Last time, we saw how when Jesus was preparing His disciples for His death, burial, resurrection  and life without His physical presence, He wanted them to understand the potential of prayer. 

At least three times, He said to them that whatever they asked the Father in His name, they would receive what they asked. (John 14:12–14; John 15:16; John 16:23–24)

As I sought to explain yesterday, this is not an unconditional promise as if by a magic formula one can get anything want simply by a prayer to the Father and then adding on, “In Jesus name, amen.”

This promise is conditioned upon the disciple’s activity in carrying out the task of establishing the church.  The “anything” had to do with their ministry needs in order to fulfill the Father’s plan.

So, what does it mean to pray in Jesus’ name?

PRAYING IN JESUS’ NAME ….

1. It means we have been granted access to the Father.

(SEE MY COMMENTS ON YESTERDAY’S THOUGHTS)

Secondly…

2. It means the same thing as praying according to the will of God. 

1 John 5:14–15 (ESV)

¹⁴ And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. ¹⁵ 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.

If we are to pray in Jesus’ name, then this means our prayers should reflect Jesus’ own values and purposes. Our prayers should be saturated with the kingdom agenda of Jesus. In order to pray “in Jesus’ name” in this particular sense, our minds and hearts must be shaped by Scripture. 

We must set aside times of quiet to attend to the still, small voice of the Spirit of Jesus. Only then will we be able to submit our desires to Jesus’ own desires. Therefore, when we pray according to His will, we will be asking for things that will bring honor and glory to Jesus.

Nothing we ask for is to be for our sake alone. The underlying motive is the will and glory of the Father and the Son. So, when I pray “in Jesus’ name,” I am saying, first of all, that I approach the Father only through Jesus, only through what He has done for me on the cross. I hope that my prayers are also consistent with His will, though I recognize that my own agenda can intrude into my prayers fairly easily. Yet my desire is to bring my prayers more and more in line with what Jesus desires.

I have a church credit card. I have a certain amount of liberty as to how to use it. But, my first question should be, am I spending this on what the church would want me to spend it on?  In other words, do I know the will of our church before I use it? 

 

To ask in the name of Jesus, means that we ask what Jesus would ask, what would please Him, and what would bring Him glory by furthering His work. 

The bottom line is, we cannot pray according to the will of God if we do not know what the will of God is. So before we open our mouth with our request, it would be wise to search our hearts as we search for insight through the power of the Holy Spirt and through the revealed will in Scripture in order to know the will of God. 

One of Paul’s consistent prayers for the church was this:  ⁹ And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰ so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; (Colossians 1:9–10 (ESV)

Did you get that?  Paul was concerned that the church and each individual member of the church would have clear knowledge of God’s will. If Paul prayed that for the church, should we not pray that for ourselves? 

So I ask you, even as I ask myself, when was the last time you asked God to fill you with the knowledge of His will?

If we want to sincerely pray in Jesus’ name, would this not be a good place to start?

Why don’t we do that right now?