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.”
In 1855, in the farm country near Port Hope, Ontario, a man sits down to write to his mother in Ireland. He has not seen her in years. He is poor by choice, because he gives away most of what he has, and he cuts firewood for widows without charging them. The woman he was to marry back in Ireland drowned the night before their wedding. Now he sends his mother a poem to comfort her in her own trouble. It begins, "What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear."
The line in it that people forget is the one that charges us: "O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer." Joseph Scriven wrote that after losing the woman he loved, with his mother an ocean away. He was not saying it lightly.
His hymn rests on the same promise as today's verse: "whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do." Look at the second half, which rarely survives being quoted: "that the Father may be glorified in the Son." Asking in Jesus' name is more than a signature at the bottom of a request. It means asking as someone who stands for Him, for what He is after. Two verses later comes the other half: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." The promise is huge, and it is aimed. It was never a blank cheque with your own name filled in.
So, Lord, we confess that we have shrunk our requests down to a size where a no would not hurt, and 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 do the thing, You are the One who is seen in it. Where our asking is really about us, tell us plainly. Let us keep asking anyway, until our 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).