Praying - In Jesus Name

There are many conditions for answered prayer given in the New Testament. I'm not going to pretend that we will cover them all in this series. But hopefully the ones we do cover will be an encouragement to you in your prayer life.

Jesus tells us that we should pray in His name.

 John 16:24 Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

What does it mean to pray in Jesus' name?  It doesn't mean that we just tack on "In Jesus Name amen" at the end of our prayers. When a representative of our government visits a foreign leader and makes some request in the name of the President, it's as good and means as much as if the President were there actually making the request. So when we pray in Jesus' Name, we are saying to God that we are speaking on Jesus' authority. We are coming with His permission and what we are asking for is what He would be asking for if He were there. To me this means that I need to be more careful what I ask for. God wants us to come boldly before His throne so that we may find grace to help in time of need, but we need to be careful of making demands and having expectations that are not in line at all with what Jesus Himself would want. This means we need to be faithful in getting to know Jesus better and better by our personal reading, study and meditation on His Word.