Jesus is the great I AM. In so identifying Himself by this name, He declares Himself equal to God – blameless and Holy. And rightly so. As God, come to earth, Jesus made a number of profound statements. In John 14:14, for example, Jesus promised us that He will do anything we ask for in His name. And yet, we look around and find that we aren’t blessed with all the things we ask for. Is Jesus unreliable? No. We’ve just done some things incorrectly, including asking.
The first thing we need to do is read all scripture in context. In just the immediate verse preceding verse 14, we find a huge amount of context, not the least of which are the often-ignored words “so that”. In this context: “so that the Father may be glorified in the Son”. When we seek to be glorified instead of asking that the Father would be glorified, we actually profane the holy name of Jesus. We put ourselves above God and our glory ahead of His glory. In these cases, it should be no wonder that our very words work against us.
Jesus was careful to teach us how we need to approach God when we speak with him in prayer. Our first step is to acknowledge that our eternal God is holy and that His very name is holy. Asking in His name means that we have come to the full knowledge and appreciation of this. Then, before we ask a perfect and holy God for anything, we want to be certain that there is no unholy agenda; any other than bringing glory to our Father who is in heaven. Practice this and you’ll discover that when you want no more or less than God Himself deserves, His answer is always “Yes”.
Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life. Psalm 139:23-24 The Message
