Day 2 :: In The Name Of Jesus (Excerpt taken and modified from How to Pray: What the Bible Tells Us About Genuine, Effective Prayer by R.A. Torrey)
It was a wonderful word about prayer that Jesus spoke to His disciples on the night before His crucifixion: And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye ask any thing in my name, I will do it (John 14:13-14). Prayer in the name of Jesus has power with God. God is well pleased with His Son, Jesus Christ. He always hears Him, and He always hears the prayer that is really in His name. There is a fragrance in the name of Jesus that makes every prayer that bears it acceptable to God. But what is it to pray in the name of Jesus?
Many explanations have been attempted that ordinary minds do not understand. There is nothing mystical or mysterious about this expression of praying in the name of Jesus. If you go through the Bible and examine all the passages in which the expressions in My name or in His name or similar expressions are used, you will find that they mean just about what they do in modern usage. If I go to a bank and hand in a check with my name signed to it, I ask that bank in my own name. If I have money deposited in that bank, the check will be cashed; if not, it will not be cashed. If, however, I go to a bank with somebody else’s name signed to the check, I am asking in his name, and it does not matter whether I have money in that bank or any bank; if the person whose name is signed to the check has money there, the check will be cashed. If, for example, I would go to the First National Bank of Chicago and present a check that I had signed for fifty dollars, the bank teller would say to me, “Why, Mr. Torrey, we cannot cash that. You have no money in this bank.” But if I would go to the First National Bank with a check for $5,000 made payable to me and signed by one of the large depositors in that bank, they would not ask whether I had money in that bank or in any other bank, but they would honor the check at once.
It is the same way when I go to the bank of heaven – when I go to God in prayer. I have nothing deposited there. I have absolutely no credit there. If I go in my own name, I will get absolutely nothing; but Jesus Christ has unlimited credit in heaven, and He has granted me the privilege of going to the bank with His name on my checks. When I go in His name, my prayers will be honored to any extent. To pray in the name of Jesus is to pray on the basis not of my credit, but of His. It is to renounce the thought that I have any claims on God at all, and to approach Him on the basis of Christ’s claims. Praying in the name of Jesus is not merely adding the phrase, “I ask these things in Jesus’ name” to my prayer. When I really do approach God, not on the basis of my merit, but on the basis of Christ’s merit, and not on the basis of my goodness, but on the basis of the atoning blood, God will hear me. Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 10:19).
Consider concluding this devotional by meditating on and praying through John 14 and Hebrews 10 to fuel your time of prayer.
