Potent Prayers

You will ask the Father directly, and he will grant your request because you use my name.   John 16:23

One of my greatest struggles in prayer is that my prayers often seem weak and ineffective. I sometimes find that I’m not sure what to ask. I feel I lack insight to understand what’s best, and sometimes I wonder if my feeble prayers can make any difference. This is why Jesus told us to pray in his name. That means much more than tagging the formula “in Jesus’ name” to the end of our prayers.

My home country of Scotland is known for several things, and unfortunately, one of them is whiskey. It’s fascinating, even for a lifelong teetotaler like me, to see how this venomous stuff is made. Whiskey is made by the process of distilling, in which liquids are separated as they boil and condense at different temperatures. What is distilled is so potent that a wise man would never touch it.

Now think of that picture in relation to your prayers. They may seem feeble, but Jesus distills them down so that they come to have a potency in heaven that is different from anything you could ever have imagined on earth. That’s true even of the simplest prayer of a brand-new Christian.

The apostle John was given a vision of this. He saw what happened to the prayers of God’s people when they ascended to heaven: the prayers were mixed with incense in heaven and then fire fell on the earth (see Revelation 8:3-5). That’s a wonderful picture of what happens when you pray. Christ receives your weak prayers and distills them so that in his name they carry weight in heaven and have effect on earth.

The Holy Spirit is involved every time you pray, authoring prayer within the Christian. Your prayers may arise from a desire for God’s glory and some insight into God’s purposes; they may also include a great deal of confusion and selfishness.

But you should never hold back from praying because you don’t know what to say or feel your prayers are inadequate. All that matters is you’re coming to the Father through his Son, Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God will help you. Don’t worry about getting it right. Your prayers will be heard because of Jesus.

For further reading, see Revelation 8