Prayer promises

I'd like to expand on something Gary Habermas touched on in a recent speech ("The Worst Suffering We Will Ever Face"). Many professing Christians have lost their faith or become disaffected because they think God broke his prayer promises. Take this promise:

13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it (Jn 14:13-14).

i) On the face of it, that's an unqualified promise. Of course, it doesn't take long for a Christian to find out that you don't get whatever you ask for.

ii) One distinction is that we shouldn't automatically reassign every promise made to the disciples to Christians in general.

iii) In addition, God's prayer promises have to be consistent with his other commitments. Jesus said this on the eve of his crucifixion. But the promise didn't mean that if one of the disciples prayed to God to prevent the crucifixion, God would grant that request. 

Likewise, God won't answer a prayer to end the world right this minute and take me to heaven if God has other plans. Prayer isn't designed to put us in the driver's seat. We don't take God's place as rulers of the cosmos. 

By the same token, it doesn't mean that if we ask God to destroy himself, he will comply. There are common sense restrictions that are just assumed. 

iv) But here's another issue: in the very same monologue (the upper room discourse), Jesus also makes "promises" like this:

18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours (Jn 15:18-20).

16 “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. 2 They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. 3 And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. 4 But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you (Jn 16:1-4).

But if the prayer promise in Jn 14:13-14 is absolute, then Christians could always avoid persecution by praying that God spare them. Yet that's at odds with what Jesus said about the prospect of impending persecution. So Jn 14:13-14 wasn't meant to be unconditional. 

In addition, we have this statement:

11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled...15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one (Jn 17:11-12,15).

Here divine protection is defined, not in terms of sparing Christians from harm in general, but from damnation. As a rule, God won't rescue them by removing them from the situation, but by spiritually preserving them in the situation.