What’s in a Name? Does Praying in Jesus’ Name Matter?

Shakespeare posed the rhetorical question he answered from the lips of Juliet. ”What’s in a name? That which we call a rose would smell as sweet,” no matter what we called that flower.

Would it?

Recently, I found myself drawn into a circle of women I do not know to pray for someone I also don’t know. These are women in a yoga class. The woman they prayed for was scheduled to have surgery that day. The one who asked us to pray then reached for hands. Among strangers, I held hands.

Awkward. Not because I object to praying for people, but because in this context it was so unexpected.

One woman said ”I will start” and someone else said, ”I will finish.” Fine. (I know how this works.)

What struck me though, in each instance, the person who prayed ended by saying, ”In his name.”

As each of us returned to our yoga mats, I said to myself, barely above a whisper, ”Jesus.”

A woman next to me said, ”What did you say?”

I answered what and why. She thanked me then and again at the end of class.

Power in the Name

BibleGateway.com counts 1,058 times the name of “Jesus” appears in the New Testament. The gospels record the power displayed in Jesus’ life and the letters of Paul explain the meaning and power in Jesus’ name.

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

John 14:12–14

Jesus instructed his disciples to ask, praying in his name. And what Jesus does in answer to prayer is that which will glorify his Father. The link between asking and receiving is Jesus.

What difference does it make whether a Pray-er says Jesus or ”in his name”?

I am not the prayer police.

Alert to a Warning

My mother died in 1998. Years before she died, she alerted me, ”people will stop using Jesus’ name.” Where she got this idea, I know not. Yet since that time, I have become increasingly aware that she may have been right.

Asking ”in Jesus’ name” or “in his name,” I wonder, could this distinction signal avoidance or offense?

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.

2 Peter 2:8–9

Jesus warned his disciples that if the world hated him, the world would also hate every believer. [1]

Little doubt exists that a contemporary cultural tide has turned against Christians.

Regardless of my mother’s cautionary, if not prophetic words, prayer in Jesus’ name actually means praying what Jesus would pray. The difference between asking whatever in the world you and I may want and what Jesus wants to do is the difference between my bank account and his. Who signs the check?

And how in the world are mere mortals to know what Jesus wants? Does he care which team wins the Super Bowl? There are people praying on both sides of the field. Right?

Easy to forget that Jesus prayed to be spared the agony of the Cross, adding, ”not my will but Thine.”

And Jesus warned religious people (hypocrites) who pray to be seen, and pagans (heathens) who babble on, thinking they will be heard for their many words, and anyone droning on and on, God already knows the need. Better, he says, to pray in the closet. [2]

Prayer changes things or changes me?

So why pray anyway?

A few lines from Mary Oliver’s poem struck me.

“PRAYING”

… just 
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest, but a doorway 

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

The words ”pay attention” got my attention.

And “patch a few words together.” A few, she says, not many, as if to inform God of what he already knows.

And ”this isn’t a contest,” as if using just the right words will make the difference.

Prayer, it seems to me, does open a doorway. Prayer provides entrance to where I can place any situation into Jesus’ hands.

Remember when Lazarus had been dead for four days, Lazarus’ sister Martha said to Jesus, ”Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”? But Jesus knew the plan. The delay was for the glory of God, he said. [3]

Whether people are spared, or raised, or we measure prayer “success” by favorable outcomes, what matters in prayer is Jesus intervening for us.

 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

Romans 8:26–27

Prayer can open our hearts, quiet our thoughts, and shift our perspective to the One and only Person who knows what’s really at stake.

Jesus.

His name is the divine signature on every prayer God answers.

[1] John 15

[2] Matthew 6:5–8

[3] John 11