Question: "What does it mean to pray in Jesus' name?"
Answer:
Prayer in Jesus’ name is taught in John 14:13-14, “And I will do whatever you ask in my
name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything
in my name, and I will do it.” Some misapply this verse, thinking that saying
“in Jesus’ name” at the end of a prayer results in God’s always granting what is
asked for. This is essentially treating the words “in Jesus’ name” as a magic
formula. This is absolutely unbiblical.
Praying in Jesus’ name means
praying with His authority and asking God the Father to act upon our prayers
because we come in the name of His Son, Jesus. Praying in Jesus' name means the
same thing as praying according to the will of God, “This is the confidence we
have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears
us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we
asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15). Praying in Jesus’ name is praying for
things that will honor and glorify Jesus.
Saying “in Jesus’ name” at the
end of a prayer is not a magic formula. If what we ask for or say in prayer is
not for God’s glory and according to His will, saying “in Jesus’ name” is
meaningless. Genuinely praying in Jesus' name and for His glory is what is
important, not attaching certain words to the end of a prayer. It is not the
words in the prayer that matter, but the purpose behind the prayer. Praying for
things that are in agreement with God’s will is the essence of praying in Jesus’
name. more»
Holiness is one of those words that means different things to
different people, isn't it? What associations does it conjure up in your
mind? For some of us I suspect holiness has decidedly unattractive
connotations. A "holy joe" is one of those religious fanatics who
embarrasses you by his antisocial killjoy attitude to life. "Holier than
thou" is the way we describe pompous prigs who reckon themselves
morally superior to everyone else. Even at its most positive, the word
"holy" I guess conveys rather austere if nostalgic memories of the hymns
we used to sing in school chapel... "Holy, holy,holy" - intoned to a
ponderous organ amid hushed whispers, stained-glass windows, gothic
architecture and acute physical discomfort. No, holiness is not a
quality to which the majority of people feel attracted.
But then it would rather defeat the object of the exercise if they
did. For the whole point of holiness is to be different, separate,
clearly distinguished from everything that is profane and ordinary. In
Old Testament times the pots and pans they used in the sacrifical ritual
of the Temple were "holy"...because they were kept especially for that
"sacred" purpose. The priests were "holy" too, because of their special
role in offering the sacrifices. Defining such objects and persons as
"holy" was a way of making clear to the Jewish people that in a very
real sense God didn't belong to this world. He was different and
therefore those who wanted to have dealings with him had to be different
too.
The holiness code that comprises a substantial part of the Book
of Leviticus generated a sacred-secular divide in ancient Israel for
precisely this reason. To embed in every Jewish mind an awareness of the
mystery and transcendence of God... what biblical scholars have
sometimes called his "otherness".
The trouble was, some of them took it too far. The idea of
holiness always has this risk attached to it. In the wrong hands instead
of being a vehicle of witness to the sublime uniqueness of God's
person, holiness can all too easily be perverted into mere religious
eccentricity...a pious theatrical that awakens at best the amusement of
the watching world, and at worst its contempt. The boundary between
being sanctified and being sanctimonious, between being pious and being
downright peculiar, is a frighteningly narrow one. The risk of the
former degenerating into the latter is always greatest when the people
of God feel threatened.
Take the period, for instance, five centuries before Christ, when
the Jews were taken into Babylonian exile. It was a devastating
experience for them. Suddenly they found themselves surrounded by a
totally pagan society. Everything familiar had been snatched away from
them. The instinctive response of any ethnic or religious minority in
such a hostile environment is to become culturally defensive; to guard
with jealous pride every cultural distinctive it is possible to
preserve. And that is exactly how the exilic Jews reacted. They may not
have had the Temple any longer, but they could still circumcise their
children and observe the Sabbath. The might have to speak Aramaic in the
market-place, but they could still use Hebrew in their synagogues.
These cultural markers thus became more important than they had ever
been before. For they were the only way the they could retain their
identity as Jews in the cosmopolitan melting-pot of Babylon where they
were now forced to live.
In many respects it was a perfectly understandable, even laudable
development. We observe exactly the same kind of thing in many
countries today where minority groups strive to preserve their local
dialect or their national dress against a cultural tide that would
homogenize the entire world if it could. But the trouble was that in the
case of the Jews, because of their special self-consciousness as the
chosen people of God, this need for the maintenance of their cultural
distinctiveness got tangled up with their ideas of holiness. They turned
their traditions into a system of regulations and defined holiness as
obedience to these rules.
Take for example the issue of ceremonial washing. The Book of
Leviticus certainly laid down certain regulations regarding ritual
ablutions in its holiness code. But the scribes of post-exilic Judaism
amplified these regulations to such an extent it was considered improper
to eat a single mouthful of food if the appropriate handwashing
procedure had not been observed. Mark, you may have noticed, draws our
attention to this practice with what I sense may be a slightly sarcastic
edge to his tone. (Mark 7:3-4)
Now as I say, this kind of legalistic attitude towards things
like ritual washing became increasingly influential in the post-exilic
period. The original biblical idea of holiness was being subtlely
subverted by the need of Jews to defend their sense of cultural
superiority in a world where they were now politically and economically
powerless. The rabbis vied with one another to pile more and more
regulation on top of the ancient law of Moses. They were convinced that
only by the painstaking observance of such rules could the Jewish people
maintain their cultural distance from the Gentiles and thus preserve
their unique privilege as God's "holy" people.And in the first century
no group was more zealous in its conformity to those rabbinical rules
than the Pharisees.
Now in some respects the Pharisees have had a bit of a raw deal
at the hands of Christian commentators over the years. The very word
"Pharisee" has a pejorative, almost villainous overtone to it, which is
really unfair. For there was much about the Pharisees that was
admirable. (i) this was a group who believed passionately in the
inspiration of scripture and devoted themselves to the rigorous
exposition of the biblical text. (ii) this was a group who zealously
pursued personal holiness (iii) this was group who scrupulously tithed
their income. (iv) this was group who enthusiastically sought to win new
converts to their faith.
Who does that remind you of? I have to say ... more»
To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.
The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.
WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.
Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, an Army spokesman, confirmed that the report was real. Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the report raised were hypothetical.
