“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” (John 14:13–14).
Anyone reading this extraordinary promise made by Jesus may wonder whether “whatever” really does mean “whatever”. Does this fused relative pronoun encompass all our desires and legitimate needs? Alternatively, is the phrase “in the name of Jesus” a magic formula intended to open the door to the answers we seek simply because we have attached these words to our prayer?
The biblical verses mentioned are not the only ones that promise a favourable response to our prayers:
“If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer,” Jesus says in Matthew 21:22 and in Mark 11:23-24 He asserts: “…if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” These passages reiterate the promise in John 14, with faith being the condition for its fulfilment.
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
In his first epistle, the apostle John revisits the theme of answered prayer, stating that it is conditional upon being in accordance with the divine will. “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (1 John 5:14). John also emphasises the relationship between answered prayers and obedience to God’s law: “and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him” (1 John 3:22).
At first glance, this all-encompassing promise (“whatever you ask”) appears to be subject to certain conditions: keeping God’s commandments, submitting to God’s will, and having faith that God will hear us. Furthermore, the condition is that the prayer must be made in the name of Jesus.
To whom is Jesus’ promise addressed?
John 14:13–14 contains one of the most wonderful promises in the Bible because it shows God’s willingness to answer our prayers, as American pastor R.A. Torrey notes in a book from the early 20th century. However, Torrey also notes that this is one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted passages, which is why two issues need to be clarified: to whom the promise is made, and how the person to whom such an extraordinary promise is made should pray.
The preceding verse clearly indicates the category of people who benefit from the promise: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).
God sometimes answers those who do not believe in the Son; however, His promises to answer are made only to those who have faith in the Son. In Torrey’s words, this means “to put our personal confidence in Jesus Christ as what He claims to be, and to accept Him to be to ourselves what He offers Himself to be to us.”[1]
The context in which Jesus makes this promise reveals who it is addressed to. In chapter 14 of John, Jesus speaks of His departure from Earth and encourages His disciples by making promises that will be fulfilled after He ascends to Heaven.
Although they will no longer have His visible presence, His followers will perform works “greater” than those performed by Jesus—a reference to the spread of the Gospel from the area where Jesus had worked publicly to the far corners of the earth. The promise that they will receive an answer and that their requests will be granted is made in the context of proclaiming the Good News. For this, His followers needed to be equipped with far more than their finite resources.
Can we really ask for anything?
Prayer is a practice and a subject that we engage in and continue to learn about throughout our lives. Even Jesus’s disciples, who we might think knew better than anyone what prayer meant because they had been so close to Jesus, asked him to teach them to pray.
Reverend Kyle Norman highlights a misguided interpretation of the passage in John 14, pointing out that what sometimes makes prayer so frustrating is facing situations where we are denied the answer we asked for, despite the promise that we would receive an answer. This interpretation is akin to expecting Jesus to offer us a blank cheque, inviting us to fill it in with whatever we think we need.
Some promote a false theology of prayer of the “name it and claim it” variety, arguing that we must be bold enough to express our desires and claim their fulfilment. However compelling it may be, such a theory has no biblical basis, writes Norman, emphasising that there is also a risk of slipping into the other extreme.
Nothing is too small for God, who cares even for an axe head that has fallen into the water.
Noting that the term “whatever” is “gloriously ambiguous”, Norman highlights our Father’s desire for us to pray about anything relating to our lives. When we pray about whatever happens to us or whatever we hope for ourselves or others, it shows that we entrust our lives to God and live in the knowledge that God is always present. Of course, there are requests to which God will not respond, and God has told us in advance that He does not intend to respond to certain requests (for example, when we ask for the wrong reasons and for the wrong purposes – James 4:3).
However, some Christians are reluctant to ask God for help with trivial matters or needs that are not spiritual, because they do not want to trouble Him. They should re-read the somewhat strange story in 2 Kings 6:1–7, writes Norman. In this story, God performs a miracle through the prophet Elijah by retrieving the iron head of a borrowed axe that had been lost by one of the sons of the prophets in the waters of the Jordan. One of the key lessons of this story is that God is involved in the details of our lives in a profound way—nothing is too insignificant for Him, not even a borrowed axe.
Jesus was not spared the suffering He endured, even though He prayed that it might be taken away.
But does God respond positively to every request we bring before Him? Paul was not healed of his infirmity, even though he pleaded three times for this need to be met by the One who can do all things (2 Corinthians 12:7–9). In the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night of His agony, Jesus was not spared the cup He had to drink, despite praying for it to be taken away while submitting unconditionally to His Father’s will.
Is there a discrepancy between Jesus’s promise that our requests will be granted and the reality that we do not always receive answers to requests we consider justified? The answer, or at least part of it, can be found in the very passage that presents Jesus’s promise: we must pray “in His name.”
Rediscovering prayer “in the name of Jesus”
Pastor Robin Webber compares communicating with God to logging into a website: we need both a username and a password. Having a username (“Christian”) alone is not enough; a password is also required to ensure that our prayer reaches its destination. We are granted access to the throne room only if our prayer is made “in the name of Jesus.”
When analysing the meaning of these words, Webber first addresses the danger of misinterpreting this expression. It is not a magic formula that wakes up a sleeping God, so reciting it will not automatically make our request more likely to be heard. Praying in the name of Jesus is not a shortcut to resolving our problems. After all, is God not more interested in our motivation than the words we use in prayer?
When we draw near to God, we do so through Jesus Christ, our High Priest and Mediator, who sits at the right hand of the Father. Therefore, praying “in the name of Jesus” opens the way to God through the authority of His Son. Furthermore, by praying in this way, we acknowledge His authority in our lives and allow Him to guide us as He sees fit, concludes Webber.
Praying “in the name of Jesus” is an expression of our willingness to let go of what we want and our own way of doing things.
As the Christian author Charles Stanley also points out, praying “in the name of Jesus” is the result of choosing to ask for and receive things that align with God’s plans, as revealed in His Word. Stanley writes that another way in which God reveals His will in our lives is by shaping the desires of those who seek Him sincerely, bringing them into harmony with His purposes.
“God never leads His children otherwise than they would choose to be led, if they could see the end from the beginning.” – Ellen White
In fact, prayer “according to His will” (1 John 5:14) is closely linked to prayer “in the name of Jesus,” as another Christian author notes. True Christians do not try to force God’s hand to receive the answer they long for; rather, they ask in humility and submission, confident that “God never leads His children otherwise than they would choose to be led, if they could see the end from the beginning.”[2]
Through prayer, we enter into a relationship with God, and this relationship has a higher purpose than merely meeting our daily needs. The purpose—and at the same time the miracle of this relationship—is to transform us deeply into the likeness of the One whom our hearts love.
Although we will probably never fully understand all the mysteries of prayer or of our relationship with the One whom the heavens cannot contain, in this journey with God, our “taste buds” will be transformed[3], as Priscilla Shirer points out. When we pray in the name of the One who has opened the heavens for us we discover that, deep down, our hearts desire what He Himself desires.
Carmen Lăiu is an editor at Signs of the Times Romania and ST Network.