IN JESUS' NAME

When Jesus told us that, if we prayed in His name, He would give us what we asked for (John 14:13), He certainly was talking about something far deeper than the reciting of a religious formula.  That kind of thing would reduce prayer to cheap magic.  Instead, our Lord was telling us that, if our prayers are to be effective, we must grow into people who are so like Jesus that our prayers will be an expression of His concerns about love.
In the ancient world, a person's name had a deep significance that has been lost in our modern world.  To those who lived in the ancient world in which Jesus lived, a person's name was meant to embody everything that the person was about.  A name expressed a person's essential character and tapped into the spiritual core of the person's identity.  So when Jesus told His disciples to pray in His name, He was telling them that if they would yield to His transforming power in their lives and let His mind be in them (Philippians 2:5), then their prayers would be like His.  Such prayers are answered. 
 
-- Tony Campolo in Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God


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