Jesus said: “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
I like the story of the church, located in an area plagued by drought, which agreed to come together to pray for rain. Just one of them, a young boy, turned up with an umbrella.
Beautiful! It makes you smile - and it makes a serious point.
The challenge it poses is simple: When I pray, do I do so with expectation? Or do I pray purely as a duty? Even if that duty is genuine, heart-felt, and carried out in loving obedience, shouldn’t it be offered with real expectation?
The words of Jesus I have quoted, if taken absolutely literally, suggest that whenever we pray “in Jesus’ name” we can be totally confident that what we ask for will be given. It’s not the only place where we read this: it crops up again in this Gospel at 15:16 and 16:23-24. And something very similar is found in Matthew 18:19-20 and 21:21-22, and Mark 11:22-24. It seems it wasn’t simply an off-the-cuff remark (though even if it was, it’s still a saying of Jesus, and therefore not to be dismissed); no, the repetition of the same essential promise suggests that Jesus intends us to take it entirely seriously.
I find, though, that the more I think about it, the more puzzling it becomes: it simply doesn’t square with our experience.
There are, it’s true, a couple of what we might call “provisos”.
For one thing, Jesus makes it clear that faith is called for. No problem there, of course. But it does mean that if we don’t receive what we have asked for it’s tempting for us to condemn ourselves: “Oh well, I just don’t have enough faith!”
All right; that may be true. But then the question arises: How much faith is “enough” faith? After all, Jesus tells us in Matthew 17:20-21 that faith “as small as a mustard-seed” will move mountains. Surely even those of us with sadly limited faith should “qualify” under that condition! (More seriously, going back to those people who prayed for rain, I wonder how many millions of prayers have been offered for the people suffering the bush-fires in Australia. Were they all lacking in faith?)
Another proviso, as I said, is that we pray “in Jesus’ name”.
Again, all right. But then the question arises: What does it actually mean to pray “in Jesus’ name”? Some Christians routinely add those words as a little formula tagged onto the end of every prayer: “We ask this, Lord, in Jesus’ name”. But while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, surely that can’t be what Jesus means? “In Jesus’ name” isn’t a mantra which magically turns a prayer into a request-that-cannot-be-denied. To think that is not faith but superstition.
Christians who bravely insist on taking these verses strictly literally are likely to end up in a kind of spiritual fantasy world.
I worked once as a hospital chaplain, and one day I ran into a nurse who I knew to be a strong Christian. Just one look at her was enough to show that she had a rip-roaring, five-star mega-cold: runny nose, red eyes, the lot. I naturally sympathised: “My, you’ve got a nasty cold!” Whereupon she put me right straight away: “No! I had a cold, but God has taken it away. It’s just that he’s left me with the symptoms.” Now, how daft is that!
(If only I had had my wits about me. I might have suggested that on any future occasion she would do well, perhaps, to ask God to leave the cold and take away the symptoms...)
Where is this leading us? Well, I would certainly be grateful for any suggestions anyone might like to make to explain this puzzle - I’m keen to learn!
There’s a book of essays called Christian Reflections, in which C S Lewis tackles this very question; the chapter is called “Petitionary prayer: a problem without an answer” (it’s one of his more technical chapters, originally addressed to a clergy group, but worth wrestling with).
Whatever you think about Lewis, it’s not often that he, in effect, admits defeat on a particular matter. But in this case he does. He ends his talk not telling his hearers what he thinks but asking them (a little tongue in cheek, I suspect) what they think: “I come to you, reverend Fathers, for guidance. How am I to pray this very night?”
Weak soul that I am, I find that faintly encouraging. If someone like Lewis, with his great spiritual sensitivity and his extraordinarily acute mind, was baffled by this question, perhaps I just have to live with puzzlement.
And so that’s what I do.
But let’s not forget... Jesus obviously wants us to pray with expectation, not just with perseverance, vital though that is. So let’s ask for grace to do exactly that. Perhaps we will never receive an intellectually satisfying answer, but who knows when we will receive something far more wonderful: a true miracle in answer to our faltering prayers?
Whatever, next time you pray for rain, don’t forget to have your umbrella handy...
Father, please teach me what it means to pray with faith, to pray with perseverance, to pray in the name of Jesus - and to pray in keen expectation. Amen.
I like the story of the church, located in an area plagued by drought, which agreed to come together to pray for rain. Just one of them, a young boy, turned up with an umbrella.
Beautiful! It makes you smile - and it makes a serious point.
The challenge it poses is simple: When I pray, do I do so with expectation? Or do I pray purely as a duty? Even if that duty is genuine, heart-felt, and carried out in loving obedience, shouldn’t it be offered with real expectation?
The words of Jesus I have quoted, if taken absolutely literally, suggest that whenever we pray “in Jesus’ name” we can be totally confident that what we ask for will be given. It’s not the only place where we read this: it crops up again in this Gospel at 15:16 and 16:23-24. And something very similar is found in Matthew 18:19-20 and 21:21-22, and Mark 11:22-24. It seems it wasn’t simply an off-the-cuff remark (though even if it was, it’s still a saying of Jesus, and therefore not to be dismissed); no, the repetition of the same essential promise suggests that Jesus intends us to take it entirely seriously.
I find, though, that the more I think about it, the more puzzling it becomes: it simply doesn’t square with our experience.
There are, it’s true, a couple of what we might call “provisos”.
For one thing, Jesus makes it clear that faith is called for. No problem there, of course. But it does mean that if we don’t receive what we have asked for it’s tempting for us to condemn ourselves: “Oh well, I just don’t have enough faith!”
All right; that may be true. But then the question arises: How much faith is “enough” faith? After all, Jesus tells us in Matthew 17:20-21 that faith “as small as a mustard-seed” will move mountains. Surely even those of us with sadly limited faith should “qualify” under that condition! (More seriously, going back to those people who prayed for rain, I wonder how many millions of prayers have been offered for the people suffering the bush-fires in Australia. Were they all lacking in faith?)
Another proviso, as I said, is that we pray “in Jesus’ name”.
Again, all right. But then the question arises: What does it actually mean to pray “in Jesus’ name”? Some Christians routinely add those words as a little formula tagged onto the end of every prayer: “We ask this, Lord, in Jesus’ name”. But while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, surely that can’t be what Jesus means? “In Jesus’ name” isn’t a mantra which magically turns a prayer into a request-that-cannot-be-denied. To think that is not faith but superstition.
Christians who bravely insist on taking these verses strictly literally are likely to end up in a kind of spiritual fantasy world.
I worked once as a hospital chaplain, and one day I ran into a nurse who I knew to be a strong Christian. Just one look at her was enough to show that she had a rip-roaring, five-star mega-cold: runny nose, red eyes, the lot. I naturally sympathised: “My, you’ve got a nasty cold!” Whereupon she put me right straight away: “No! I had a cold, but God has taken it away. It’s just that he’s left me with the symptoms.” Now, how daft is that!
(If only I had had my wits about me. I might have suggested that on any future occasion she would do well, perhaps, to ask God to leave the cold and take away the symptoms...)
Where is this leading us? Well, I would certainly be grateful for any suggestions anyone might like to make to explain this puzzle - I’m keen to learn!
There’s a book of essays called Christian Reflections, in which C S Lewis tackles this very question; the chapter is called “Petitionary prayer: a problem without an answer” (it’s one of his more technical chapters, originally addressed to a clergy group, but worth wrestling with).
Whatever you think about Lewis, it’s not often that he, in effect, admits defeat on a particular matter. But in this case he does. He ends his talk not telling his hearers what he thinks but asking them (a little tongue in cheek, I suspect) what they think: “I come to you, reverend Fathers, for guidance. How am I to pray this very night?”
Weak soul that I am, I find that faintly encouraging. If someone like Lewis, with his great spiritual sensitivity and his extraordinarily acute mind, was baffled by this question, perhaps I just have to live with puzzlement.
And so that’s what I do.
But let’s not forget... Jesus obviously wants us to pray with expectation, not just with perseverance, vital though that is. So let’s ask for grace to do exactly that. Perhaps we will never receive an intellectually satisfying answer, but who knows when we will receive something far more wonderful: a true miracle in answer to our faltering prayers?
Whatever, next time you pray for rain, don’t forget to have your umbrella handy...
Father, please teach me what it means to pray with faith, to pray with perseverance, to pray in the name of Jesus - and to pray in keen expectation. Amen.
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