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The one sentence guide to powerful prayer
John 14:13
David Campbell
With his disciples gathered in the upper room, Jesus gives them his last earthly
teaching before the cross. This teaching is found only in John’s gospel (chapters
14-16) and is sometimes called the Farewell or the Upper Room discourses of
Jesus. Jesus’ goal that night was to prepare his disciples for a world in which he
would not be physically present, even though he will be so powerfully represented
by the Holy Spirit that his followers will be enabled to do more than he himself
had ever done.
This truth is brought home to us in Jn. 14:12: “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever
believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he
do, because I am going to the Father.” We know that part of the meaning of this
saying is that millions of believers around the world moving in the power of the
Spirit can see God do things in a vastly more multiplied manner than the one man
Jesus could do, even though none of us as individuals is ever going to accomplish
in our own lives what Jesus did by way of signs and wonders and miracles.
What we overlook in terms of what this verse means is that the key to its coming
into effect is found in the very next verse: “Whatever you ask in my name, that will
I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (14:13). In case we miss what
he’s saying, he repeats it in verse 14: “If you ask me anything in my name, I will
do it.”
Six times in these three chapters, Jesus tells us that God will give us what we ask
in his name. Prayer is the single most important thing we can do if we want to see
the kingdom of God come on earth. The devil will try to persuade us that we have
to do all sorts of things, if by getting us involved in those things he can divert our
attention away from the power of prayer. There are lots of things we can do, and
lots of things God tells us to do. We are to witness to the lost, we are to care for
the poor, we are to shepherd the sheep, we are to cast our demons and heal the
sick. We can strategize and we can plan and we can hold meetings till we are blue
in the face. But the fact is that if we are not praying, we are wasting our time.
Prayer is what releases the power of God into the things that we do for God.
Prayer is also what reveals that a lot of what we think we are doing for God is not
what God wants us to do at all.
The truth is that we ourselves cannot actually accomplish anything for God.
Without the empowering of the Holy Spirit, we may have the best intentions but
the worst results. Our action-oriented society pushes us into a frenzy of activity
without us ever asking God whether we are doing what he wants us to do. What
Jesus tells us about prayer reveals a powerful truth. Our greatest task is not to do,
but to ask. Our job is to ask, God’s job is to accomplish what we ask.
Does this mean we do nothing? No. But what it does mean is that what we are to
do is often only found out as we ask God.
To illustrate this, let’s look at this critical verse. According to our understanding,
John 14:13 is the bridge toward the accomplishment of John 14:12. Verse 13 is
about our asking, verse 12 is about his doing what we ask. And if Jesus tells us we
will do greater things, these are only the things that he is empowering and enabling
us to do in response to our asking him.
So here is the verse again: Whatever you ask in my name, that will I do, that the
Father may be glorified in the Son.
Let’s take it apart phrase by phrase.
Whatever. These words translate a phrase in Greek which refers to the broadest
possible range of things you could imagine. There is nothing outside the
appropriate scope of prayer. Prayer is a “whatever” activity. Paul says the same
thing in Phil 4:6. First he says worry about nothing: “Do not be anxious about
anything.” Then he says pray about everything: “But in everything by prayer
and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” And
this gets us a great result: “The peace of God, which passes all understanding, will
keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (verse 7). The peace of God is the
most priceless possession in the universe. The word “keep” refers to a military
garrison. The peace of God is an impregnable wall God builds around us in the
midst of all life can throw against us. The only way to get the peace of God is to
pray. And the wall has be strengthened again with every new day.
you ask. If prayer is a “whatever” activity, our asking will never stop. When Paul
says “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17), he doesn’t mean we do nothing but
pray, but he does mean that to pray is a regular part of our life. Jesus made it clear
you don’t need a lot of words to pray, but you do need to ask. When a child asks
his parents for something, he doesn’t compose a 45 minute speech. He just asks.
You don’t have to spend an hour petitioning God when he heard you in the first
few seconds. Yet to ask is critical. The asking is our part. But the doing is God’s
part. The problem with large parts of the church in our culture is that we try to do
God’s part without ever doing our part. Jesus didn’t say to the church at
Philadelphia, “Develop a plan to reach your city for God.” No - in response to
their faithful seeking of him, he said, “I have placed before you an open door”
(Rev. 3:8). Through prayer, he opened the door. How much easier can it be to go
through a door Jesus has opened instead of trying to find a door and try to break it
open yourself? Jesus also said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will
find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7). The Greek verbs are in the
present tense. Jesus is not referring to something we do occasionally or when
we’re in trouble. He is describing a continuous action. We ask, and ask again.
We seek and do not give up. We knock until our knuckles are raw and bleeding,
and then we knock some more. Even when the need was the greatest and the most
obvious, Jesus required a person to ask. Remember the blind beggar at the side of
the road. As he came running, Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for
you?” (Mk. 10:51). And his asking released the answer he sought. Jesus said to
him, “Your faith has made you well.”
in my name. Biblically, to be in someone’s name or to come in someone’s name
means to come under their authority or in their ownership. To ask in Jesus’ name
means to ask as those who are under his ownership, obedient to his authority,
wanting to know his will in every situation. To be in his ownership means to be
aligned with his will. Sixty years after he heard Jesus speaking these words, which
he recorded in his gospel, John wrote a letter in which he said: “This is the
confidence we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he
hears us. And we know that if he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we
have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 Jn. 5:14-15). The key words are
the same as Jesus spoke the night before he died: “whatever,” “ask.” and “in his
will” (the same as “in his name”). Sixty years later, he was still remembering
what Jesus said that night. In between was a lifetime of trial and adventure and
extraordinary challenges, in which he must surely have tested over and over again
the truth of what Jesus had taught, and found that it worked.
that will I do. The asking is our part. The doing is God’s part. This frees us from
worrying about asking for the wrong things. God is only obligated to perform his
will. He is not worried about us getting it wrong when we ask, so long as our heart
is right. He would rather we asked according to the understanding that we have,
than that we never asked at all. God is not worried so much about us asking for the
wrong things as he is concerned about us doing the wrong things. Far better to
give him the opportunity to adjust our asking than to have him clear up the
consequences of our disobeying! In the process of asking, God draws us closer to
himself. Even if he does not answer the request, he answers the cry of our heart to
draw near to him, and as a result we begin to understand better what to ask for the
next time. The Bible introduces us to God this way: “In the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). The Hebrew even puts the verb
first: “In the beginning created God the heavens and the earth.” At Oxford
University, C.S. Lewis began lecturing in the hallway outside the classroom and
was already well into his talk by the time he entered the room. God walks into the
universe already doing things. He was already at work before we ever knew him
and he has never stopped.
that the Father may be glorified in the Son. There are a multitude of good goals
that we can aim for as Christians. We can witness to the lost, build strong
marriages and families, be part of churches that grow and influence communities.
There are thousands of smaller goals that we aim for as Christians every day -balance our budget, maintain sexual purity, be on good terms with our spouse, see
our kids do well, and so on. But we must never lose sight of the fact that there is
only one ultimate goal a Christian is to live for. This goal is that God is glorified
in our lives. This is also the ultimate goal of all prayer. Why is it so important to
keep this truth before us? One reason is that otherwise everything in life tends to
boil down to us. As fallen men and women, we build our lives around ourselves.
But really, life is about God and his will, his desires, his purposes, his glory.
Seeing as our life is only a gift from him, why would we not want to build that life
around his? That is a good theological reason to hold God’s glory as our ultimate
goal. But there is another, very practical reason to keep this truth before us. Do
we want our prayers answered? We can pray prayers that are all about us, but it
does not obligate God to answer. The only way to guarantee answers from God to
is to pray with his will and his glory in mind. We need to evaluate everything in
our lives and our prayers from the perspective of whether or not it gives glory to
God. God is not invested in our success, but in his own glory. This sounds selfish
only from our human point of view. God is not like us. He seeks his own glory
not for selfish reasons but because he is glorified by our becoming like him. And
that is the biggest win-win in the universe, because to become like him is the
greatest blessing we could ever gain for ourselves. And in that he is glorified. In
the Olympic races, the judges erected a pole so that the runners, seeing it, would
not go off course. Paul writes of that pole when, describing himself as an Olympic
runner, he says, “Forgetting what lies behind, I press on toward the goal marker
for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). The goal
marker of all prayer is the glory of God. Those are prayers God will hear. And if
he hears, we know he will answer in his own perfect way and timing.
We have to start somewhere. So why not start by using this verse to help you?
Expand the horizon of prayer to every issue in your life.... whatever. Ask God
about everything... you ask. Come to him in submission to his lordship... in my
name. Allow God to be God and do his part....that will I do. Seek his glory in
everything.... that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
And then see what God does!