In the first few months of church history, the Jewish
leadership tried to squelch the disciples preaching in the name of Jesus.
Peter refused, telling the Sanhedrin that salvation was offered in no other
name. They knew what it meant to use “The Name.” In their Scriptures, their God
was often referred to as The Name. God’s actual name, Yahweh, was so revered
that they would not speak it out loud. Most English translations of the Bible
pay homage to this attitude by substituting “LORD” in the text where Yahweh appears.
By preaching Jesus as the Name, what the disciples were
doing was calling Jesus Yahweh. That is what so angered the Jewish religious
leaders. They would have been even more upset if the disciples had suggested
what some contemporary scholars believe: namely that the Yahweh of the Old
Testament is the Yeshua of the New Testament. Students of the Scripture have
proposed that there were pre-incarnate appearances of Yeshua, Jesus, throughout
Israel’s history. The most fundamental of these appearances is described in the
first few verses of John’s Gospel. In the beginning, the Word was
responsible for all things that were created. John clearly states that the Word
become flesh is Jesus. So, in some way, Jesus is identified with the creator God of
Genesis one.
The key to understanding this is found in the word
“pre-incarnate.” Before becoming flesh, the Word was pre-flesh, fully divine. Paul
explains in Philippians chapter two that to become incarnate, to put on
flesh, Jesus had to empty Himself of some of His divinity. The most significant
thing Jesus put aside was omnipresence; He could only be where His fleshly body
was. Exactly what He retained of divinity is unclear. He knew men’s thoughts,
controlled natural phenomena, defied conventional physics, and healed diseases.
What we call His miracles were just Him being God incarnate.
Something else He retained was the Name if Peter is to be
believed. In other words, all the power of God, the
fullness of God is wrapped up in Christ, especially the power to save. That
is easy to see when Peter says there is salvation in no other name. What may be
harder to recognize is what that means when Jesus tells His disciples to pray
“in My Name.” At the very least, we can understand that it means we ask with
the authority of Jesus. A military example will make this clear. If a corporal
is told by his sergeant to get something from the supply clerk, the corporal
asks for it in the name of, by the authority of the sergeant. His request would
be granted because of the sergeant’s authority, not his own.
When we go to prayer in Jesus’ name, we are essentially
saying, “Jesus told me to ask for this.” It takes a lot of nerve to say that if
you haven’t heard from the Lord. I have cited Graham Cooke’s book, Crafted
Prayer, before. He says that too
often we make a request of God before having sought to know what God’s will is
in the situation. We cannot honestly say we are coming to the Father in Jesus’
name if we haven’t first listened to what Jesus may be saying about the topic.
Cooke and others have also pointed out that we can pray with
confidence if we are praying God’s Word back to Him as long as we are not
taking it out of context. We know, for example, that it is not
God’s desire that any should perish, but that all might come to Him in
faith. I believe this gives us license to ask that anyone on our list would
come to believe in Christ as their savior. I don’t mean to say that such a prayer
is a guarantee of the person’s salvation; what I am saying is that we can confidently
align ourselves with God’s attitude toward the lost and rely on Him bring about
salvation for those He chooses.
There are other prayers that we can know are within God’s
plan. He always cares for the poor, the orphans, the widows, and those unjustly
imprisoned. He will always be in favor of approaching any situation with a
heart toward peace and reconciliation.
The Word commands us to pray for our civil authorities so that we may be
able to live lives of peaceful godliness. We are called to pray
for our church leaders so that they will be empowered to do their ministry
according to God’s will. These prayers and others can be found in Scripture
which gives us the right to ask for them in Jesus’ name.
However, there will always be situations that have no exact
biblical reference to assure us of God’s will. Should I buy that car; should I
take that job; should I marry that person; should I donate to that ministry; is
it God’s will to heal that disease? How do we gain the confidence to pray in
Jesus’ name in those situations? The only way I know is to seek the mind of
Christ in quiet contemplation. This is difficult for most of us as A. W. Tozer
points out: “Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life
all but impossible, multiplying distractions and beating us down by destroying
our solitude…. Even the majority of Christians are so completely conformed to
this present age that they, too, want things the way they are.” [1] Too often, the
way things are is not the way Jesus would have them.
Tozer suggests a remedy: “However, there are some of God’s
children who have had enough. They want to relearn the ways of solitude and
simplicity and gain the infinite riches of the interior life. They want to
discover the blessedness of what has been called “spiritual aloneness”—a
discipline that will go far in making us acquainted with God and our own souls.” That is the answer. We must become better acquainted with God if our prayers in
Jesus’ name are to be effective. I pray that you can find a quiet place… in
Jesus’ name, amen.
Related Posts: The
Presence of God; Moving
Mountains; Prayer Primer
love it!!!
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