By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” Here the qualification is explicit: “ If you abide in me and my words abide in you” - that’s the qualification. Then comes John 15:7–8: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. Therefore, any prayer that does not imply “Hallowed be thy name” as the main desire has no claim on this verse. ” the whatever is qualified by the end of the verse: “that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” Prayer exists, like everything else, to show that God is supremely glorious. “God, please make pornography a godly thing to look at once a week.” “God, blind the IRS to all the times I have lied on my tax returns.” “God, please put my competitor out of business.” For example: “God, please, make me more important than yourself.” “God, please wipe the Jewish people off the planet - or black people, or white people.”Ĭhoose your hatred, and ask God to support you in it. If God answered them, he would not be glorified. Why is that? Because we can all think of prayers that do not glorify God. If we make it absolute, we deny that the glory of God is the aim of prayer. We all wonder how extensive that whatever is. That explains why he does not need to qualify the word whatever. “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” When Jesus says, that the aim of all prayer is that God, the Giver, might be glorified in Jesus, the Mediator, he puts prayer in a radically God-centered context. Second, notice that God is glorified in answering our prayer. We are accepted in God’s presence only because of Christ. The reason we pray in Jesus’s name (and not our own) is because we have no rights to anything good from God apart from what Jesus has done for us in taking away our sins (John 1:29) and in providing us a robe of righteousness (Revelation 7:14) that God finds acceptable. Notice, first, that we pray in Jesus’s name. Verse 13: “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” In the Name and for His Glory In John 14:13–14, Jesus connects our praying with the glory of God, and with his own role as the Mediator between God and us. That the Father May Be Glorified in the Son Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”ġ. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. John 16:23–24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. John 15:7–8, 16: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” John 14:13–14: “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. “Prayer exists, like everything else, to show that God is supremely glorious.” I’ll read them with you, and then sketch some of the picture that emerges. He deals with our praying mainly in three places. So, first, let’s sketch part of the picture that John gives us about prayer. My title for the message is “Put in the Fire for the Sake of Prayer.” I pray that the overall effect will be to make us earnest and serious and disciplined and joyful and Christ-dependent and God-glorifying in our prayer during 2009. So what you are going to hear is John’s portrait of prayer with a Zechariah twist at the end. What I did not anticipate was the effect of reading the prophet Zechariah as I finished my read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year program.
Should christians pray in a circle joining hands series#
Since we are in a series on the Gospel of John, I resolved to preach on prayer from John. So as I have done for over 25 years, I set myself to preach about prayer. My preparations for this message took a surprising turn.
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