Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 9

You hear it or variations of it all the time. "We pray these things in Jesus' Name," people say.

Why exactly do people pray in Jesus' Name?

And what does it mean anyway?

Followers of Jesus pray in His Name for several reasons. First: Because Jesus has promised us that God the Father will hear prayers offered in His Name.

Second: Because Jesus, Who from the very beginning of the Christian movement was regarded as God-enfleshed by His followers, has commanded it.

Third: Because it only makes sense.

In one of the New Testament's most famous passages on prayer, Jesus says:

"...And I appointed you to go and bear fruit [meaning, in part, to accomplish good things through the power God gives], fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in My Name..." [John 15:16]

In another place He says:

"So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" [Luke 11:9-13]

In these two passages, we see Jesus making promises and commanding that we pray in His Name. He promises that when we do so, our prayers are heard. As is true of every command God makes, Jesus makes this one because it is for our good. Approaching God the Father in Jesus' Name assures that our connection with heaven is secure.

In another place, Jesus makes one of His famous I AM statements. These statements all underscore Jesus' authority as God because I AM (in the Greek of the New Testament, the phrase is ego eimi and in the Hebrew, it's Yahweh) is the Name God gave Himself in the Old Testament.

By way of background, God first did this is His encounter with Moses at the Burning Bush. There, God is commissioning Moses to end his exile and to return to Egypt. Moses, God tells him, is to sue for the freedom of God's people, the Israelites, and to act as their leader, taking them to freedom. They had been slaves there for more than four-hundred years.

Moses makes a series of excuses for not doing God's will. (Many of which I've used myself!) One of those excuses is that if the people of Israel ask Moses exactly who sent him, he wouldn't know how to answer. Then, we're told:

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you." God also said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you': This is My Name forever, and this is My title for all generations..." [Exodus 3:14-15]

Jesus' most jarring use of I AM as a designation for Himself comes in John 8, where He uses the grammatically incorrect sentence, "Before Abraham was, I Am." [John 8:58] Here, Jesus is clearly indicating that He was around a long time before Abraham, echoing the point made by John the Evangelist as he began his account of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. [John 1:1-18] (More significantly, this strange phrase echoes the words Paul wrote about Jesus sometime around 55-60 A.D., found in Colossians 1:15-20, indisputable proof that, contrary to what some shoddy scholarship says today, the early Church always said that Jesus was not just a human being, but also God.)

As it specifically relates to prayer in Jesus' Name, Jesus made this I AM statement:

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." [John 14:6]

Jesus is the authoritative means by Whom we know God and can have a relationship with God. Through Him, we have access to God. This is why it makes sense to pray in His Name. Why, when prayer in Jesus' Name allows us to speak directly to God, would we not pray in His Name?

But praying in Jesus' Name is more than saying a word or employing an incantation, as though communicating with God is like using a Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring.

People who pray in Jesus' Name:

1. Acknowledge Jesus' Lordship. This means the pray-er understands that Jesus is Boss of the universe. Like Peter, the person who prays in Jesus' Name, says to Jesus, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!" [Matthew 16:16...By the way, that phrase, Son of God, doesn't denote derivation or subordination to God the Father on Jesus' part. Rather, as the Colossians passage I mentioned above says, it means that Jesus was the very image of God Himself.]

2. Ask God to provide answers to our prayers in ways that are consistent with the character and the will of Jesus. In essence, when we pray in Jesus' Name, we subordinate ourselves to the will and the infinitely greater wisdom of God. In one of the New Testament letters, First John, it's written:

And this is the boldness we have in Him [Jesus], 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 obtained the requests made of Him. [First John 5:14-15]

This, of course, isn't a carte blanche to offer selfish prayers. To ask in Jesus' Name, in ways that accord with Jesus' character, is to adopt to an attitude of humility and submissiveness to God. That doesn't mean that God wants us to wallow in self-loathing or be miserable. Quite the contrary! It means that we acknowledge that since God is the One Who's made us, He knows what He can give that will allow us to live our lives at their optimal levels. One of my favorite passages in the Old Testament says:

Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. [Psalm 37:4]

I think this is intriguingly phrased. It says if we take our greatest pleasure in what pleases God and puts Him first in our lives, God will give us our desires. But what will the desires of people who put God first be? That God will do what is best in God's eyes, not our own.

Many times when I talk with God, I have very particular ideas about how God should go about answering my prayers. I'd be happy to be God's consultant, micromanaging how He wields His power in the areas of concern I bring to Him. But I try to remember that God isn't a Cosmic Cookie Jar, filling me up on what I want without regard to what's best for me or others or for what God wants to happen.

In spite of what I want, I always ask that God's will be done, praying in Jesus' Name and then trying, with the help of God's Spirit, to truly want to want what God wants.

3. Have confidence that their prayers are heard. Jesus has told His followers, “I will do whatever you ask in My Name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in My Name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” [John 14:13-14]

And just in case you have a sense of foreboding because you know that Jesus and God the Father are one (John 14:7), put your mind at ease. Because of His humanity, Jesus understands everything that we go through in our lives. In Jesus, the New Testament says, we don’t have an advocate “unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” Because of that, we’re told that we can “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” [Hebrews 4:15-16]

In the risen Jesus Christ, we have someone who understands our humanity and has the divine power to hear and answer our prayers. Jesus tells us, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” [John 14:6] I believe that prayers offered in Jesus’ Name are ushered into the very heart of God the Father

[To read more on this subject, you might want to check out:
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 1
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 2
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 3
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 4
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 5
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 6
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 7
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 8]