Daily Manna · Day 54 · February 23
In His Name
“And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”
A man in Port Hope, Ontario, in 1855 sits down to write to his mother in Ireland, whom he has not seen in years and will not see again. He is poor by choice, gives away most of what he has, and cuts firewood for widows without charging. His fiancee back in Ireland drowned the night before their wedding. What he sends his mother is a poem to comfort her in her own trouble, and he does not put his name on it. It is the one that begins, What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.
The line in it people forget is the accusation: oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. Joseph Scriven wrote that with a fiancee in a lake and a mother across an ocean. He was not being glib.
And he had this verse in view. Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do. Look at the back half, which rarely survives being quoted: that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Asking in His name is not a signature at the bottom of a request. It is asking as His representative, for what He is after; and two verses later comes the other half, if ye love me, keep my commandments. The promise is enormous, and it is aimed. It is not a blank cheque with your name written in the payee line.
So, Lord, we have shrunk our requests to the size where a no would not hurt. We have called that maturity. Teach us to ask for large things in your name and to mean your name when we say it, so that if you did the thing, you would be the one seen in it. And where our asking is really about us, tell us plainly and let us keep asking anyway, until the wanting comes round to what you want. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 54 is Crucified With Christ (Galatians 2:20).