A spiritually-minded friend of my wife and me recently made this comment: “I struggle with the idea of praying according to the will of God. Since I know that some things are clearly according to God’s will, why can’t I just pray directly about those things and know for certain that they’re going to happen? But that’s not the way it works with my prayers. For example, I know that God doesn’t want Christians to get divorced. But I’ve sometimes prayed that God would preserve a struggling marriage that still ended up in divorce.”

She, of course, was referring to 1 John 5:14-15 in her comment about praying according to the will of God. 1 John 5:14-15 says, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”

This seems like such a wide-open promise. Pray according to the will of God and your prayers will be answered. So why can’t we simply ask—and expect to receive positive answers—when we pray about something that is God’s will?

We can. 1 John 5:14-15 couldn’t be clearer. But we need first to answer the question: What is meant by “His will” in these verses, and indeed in other places where the concept of God’s will shows up in the Bible? If we can grow in our understanding of the various ways that the Bible speaks about the will of God, it may help us figure out how to resolve this legitimate and practical question in our prayer life. Yes, theology has many practical applications.

Here are three ways the Bible speaks about the will of God:

Category #1: God’s Sovereign Will

God chooses and orders all that has and ever will take place (examples: Ephesians 1:11; Acts 4:28).

Category #2: God’s Moral Will

God has communicated his standard for right and wrong based upon his own holy and righteous character (example: Exodus 20:1-17).

Category #3: God’s Permissive Will

Because sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, God currently allows certain things to take place in this world