Devotions

What incredible authority we have been given in prayer. How, exactly, do we use this authority? Through Christ’s own name. You see, when we placed our faith in Jesus, he gave us his name.

You can see why the phrase “in Christ’s name” isn’t just some impersonal formula. Rather, it’s a literal position we have with Jesus. That position is recognized by the Father. Jesus tells us, “In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God” (John 16:26-27, NKJV).

Here is why Jesus commands us to pray in his name. He’s saying, “Whenever you ask in my name, your request has the same power and effect with the Father as if it were me asking him.” Likewise, when we lay hands on the sick and pray, God sees us as if Jesus is laying hands on the sick to bring healing.

This is also why we’re to come boldly to the throne of grace: to receive. We are to pray with confidence, “Father, I stand before you, chosen in Christ to go forth and bear fruit. Now I make my request that my joy may be full.”

I hear many Christians say, “I asked in Jesus’ name, but my prayers weren’t answered.” These believers state, “I tried to claim the power in Jesus’ name, but it just didn’t work for me.” There are many reasons why we don’t receive answers to our prayers. We may have allowed some sin in our lives, something that defiles our union with Christ. These become roadblocks that dam up the flow of blessing from him. He won’t answer our prayers until we’ve forsaken our sin.

Perhaps the blockage is due to lukewarmness or halfheartedness toward the things of God. Perhaps we’re being stifled by doubt, which cuts us off from the power in Christ. James warns, “Let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord” (James 1:6–7).

God knows our hearts, and he knows when we’re undecided in our commitment to his Son. He reserves the power that’s in Christ for those who surrender to him wholly.

“Therefore the Lord will wait, that he may be gracious to you; and therefore he will be exalted, that he may have mercy on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him. For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you” (Isaiah 30:18–19, NKJV). Isaiah was saying, “If you’ll just wait on the Lord, if you’ll cry out to him again, and return to trusting him—he’ll do for you everything I’ve said and more.”

God can merely speak a word, and the enemy will falter before us. “For through the voice of the Lord Assyria will be beaten down, as he strikes with the rod” (Isaiah 30:31). Beloved, there is no matter our Father can’t solve, no battle he can’t win for us with a mere word from his lips. Isaiah says “the breath of the Lord” will consume everything in our way (see Isaiah 30:33).

Despite this, the process of trusting God in all things isn’t easy. I sought the Lord about a situation concerning our church building here in New York City. I told God, “I trust you about this, Father. I have sought you about it, and I will be at peace about it.” Here is how he answered me. “David, I’m amazed that you can trust me with your real estate, finances and other material things, yet you still won’t trust me with your physical well-being.”

I’d been very aware of my age. I’d been overly concerned about what would happen to my family after I’m gone. Now the Lord’s convicting words hit me like a thunderbolt. I’d put every material concern into his hands but not the eternal concerns. I realized, “Lord, you want me to trust you with everything, don’t you?”

Yes, dear saint, he wants it all, your health, your family, your future. He wants you to entrust him with every matter. He wants you to live in quietness, confidence and rest.

Go to your secret closet and get alone with the Lord. Bring everything to him. He has promised, “You’ll hear my word behind you, telling you which way to go. This is the way. Now, walk in it.”

The evidence of faith is rest. Trust faith results in peace of mind. True faith entrusts all things into his hands.

John 14 contains two magnificent promises. First, Jesus states, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to my Father. And whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:12–14, NKJV). Jesus makes it plain and simple in the last verse: “Ask anything in my name, and I’ll do it for you.”

Two verses later, Jesus promises, “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Helper, that he may abide with you forever — the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; but you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:16–17). Here Christ is saying, “I’m going to give you the Spirit of Truth, and his power will abide in you.”

These are two incredible promises from Jesus. Yet, notice the one verse that’s sandwiched between them: “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Why does this statement appear here?

Christ is telling us, “There is a matter of obedience connected to these promises.” In short, both promises have to do with keeping and obeying God’s Word. They were given to be fulfilled, so that nothing would hinder us from claiming the power that is Christ.

I’m convinced that asking little or nothing in Jesus’ name is a reproach to him. Year after year, many Christians settle for less and less. Finally, they settle for salvation only. They have no expectations other than making it to heaven someday.

Have you come to the end of your expectations for Christ? Do you expect nothing more than to be saved by his power and grace? Does ‘your Christ’ end at just enough strength to make it through another day? Does he end for you at a place of occasional peace and joy in a life lived mostly under Satan’s harassment? All of these passages in God’s Word persuade me that ‘my Jesus’ is no bigger than my requests. Sadly, many believers make Christ look insignificant and powerless by their unbelief.

Beloved, I don’t want Christ to be limited in my heart. Instead, I want every devil in hell to know how big my God is by how big my requests are. I want more out of Christ. I want him to be bigger than ever in my life.

In Jeremiah 5, God pleaded, “Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem; see now and know; and seek in her open places if you can find a man, if there is anyone who executes judgment, who seeks the truth, and I will pardon her” (Jeremiah 5:1, NKJV). The Lord was saying, in essence, “I’ll be merciful, if I can find just one person who’ll seek me.”

During the Babylonian captivity, God found such a man in Daniel. When the Holy Ghost came to Daniel, the prophet was reading the book of Jeremiah and asking why God was not delivering Israel after the promised 70 years. When the revelation came that Israel had not repented, Daniel was provoked to pray, “I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession” (Daniel 9:3-4).

Daniel knew God’s people had failed, yet did the prophet lambaste his peers for their sins? No. Daniel identified himself with the moral decay all around him. He declared, “We have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from your precepts and your judgments… O Lord, to us belongs shame of face, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against you” (Daniel 9:5, 8).

God strongly desires to bless his people today, but if our minds are polluted with the spirit of this world, we are in no position to receive his blessings. Daniel made this powerful statement: “All this disaster has come upon us; yet we have not made our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand Your truth. Therefore the Lord has kept the disaster in mind, and brought it upon us; for the Lord our God is righteous in all the works which he does, though we have not obeyed his voice” (Daniel 9:13–14).

We must examine our own walk with the Lord and let the Holy Spirit show us areas of compromise. We should do more than pray for a backsliding nation. We should be crying out, “Oh, Lord, search my heart. Expose in me all of the spirit of the world that has crept into my soul.” Like Daniel, we could then set our faces to pray for the deliverance of our families and our nation.

In Genesis chapter 34, we’re following the events in the family of Jacob and his 12 sons who eventually became known as the 12 tribes of Israel. Levi was one of the 12 children of Jacob, and he had a sister named Dinah.

Now, Dinah was mistreated to the point of actually being raped by some men in a village near where they were living, so Levi and Simeon went into this village and enacted murderous revenge. When they came back, Jacob was so frustrated with them. A few chapters later, Jacob was dying. The tradition in those days was that you would gather your children and speak a blessing over them at the end of your life.

Here were his 12 sons, and he spoke 10 blessings. Instead of a blessing Levi and Simeon, he said, “Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel” (Genesis 49:7). I can’t help but imagine that their father really affected them, and it would seem so in scripture. The Bible doesn’t mention the tribe of Levi or Simeon very often in the next couple hundred years.

Finally, we find the tribe of Levi mentioned again. Moses went up on top of the mountain, God carved out the Ten Commandments, then Moses came back down off that mountain only to find Israel had put together this idol of a golden calf. They were dancing and partying and worshiping it. Moses was struck to the heart by this and how lightly they took the things of God. “Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, ‘Who is on the Lord's side? Come to me.’ And all the sons of Levi gathered around him” (Exodus 32:26).

People in the tribe of Levi were the first ones to step out of worldliness and stand with God’s chosen leader and the law.

Do you know what Moses said to them through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? “Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day” (Exodus 32:29).

God made the Levites into a dedicated tribe of priests to serve him in his temple. God can break generational curses and pain. Step into a relationship with him and bow to his truth, and he can transform anything.