Right Petitions Heard by God.
The power by which we overcome the world is the Divine life which we have in the Lord Jesus Christ; but in order to our obtaining that life two conditions must be fulfilled: first, God must give it; and secondly, we must take it.
I. God must give it, for although there may be many things that we could earn or produce for ourselves, obviously there is one thing which we could neither earn nor create, into which, it is plain, we must be born that is, our life. Now this is true of all life, whether the life that we possess by nature, or the life that we possess by grace. Nevertheless, respecting the Divine life that is in Christ Jesus a further affirmation must needs be made. It must not only be given us by God, but it must be taken through our faith. And this arises from the very nature of spiritual things, for when God is said to have made us free and responsible creatures He is said in effect to have ordained that our obedience should be of a certain quality, that it should not be that of the world, unconscious and constrained, not that of the beasts, unconscious and instinctive, but that of the holy angels, the voluntary obedience of a free and virtuous choice.
II. What is meant by asking according to God's will? We must make both the matter and the spirit of our prayers correspond to His will. We must ask first in the right spirit, and then for the right thing. (1) We must ask in the right spirit. We must, as the Apostle says, lift up holy hands. In the hands of supplication which we raise to heaven there must be found no sinful and inordinate desires. (2) We must ask the right thing. You will find what is according to God's will, what you not only may expect, but must expect, to receive, in the pages of God's holy word. Lord Clive, we are told, once when he was in India was taken into a vaulted chamber which was filled from end to end with all kinds of treasure: there were heaps of gold, heaps of silver, heaps of precious trinkets, heaps of jewels; and he was told by the native ruler of Bengal to take as much as he pleased. And recalling that incident of his life, it is said that he exclaimed, "I am amazed at my own moderation!" Now the Bible is God's treasure-house, filled from end to end with precious jewels; and we are bidden to take as many of the rarest and richest as we please, without money and without price.
J. Moorhouse, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 624.
References: 1 John 5:14. T. V. Tymms, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxiii., p. 181. 1 John 5:14; 1 John 5:15. Homilist,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 37; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 162.