Read on Twitter
Brief thread on prayer:
The question of how to understand passages like John 14:13-14 and John 16:23-24 frequently troubled me growing up.
I read those passages. I tried it. And it didn't work. So you know what I did? I stopped praying. In the sense of asking for anything.
The question of how to understand passages like John 14:13-14 and John 16:23-24 frequently troubled me growing up.
I read those passages. I tried it. And it didn't work. So you know what I did? I stopped praying. In the sense of asking for anything.
I simply concluded that it didn't work so why bother? To be clear, I still rejoiced and thanked God for waking up each day, family, food, Communion, etc., but petitionary prayer I just sorta did away with.
Now I never believed that Jesus had lied to me and to the Church, but I knew it just didn't work the way I tried it. So I said goodbye to it.
But then I was presented with a teaching from Dr. Norman Nagel on prayer.
But then I was presented with a teaching from Dr. Norman Nagel on prayer.
Dr. Nagel taught that prayer is literally pulling things out of God's name.
He told his students to picture the name of Jesus like a treasure chest that holds all of God's gifts--for you--inside it. You can ask for anything that is "in that name" and He gives it to you.
He told his students to picture the name of Jesus like a treasure chest that holds all of God's gifts--for you--inside it. You can ask for anything that is "in that name" and He gives it to you.
The critical key is to learn what is "in the name" and what is not. Instead of dwelling on our (often!) silly will and smacking a "in the name of Jesus" onto the prayer, we learn to stop and ask:
what does the Name of Jesus hold for me in this situation? What can I ask for from this treasure chest?
And here we see the beautiful harmony between the promises of Christ in John's Gospel and John's own words from 1 John 5:
And here we see the beautiful harmony between the promises of Christ in John's Gospel and John's own words from 1 John 5:
that if we ask anything according to His will, we know that He hears us and grants us whatever we ask. We see that the will of God is precisely that we have all the goodies God has loaded into the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
If you want to do this with kids, have them take a box and label it with the word "Jesus," and then fold up a bunch of slips of paper inside it with things such as: joy, peace, health, daily bread, strength, deliverance, etc., written on them.
Tell them to reach their hand in and grab one. Have them read what is on the slip and tell them, "this is what it means to pray 'in the name of Jesus.' That everything that is IN that Name is YOURS!"
