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The Lord Jesus has begun to introduce to us that vital dimension of the true Christian life. It is a dimension which is so little understood today. Yet, without it, there is no real Christian life. None!

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber" (John 10: 1).

“I am the door”(verse 7) "1 am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved" (verse 9).

"I am the bread of life"(John 6: 48). "1 am the Light of the world" (John 8: 12). "1 am the Resurrection and the Life" (John 11: 25). "1 am the Way, the Truth and the Life" (John 14: 6).

The Lord Jesus found every aspect and dimension of His life in: The Father! All that He was. All He said. All He did. He was fully one with the Father. He was in the Father and the Father was in Him.

He points to His life of oneness with the Father as the illustration and demonstration of what the Christians life is to be in Him. In every aspect, in every way, He reveals that there is a complete and dynamic match.

This is most certainly true in the area of the Christian's life and prayer.

"And whatsoever!” "And" so obviously is a conjunction. Its purpose is to join what follows with the teaching which has preceded.

The Lord Jesus is not commencing a totally new emphasis in His teaching. Yet most often that is exactly the way these verses are treated. As if the subject matter of the previous verses has been fully dealt with and is now complete. So that we move now into a new and unrelated aspect of His teaching.

Rather, that which follows is directly tied to the teaching which went before. It is a part of one great and inspiring truth.

These statements flow from the example of the relationship of the Lord Jesus to the Father. From the fact that He speaks the Word of the Father. That the Father works in and through everything that He does. .

The promise and assurance of these verses is specifically given to: "He that believeth on Me" (verse 12). That one of whom the Lord Jesus said, "The works that I do shall He do also!"

This is a continuation of all that is involved in that great and inspiring truth!

“And whatsoever ye shall ask!” “Whatsoever!”is asked by the person who puts their faith completely in the Lord Jesus Christ.

That: "believeth" faith, as the Lord Jesus defines and illustrates it, qualifies His use of: "Whatsoever." Some may want to suggest that to qualify "Whatsoever" in that way puts real limits on the meaning of the word. That is not the case at all.

That genuine "believing" actually sets free the one who comes in prayer. It both liberates and gloriously expands the scope of their thinking, and, therefore, of their asking.

That person has already heard the Lord Jesus say, “The works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do!" So, "whatsoever" is being seen in the light of that gracious and glorious assurance!

Faith is excited by the reality. In great enthusiasm it grasps with both hands this most significant truth. It is motivated by the realization which the Lord Himself gave. "I can not only see more and more of all that the Lord is doing. He enables me to be fully involved. I can share with Him in all that He is doing!" So he prays according to that fact.

Where there is no real faith there is no such vision. In its place there is a most negative attitude which results from a totally limited concept of the potential of the Christian life.

Faith looks with conviction at "Whatsoever!" Faith is thrilled by the assurance which the Lord gives that He does mean exactly what He says. Claiming that we actually do have every right to see: "whatsoever" through the eyes of the Lord Himself!

What a privilege! This is the privilege which is given to all those who by faith live the true Christian life according to the Lord's plan.

There is more than one way to ask. James comments, "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts" (James 4: 3).

"Let him ask in faith" (James 1: 6) Which is exactly the way Jesus taught. "All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive" (Matthew 21: 22).

It is far too easy to pray prayers which are devoid of “believing.” Such "prayers" are the expression of some vague hope to which we really do not expect to receive any answer. There is no compelling sincerity in our praying.

It is impossible to imagine the Lord Jesus praying that kind of "prayer". Whenever He prayed, He prayed in the faith which was compelled by His personal knowledge of the Father. Constrained by His commitment to grasp and do His will always.

"Ask!" Motivated by that compelling sincerity which comes from knowing Him. Which desires above all else to be one with Him. Longing faithfully to do His will. Motivated to please Him. To honor and glorify Him.

We see what He is doing and desire to share in that with Him. That is: "asking" as He Himself "asked"! We hear all that He is saying, and want to faithfully reproduce that same Word. To express the same attitude and motive. Longing always to be one with Him.

We have fallen into a very common habit which results in us missing the true significance of these words: "In My Name!"

We almost invariably pray, using the actual phrase in the prayer: "In the Name of Jesus!" Far too often the use of that phrase is neither spiritual nor sincere. It is superstition. As though the words, "In the Name of Jesus" were a talisman which somehow guarantees us the answer which we seek.

Empty words, which are being used out of habit or custom, having no positive effect or benefit. Part of empty ritual.

The Lord Jesus said, "I am come in My Father's Name!" (John 5: 43). When He used that expression, "In My Father's Name!" He meant that He came faithfully representing the Father. That He was fully and completely one with the Father in everything. Entirely one with Him in life and will.

In fact, this is another way of saying: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father!" And, "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me" (John 14: 9, 11).

"In My Name'' means: in that same personal and vital relationship with the Lord Jesus. Being genuinely one with Him in all that He is. In the same way that He is one with The Father.

“In My Name!” The result is clearly demonstrated in the life and attitude of the Lord Jesus. For Him, "In My Father's Name" meant continually and joyfully emphasizing His Father's will.

“I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me" (John 5: 30). It means exactly the same for us. Not doing or seeking our own will or way. But seeking to do His will in all things.

He said, "For I do always those things which please Him" (John 8: 29). To pray: "In My Name"will always be with the desire to do those things which please Him.

For the Lord Himself, there was no aspect of His life left untouched by this principle. His values were the values of the Father. He embraced the priorities of the Father as His own priorities. The same applied to the standards and values of the Father. The principles. Everything.

"In My Name"embraces all this. Values, standards. Priorities. Principles. We claim none of those as being ours. They are all His. We have no will but His will.

Our one desire and motivation is that He will always be all in all: in all things. That, "For to me to live is Christ!" (Philippians 1: 21).

Yet, can this really be our experience? "For to me to live is Christ!" Where He is actually and always: everything!

That can be our experience. Especially in the realm of prayer. If it is our experience there, it will become our experience in all other areas as well.

This is the life of prayer in which we are: "Alive! to God!" That is the expression which Paul uses. "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6: 11).

We are identified with the Lord Jesus Christ. With His death! In His death we died to sin! Sin can no longer separate us from God. We are raised to new life in the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, in Him, we are alive! we are "alive to God!"

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2: 20).

“Not I, but Christ liveth in me!" When I pray, that is the reality which enables me to pray: "In His Name!"

“I live by the faith of the Son of God!" "I pray in and by the faith of the Son of God!"

The Lord Jesus willingly accepts that as His personal responsibility! We see this demonstrated in His relationship with the Father.

Listen as the Lord Jesus prays to the Father. As you listen, remember, the Father is in the Son. The Son is in the Father. They are one!

"And Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. And I knew that Thou hearest Me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast heard Me" (John 11: 41, 42).

The Lord Jesus is pointing us to that glorious relationship. He reminds us: All that the Father was, and is, to Me I will be to you!

I prayed, "In My Father's Name!" Knowing that He always heard. Always responded. You pray, "In My Name," with the guaranteed assurance that I will always hear, and that I will always respond!

That is His personal guarantee: to us! HE will always be everything to us that the Father was to Him! This is assured when we come according to His Word and will.

“I will!” When the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father "I knew that Thou hearest Me always" He knew exactly what that fact meant. That in "hearing" the Father acted. The Father responded.

In the same way the Lord assures us. We will be heard, giving us the confidence of a specific answer!

"If we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him. 11 (1 John 5: 15).

Our total devoted identification with Him assures us of this reality: His total identification with us in our prayer. That is His stated purpose in this promise!

He is saying to us, Do you want to know how this Christian life works effectively and victoriously? This is how: through this level of genuine prayer! This real and vital prayer which does make us truly one with Him. With His will. With His Word.

In this prayer He enables us to see where He is leading. Enabling us to willingly follow Him. We see what He is doing, and work with Him doing His works. Hearing what He is saying we say it with Him.

In everything we are becoming more and more one with Him! It is that fact which gives Him the opportunity He seeks. He can say, "I will do it"

This statement made by the Lord Jesus confronts us with an essential truth which far too many Christians ignore.

Our salvation is not the first priority of the Lord Jesus. His first concern, even as He died on the cross of Calvary, was not to save us from our sin!

Christians get so smugly selfcentered. So full of their own selfimportance. They see themselves as the center of everything. That is not the reality.

For the Lord Jesus, the glory of the Father was always His first priority! Always! Nothing will ever change that eternal reality.

Yes, our salvation was, and is, important to Him. Especially as it contributes to the glory of the Father! Saving us from our sin and its consequences is important: as it reveals the wonder of the Father's gracious plan.

That is why Paul says, "That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2: 7).

“To the intent that. now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be kown by the Church the manifold wisdom of God!" (Ephesians 3: 10) The same witness. Everything glorifies the Father. Everything!

The Lord Jesus seeks to show to us this vital truth. Yes, He is fully committed to hear our prayer. To respond with the assurance: “I will do it!” For the highest possible purpose.

To take us, and our prayer. along with our willing total identification with Him, and to make it all an integral part of His commitment to always give the first priority to the Father and His glory.

What a wonderful privilege that is: for us! Yet we are so slow to see it. Even reluctant, to identify completely with this aim of the Lord Jesus. What a challenge this is to us and to both our faith and our love for Him.

The Lord Jesus is saying to us, This fact must always be first in your thinking. This is what true prayer is always making the objective.

We have this in His prayer of intercession in John 17 "I have glorified Thee on earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do" (verse 4).

His prayer was always expressed with that objective. Glorifying the Father by accomplishing His will. That is even true of His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me: nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done" (Luke 22: 42).

When we pray, "In His Name," He draws us into genuine personal identification with that attitude. Such prayer becomes the heartcry of deep devotion. Whatever it takes, may the will of God be done so that He is glorified!

Far, far too often we operate on a much lower level. Our concerns are selfcentered. Our prayers are to gratify self and its desires.

The Lord Jesus seeks to lift us to that higher plane of prayer. Praying: "In His Name!"

What an amazing expression of grace this is. Paul was able to grasp the wonder of this humbling reality.

"And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus" (I. Timothy 1: 12 14).

Think of it! Only by that amazing and abundant grace could this be possible. Those who were once the vilest of sinners. Now, are one in and with the Lord Jesus. Able to pray "In His Name!" Thus being used by the Lord that: "The Father be glorified!"

This is the exciting truth which the Lord Jesus is seeking to reveal to us. Even as He seeks to enable us to live by it daily. This is true prayer.

He is the One who fullfills this role of bringing glory to the Father. Only He can do it! The honor for doing so must always be given to Him!

Just as the first priority of the Son is to glorify the Father. So the first priority of the Father is to glorify the Son.

There is an essential truth here. As Christians we can only bring glory to the Father as we are genuinely one with the Lord Jesus. Completely identified with Him in everything.

Anything that is less than that cannot bring glory to God, no matter how much we may want to pretend that it does. In fact, anything less actually robs God of His glory!

To come to the Father in prayer, genuinely asking in the Name of the Lord Jesus. Faithfully applying these spiritual principles which the Lord Jesus has so clearly taught. These principles which He reveals by means of His relationship with the Father.

Having permitted this truth to really get a hold of us: That is to pray with a heart filled with love for Him. Love surrendered willingly to His will. With the burning desire to glorify the Father in the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is the compelling effect which results from the Lord Jesus filling all we are and all we have. The Lord Jesus Himself, and only Him, continuing to live in our hearts by faith. Live there as all in a1l:

That "if" does not mean that the Lord Jesus is unconcerned. He is concerned. That indifferent attitude which marks so many Christians is totally alien to Him.

The Lord Jesus repeatedly encourages us to "Ask!" He teaches us the necessity of asking. In fact, He commands us to ask!

“I say unto you , Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. . . If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" (Luke 11: 9, 13).

“Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My Name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full" (John 16: 24) .

This is His most gracious invitation to us. The Lord impresses upon us the importance of personally grasping this opportunity.

The Lord Jesus asked the Father. As He asked, He knew that it was His Father's will, both for Him to ask, and for the Father to respond.

"I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter" (John 14: 16).

This is a confirmation of His earlier use of the word: "Whatsoever!" "And whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name!"

The intention of the Lord Jesus is quite clear. He is deliberately reminding us of the amazing scope of His promise. Yes, there is still the qualification, which we shall look at in a moment.

But, again, that does not limit the extent of: "Anything!'' Rather is helps to give us a clearer focus. While it also broadens the glory of the potential contained in His promise.

The Psalmist wrote, “I have seen an end of all perfection: but Thy commandment is exceeding broad" (Psalm 119: 96).

"Exceeding broad" is the most appropriate term to use in the context of Jesus saying, "Anything!"

."Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature!" (2 Peter 1: 4).

"Exceeding great and precious promises!" All of which are an integral parts of His: “Anything!”

Who of us would dare to suggest that any of us has begun to exhaust His promises? How then can we imagine that His "Anything" is so easily exhausted by our feeble requests?

Here is this most vital qualification. It does not, in any way, limit the scope of our prayer. It liberates it!

Being one with Him, we are set free! "If the Son therefore shall set you free, ye shall be free indeed!" (John 8: 36).

To be "in Him", is to discover ourselves being gloriously released. Liberated into the infinite potential of His Person and His personality. To be stunned by the indescribable magnitude of the limitless potential of His great heart and mind!

The more that we are taken up into Him, the more we are humbled. Realizing how little we have claimed of all that He desires to give. He has so much that He wants us to experience. We have so foolishly pretended that it is so little!

"In My Name!" Allowing Him to set us free. Making it possible for us to freely, continually identify with Him. With His power. His purpose. His purity.

We begin to realize just how empty, vain, worthless and repulsive are all of the vaunted treasures of the world. And: self!

We want: Jesus! Only: Jesus. More and more of: Jesus! "In My Name!"opens the most glorious of all doors to: the prayer of faith!

The Lord Jesus has made abundantly clear these vital spiritual principles. They are the foundation of this exciting promise. It is because so many Christians ignore these principles that their prayers are so empty and unsatisfying to them.

James reminds us: "But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A doubleminded man is unstable in all his ways" (,James 1: 6 8).

Many pray: hoping that they will get what they ask for. Not sure. Wondering. One moment their attitude is positive. The next it is negative.

That is not prayer as the Lord Jesus taught us. He gives the absolute assurance. Ask, in My Name, and I guarantee to you that I will do it!

That is the level of Christian experience which He desires for us, when we do pray with strong confidence.

Think of His words: "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently (in this present moment) give Me more than twelve legions of angels?" (Matthew 26: 53).

All that I have to do is: Ask! Just as soon as I ask, the Father will give! Will give! So that this earth of sin and Shame will be invaded by more than twelve legions of angels!

That is the truth He wants us to claim. Ask! He gives. ASK! I WILL! That is it!

John Wesley said, "God never does anything, except in answer to prayer!" "Ask, and it shall be given unto you!"

What happens when Christians do not ask? Do not pray? Do we really understand that our failure to pray does seriously limit the Lord Jesus? Hindering Him so that He cannot do all that He desires to do.

Neglecting prayer is, in reality, not allowing Him to speak His Word of grace to those who so desperately need to hear it!

That incredible fact reveals something of the scope of our great responsibility! The Lord says to us: “Ask, I will do it!” How much are we praying about the many desperate situations in the world today. Or, is it that we just do not care?

There are so many, all around us, going out into eternity without Christ and without hope. Often: loved ones. Yet many Christians are not taking this commitment of the Lord Jesus seriously enough to pray.

The Lord reminds us that He has put this responsibility into our hands. Hear Him again "Ask, in My Name, and I will do it!"

Think of the privilege involved. The Lord gives to us this amazing opportunity. We are to play an integral and vital role in changing the world! In changing, transforming, the lives of unsaved, godless, people around us.

We can if: we ask, in His Name. Believing, knowing, He will use our prayer to do it!

In prayer we can fully identify with His will. We will see more clearly all that He is willing and waiting to do. We can release His will. He will do it

This privilege which He gives to us extends to every area of His concerns. To every person everywhere to whom He is seeking to bring the wonder of His saving grace. His transforming power.

Think about that in humble awe! In wonder! In praise! In thanksgiving! He makes us an essential part Of: "Even greater things than these!"

He seeks to inspire us to believe Him. Believe His Word. To totally identify with Him in faith. To be one with Him in all that He is. To personally become a dynamic part of all of the activity of His grace in the world today!