Can We Talk? pt.2

"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us." — 1 John 5:14 (NIV)

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In our last Midweek Manna I shared about my love for music and one of my favorite karaoke songs by Tevin Campbell, “Can We Talk?”, these lyrics move through nervousness, vulnerability, and stillness — the very real feelings that surface anytime we approach a conversation that matters. In our verse 1 John 5:14, we find a strikingly similar dynamic in how we approach God. We dealt with the A portion of this verse about approaching God with confidence, but there is more to this verse. Not only must we approach with confidence, but we need the right posture. 

He attaches a condition: if we ask anything according to his will. This is the theological weight of the verse, and it is where many of our prayers quietly go unanswered — not because God is withholding, but because we are asking outside the boundary of alignment.

This raises the question underneath every prayer we pray: are your requests shaped by your will, or by God's? I believe one of the primary factors behind prayers that yield the outcomes we desire is whether they are already aligned with what God has purposed. This is not a call to stop asking, nor a suggestion that God is indifferent to our desires. It is an invitation to a deeper kind of praying — one where we bring our requests and submit them, the way Jesus did in Gethsemane: "not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42).

When those two things converge — confident posture and aligned will — John promises something remarkable: he hears us. Not merely that God is listening in a passive sense, but that He receives, attends to, and responds to the prayer. Confidence isn't ultimately in our ability to get the wording right or the faith exactly calibrated. The confidence is in the character of the One we're approaching. He is a God who wants the conversation.

So, like Tevin Campbell's invitation, God extends His own: an invitation to nervousness giving way to vulnerability, to vulnerability giving way to stillness, to stillness giving way to real dialogue. He is not asking for a performance. He is asking for a relationship. So — can we talk for a minute?