24

 John 16:12 - 24 

Everyone who has unanswered prayers looks at verse 24 with a questioning or a dubious eye. We read, “Ask and you will receive”, and we wonder why we don't get the answers to our prayers. The marriage doesn't recover, the child is never conceived, the cancer wins, we never get that date we asked for or the pony we wanted when we were six years old. My friend Rob died.  I never knew one person who was such a combination of Christian Grace and love and warmth. From when he told me he had pancreatic cancer till he died was about one year, a painful year of chemo and decline. In those last 365 days of my praying for Rob, me and perhaps 1,000 other people, he was not healed at all. Some of those people praying were holy saints that had dramatic prayers answered with startling frequency. By the way I, for one, don't want to hear “he got his healing in heaven”. That is not what we asked for. Our prayer was that stage 4 pancreatic cancer would go away and Rob, with a healthy cancer-free body, would live out many years of helping us know Jesus better and love Him more. 

Jesus tells the disciples that before the cross there were things they could not understand. After the Spirit comes He would guide them. This is not a promise of new revelation, rather the Spirit would guide them in application of what Jesus had revealed. At this time the disciples were still thinking of the Kingdom as a political-military  Earthly affair. Even after the resurrection they were looking for an Earthly Kingdom. It is only after Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit that they begin to understand that the kingdom of Christ is something entirely different. And this, by the way, was only one of their confusions. The Holy Spirit comes to our lives to give us the application of truth that leads us to holiness and righteous living. 

The Holiness of the disciple is superior to that of the self-righteousness person because the Spirit guides it. On the outside they may look very much the same. The self-righteous person may tithe and be so conscientious about it that to the point that they count their seeds. The Spirit guided disciple may be equally conscientious but it is supremely different because of the motivation, the Holy Spirit guides them. The disciple will never live immorally and claim that God's will.  His behavior is righteous and seen but he is empowered by the Spirit, which is unseen. Which brings us back to Jesus's promise of answered prayer. When we want to know what is righteous, what is Holy, what is the right thing to do; Jesus guides us by the Spirit. That does not violate our free will, because we want to be righteous.  It may be that we may not want to know God’s will or obey Him. But when we seek righteousness Jesus always answers and gives us what we asked. This passage is more about getting what we want when what we want is righteous living. It isn’t about getting the things or earthy pleasure or selfish ambition.

So my friend died in spite of all the prayers of a lot of godly people.  Perhaps we didn’t get what we wanted because it wasn’t what God wanted.

“Lord, help me want what You want more than anything else.  AMEN”