God put on the robe of human flesh, being born from the womb of Virgin Mary. As God, He knew all; as a human, He had to learn, grow, and develop. As a man, God, in the person of Jesus the Messiah, made Himself a sacrifice for our sin–for us and our salvation. He ascended to His Father’s right hand to be our Advocate.
Through Jesus, God the Father sent His Holy Spirit, who would point people to Jesus, who, in turn, would bring them to the Father. God has done this, whether we wanted Him to do so or not. For His merciful and kindly disposition does not depend on us, but on Him. And because of that, you needn’t hold on to your sins any longer–Jesus will take them!
And if Jesus takes your sins, they are as far from you as the East is from the West, and your sins cling to you no more! That means the day will come when you will forget your anguish for the joy that Jesus has set before you. Your sorrows will end, and nothing will ever bring sorrow to you again. You will see God, the kingdom of heaven will be yours, and you will inherit the earth.
On that day, the Last Day, your prayer life with God will change, for you will reign with Him in eternity. You’ll have no unmet needs or wants. This isn’t because you won’t have needs or wants, for you will still be a creature, still dependent on God. But it will be so because you have received mercy. You will have everything you need or want.
But that is not how life is like in this fallen world. Although Jesus has taken your sins, you still weep. You still labor for your daily bread. Others disappoint you; you even disappoint yourself. And every day, suffering still greets you in some way or the other.
But on that day, the Last Day, when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead, after your body and soul reunite, after you are reigning with Jesus in eternity, you will ask God for nothing. But now, but now, you ask for everything.
Jesus says, “Ask and you will receive, so your joy may be complete.” But we ask, and we ask again, and as far as we can tell, we don’t receive. Our joy isn’t full. It isn’t complete. Our cup doesn’t overflow. Our loved ones get sick and die. Our bodies age, break down, and even betray us. Our friends don’t support us as we would like. Our love life with our spouses is not what we want it to be.
Here, we have joy in Christ–but it coexists with our sadness. And as our faith stands alongside our doubt, so also do our good works stand next to our shameful sins. Temptations still torture us. Sin still deforms our lives. Regret and doubt, and even guilt and shame, still haunt us. We ask, and we ask, but, as far as we can tell, we rarely receive. And when we do, it is only in part.
Like no other place, it’s in our prayer lives where the hidden will of God confronts us. Oh, we understand the facts of the
faith. God loves us and sent His Son, Jesus, to do what we could never do. From the unending storehouse of His love, Jesus has taken our sins and given us His righteousness. We are the forgiven saints of God. So we also know what will happen: God will bring us to heaven, our sorrows will end, our bodies will reunite with our souls on the Last Day, and we will be complete.
But what we don’t know, at least as well as we would like, is what is happening now. We live in the anxiety and sorrow of Gethsemane. We pray that God will fulfill everything as He has promised. But we also pray for our daily needs and wants, like daily bread, a loving spouse, or maybe even a new TV or car.
Sometimes, most of our prayer lives are made up of asking for stuff. But all our prayers on this side of heaven are the prayer of Gethsemane. For Jesus’ words, “not my will, but yours, be done,” shapes and moves our every prayer (Luke 22:42).
Yet, we do not know, beyond the generalities of Scripture, what is God’s will for us. We know that God has intervened for us. We know that God worked His will for us on the cross of death. We know that God works His will every time we receive Jesus in Word and Sacrament. We know that our sorrows here will not last. We know that God will overcome death itself, that last enemy.
But what we don’t know, with any certainty, is God’s will for us right now. Will we live or die? Will we laugh or cry? In this fallen world, we endure in the night of betrayal, ever on the brink of disaster.
We don’t know if our beloved will tell us that he has been unfaithful and no longer loves us anymore. We don’t know what the biopsy will reveal. We don’t know who will run a red light and cause calamity in our lives. We don’t know the conspiracies of Hell that God will allow to come partly to fruition. We don’t know how the trials in our lives might sift us like wheat or purify us by fire. We simply don’t know the will of God for these specific parts of our lives.
So, what do we do? We ask for everything. Like children asking their fathers, by faith we know that our heavenly Father will only give us what is good and that His will is best. And so we ask for the big items: the end of poverty, war, and hunger, for we know that God will answer those prayers in His own way and time. And for us, that is enough, for God’s will is always best, even when our sinful selves rebel against it.
Jesus says it is “a wicked and adulterous generation [that] asks for a sign” (Matthew 16:4). So we don’t test God and ask for signs. But God is gracious, and He may choose, on His own, to give us a foretaste of heaven now, which He does every week in His Supper.
So, how else do we pray? We ask for the small items of life. We ask for a good parking spot and eggs that will not be scorched in the skillet, for the day will come, as Jesus says, when we will ask for nothing. But that day is not today. That day is the Last Day, when Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead.
And so, today, we ask for everything. Today, we ask for everything in Jesus’ name. But what does that even mean? What does it mean to pray in Jesus’ name? It means that we ask Jesus, who is at the right hand of the Father, to align and change our every prayer into what God’s will is. Praying in Jesus’ name is aligning our wills, the will of Jesus and what you want, to be the same.
Yet, it is not you changing God. Instead, when you say “in Jesus’ name,” you are asking Jesus to change your prayer, so it aligns with His will. After all, you aren’t praying in your name, but in Jesus’ name. And what Jesus wants for you, so also does the Father, for Jesus and God the Father are one. And so when you pray in Jesus’ name, you are asking that His will change and shape your prayer into what it should be. Ask in Jesus’ name and you will receive.
Jesus has overcome the world and earned your salvation. He knows what is best. And so we focus our attention–not on His hidden will, on which cereal we should eat or whether we should use Ivory soap instead of Dial–but on what He has promised, on who He is.
We cannot know God’s hidden will, so we exercise the Christian freedom He has given us. We choose the cereal before us, what we can afford, what seems best to us, whether it’s best for our health or our taste buds. For, by faith, we know that God will even bless such a mundane decision of life.
We also know that God the Father, who has given us His only Son, will also give us everything according to His will. We know that everything works together for the good of those who love God, even bathroom breaks and scorched eggs as much as war and earthquake.
And so we wait on the Lord. We wait, knowing that He hears and answers all our prayers. Right now, God answers our prayers with what is best for us and our neighbors, whether it seems as if we get all we asked for or not. We pray in such a way until all is given according to His promise in the Day that is yet to come.
The Lord has redeemed you. He does not turn away your prayer. He hears. He answers. Call on Him, O sainted sinners, for He is merciful. He will pardon. And He comes to you now, in answer to your prayers, in His Body and His Blood, giving to you according to His will. Amen.
