The Inspiration and the Enablement

Wanting to join the game

I used to dream about going to see my favorite sports team play, but when I showed up, they needed me to play.

Then I got to live that dream:

Getting invited to Levi’s Coach Pitch game

But what if that really happened?

Imagine

showing up for a stage production of your famous disney story, and someone runs up to you and says “Hey, Belle is sick so we need you to stand in for her! You know all her lines right?”

That sounds awesome. And you do know all the lyrics and probably all or most of the lines. But would you really be willing to jump on stage and perform it in front of thousands of people?

See you can dream about the call coming. But what if that call actually came?

The crazy thing is, life in Christ isn’t terribly different from that.

We spend our lives dreaming about playing a meaningful part in an exciting story.

But how do we respond when that call comes?

Look what Jesus says to His disciples here in

“whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do…”

Ok… so if I’m getting this right, anybody who is a true believer in Jesus is going to do all the stuff Jesus did, and even greater things than those.

So could you guys just go do that?

Sounds overwhelming, doesn’t it? If we put ourselves to that test--none of us pass. Not even close.

How do you approach a job that is way over your head?

Cleaning the trash cans while fam was at Boulder Cave

It felt like I would never get it done. I was intimidated by the job so I took forever starting it.

And I was right. The job I had started still wasn’t done by the time they came back.

Now the trick is it wasn’t an impossible job. It was a gross job. It was a challenging job. But I probably could have finished it in less than an hour if I had jumped in and done it. But I didn’t. I sat around and moped. I cried. I bemoaned the fact that the job was impossible because I didn’t have the tools to get the job done.

Have you ever felt like that when it comes to the Bible? Like you read the way Christ calls us to live, and your response is like, “that’s great Jesus, but I can’t do this!”

We get overwhelmed, feel unworthy, and refuse to budge from where we are.

And Satan loves to get us in this place. He loves to confront us with how high our calling in Christ is, while conveniently distracting us from the ways God equips us to live out this high calling.

And this is why it’s so important to not just snatch a verse here, a verse there, from the Bible, but to take it in the context God gave it to us.

Let’s look at the whole passage that I cherry-picked v. 12 from. Let’s read in , starting in verse 6. 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.

12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.

See the first thing Jesus is doing in this passage is elevating the disciples understanding of himself. To this point they have recognized that He’s a prophet, and not just any prophet--that he’s the messiah.

But they’ve still been selling Him short. They have gotten that he is from God, but they haven’t gotten that He IS God.

So Jesus says to them, Hey--stop trying to look past me to see the Father. I’m in Him, and He’s in me. When you see me working, you’re seeing Him working. In verse 11 He says look, even if that’s hard for you to get, look at the works that I’ve been doing. That proves that I’m more than just “from God.”

So His first call is to believe Him. And for those who respond to that call, we move to verse 12: true believers in Jesus are going to be about what He’s about--and in fact greater work will be done in the future than has already been done.

So now we’re back to feeling intimidated. We’re supposed to outdo the work Christ already did? Not gonna happen Jesus.

So we’re not real happy with the job description Jesus is leaving for us, but at the end, Jesus tacks on this nice promise for us to put on bumperstickers. He says “whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” Uh… so that’s awesome! I’m utterly incapable of doing this job God gave me, but apparently if I ask him for a Ferrari and say “in Jesus name” at the end, I’ll get one!

And this is where the enemy wants us to live. You can’t do this. You’re not enough. You’re unworthy. God made a mistake when He called you. You’re going to blow it. But here’s how God works: He absolutely calls us to things that are above us--that we could never accomplish on our own. But He never leaves us without the provision we need to accomplish these seemingly “impossible tasks.” He says “whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

Our destiny is to be conformed into his image, so of course the more we grow the more we’re going to be about what He’s about! (Explain “In Jesus Name”) And he’s made the impossible possible. Because it won’t be just us working--He’s the one doing it!

So now the our emotional pendulum swings across the spectrum from feeling overwhelmed and unable, to feeling excited! This is an incredible promise. Slide: Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do. Then in 14 he says it again: If you ask me Anything in my name, I will do it. That’s a crazy-big promise! God wants us to do mighty works in his name, and He’ll give us anything we ask for in the process, if we ask in Jesus name.

See but already there is a voice in the back of your head. You’ve prayed before. With all your might. For someone to be healed. To get the job you needed. For the relationship to be restored.

You’ve prayed those prayers, and you’ve closed it up by saying “In Jesus name, amen.” And it didn’t come true. You didn’t get what you asked for. And you’ve faced severe brokenness as a result. Raise your hand if you’ve had prayers go unanswered.

Yeah, We all have. So Is this promise untrue? Or have we just blown it? We’re not spiritual enough to get our prayers answered? What’s going on here?

Well to fully understand this promise, let’s take a closer look at verses 13-14: Slide Verse 13 Jesus says “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, in order that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

See this “Whatever” really is a big word. This really is a big promise. And we can be tempted to rip this out of context and say “My heavenly Father’s gonna get me a pony for Christmas.” But Jesus’s promise to answer our prayers is directly tied to His motivation. And here, what He’s saying is that I’m going to be answering your prayers, giving you this “Whatever”, this “anything” IN ORDER THAT the Father may be glorified in the Son.

Remember earlier when we were feeling overwhelmed by all this talk about believers doing greater works than Jesus? See in our ADD, some times we forget that Jesus isn’t just spouting random proverbs and inspirational sayings. He’s talking about what life is going to be like for believers once he ascends back to the Father. so this is all connected.

In verse 12 we’re talking about these monumental works we as believers will do. And here Jesus says something kind of curious to us: Slide He says “whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, BECAUSE I am going to the Father. See the crazy thing is that Jesus says these works will be done not “in spite” of His physical absence from the disciples, but BECAUSE of His return to the Father. So let’s put it all together: As believers we have this high calling to be doing the work that Jesus was and is all about. And that work is going to be magnified and multiplied because He has ascended to heaven, having taken back up the glory He laid down when He came as a baby. And as we live out the mission He’s given us, to proclaim Him and His kingdom, He’s going to be powerfully at work, equipping us, working in and through us--particularly through the power of prayer.

This is why the Psalms can be such a comfort to us. Because there is a wrestling that happens in our walk with God. We see the promises, and we see the places where it doesn’t seem like they’ve been true. A lot of the Psalms really question God on this. We talked about a few months ago--the psalmist cries out “How long O Lord? How long will you hide your face from me?”

It’s starting to get a little clearer here, but we still haven’t fully addressed the problem that our experience with prayer raises. Cause we’ve had a lot of prayers get answered “no.” So we see Jesus making this promise, “Whatever you ask, I’ll do it.” But we haven’t seen that borne out in our lives. So what are we missing here? The answer is right in front of our eyes: Look at this phrase you have heard in virtually every prayer you’ve ever heard before: in both verses 13 and 14, Jesus clarifies that our Prayer should be In His Name Slide

See in our walk with God there are going to be those moments of darkness.

What does that really mean?

Growing up in the church I always thought of these words as just sort of a magic saying that you add on to make your prayer better/more effective/ etc.

Our destiny is to be conformed into his image, so of course the more we grow the more we’re going to be about what He’s about! (Explain “In Jesus Name”) And he’s made the impossible possible. Because it won’t be just us working--He’s the one doing it!

So now we dutifully close almost every prayer we pray with that phrase, “In Jesus Name.”

Rabbit trail?“God will never give you something you can’t handle”???

But this is more than just tacking on Jesus’s name to something we want. One of the reasons we don’t necessarily understand this phrase from the getgo is because we don’t see it used in modern english a lot. But you’ve probably heard it. Maybe watching a movie about medieval or ancient times--the good guys are hiding somewhere while the evil king’s soldiers search for them, and the pounding comes on the door--”Open up! Open up in the name of the King!” Or maybe you’ve heard “In the name of all that is holy, stop what you’re doing!” Or that old song, “stop, in the name of love.” In all of these phrases, the idea isn’t simply just randomly “tagging” this person in whatever you are saying or doing--you are invoking their essence or authority. It would make no sense to say “Overthrow the government in the name of the king!” The king wouldn’t order you to overthrow him… it doesn’t make any sense. So when Jesus tells us to pray “in His name”, and promises to do whatever we ask, the same principle applies. See the enemy wants us to take this promise out of context and disappoint us with the lack of results--I thought Jesus was giving us a magical phrase that makes our prayer 100% more successful!

So it makes so much more sense when we start to understand what it means to pray “in Jesus’s name”--because if we pray “I pray that me and my friends won’t get caught when we try to rob a store later tonight--in Jesus name, amen!”

We said the little phrase there...but that’s not praying in Jesus name! We’re asking for his help to do something He’s clearly said is wrong. Jesus isn’t giving us a magical incantation to get what we want. He’s inviting us to step into partnership in the work of the Kingdom. Now the whole passage starts to make sense: verse 12: Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, Why? Because I am going to the Father. His mission here on earth is about to be completed by his sacrificial death and resurrection, then He will return to the Father, taking up the glory he laid down in the incarnation. Those who believe in Him will be partnering in that Kingdom work with Him in even greater ways than we saw during His time on earth.

How?

verse 13:

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, Why? In order that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

Why are these works “Greater”?

How are we as believers going to accomplish these crazy things that Jesus is promising here? Because Jesus will be there every step of the way, providing what we need. We don’t have to hope He’s with us. We don’t have to hope he’ll give us what we need. We can know: Whatever we ask for as we move in His kingdom work, in his name--in accordance with His power, might, integrity, glory, and character--whatever we ask for in line with that, He’ll grant us.

Application

What I love about this is that, even within this high calling, and this magnificent promise concerning prayer in Jesus name, it’s a call to deeper relationship with Jesus. Because as we are living lives as Christ’s disciples, we live in the tension between a high calling, and God’s mighty promises. We look at the task--doing great works in the kingdom of God, and we get overwhelmed by the task. Or we take matters into our own hands, charge ahead without seeking God and assuming He’s always going to be working the way we expect him to. And then some of our prayers go unanswered. We hit a wall we didn’t expect to run into. So we become disenchanted with the tools he’s given us. And Doubt creeps in. Does prayer even make a difference? Did Jesus really mean this promise to do everything we ask in His name? So for each of us who are disciples of Jesus, I imagine we’re all somewhere on this spectrum. You’re overwhelmed by the opposition and the enormity of the task. So in fear you do nothing. Or you jump in and are trying to bring the Kingdom to fruition by working your fingers the bone. And it doesn’t work how you thought it would. And you get disenchanted and discouraged. You get burned out. See the issues in either case is taking our eyes off of Jesus and who He is. Because the reason the work He calls us to is going to be greater than even the works He did while on earth is BECAUSE he has returned to the Father. And, as He said to the disciples at his ascension-- “All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.” We can approach the work with confidence because He is with us. And He created the universe, and He’s returned to his rightful place of power and authority at the Father’s side. And if we’re discouraged in the midst of these works--we’re trying to bring His kingdom and we’re hitting obstacle after obstacle, and it feels like our prayers are going unheard and unanswered, we need to stop, and draw close to Him. Because learning to walk with Him is a process. And as we learn and grow, we get to know him better and better. And we learn how he works, who He is. And we grow more and more equipped to truly pray in Jesus name. We stop praying for him to fix our situation, and start asking him to USE our situation. This is the amazing reality of the gospel: because not only do we gain a clearer and clearer picture of who He is, we actually become more and more like him. It’s our destiny.

This is why the Psalms can be such a comfort to us. Because there is a wrestling that happens in our walk with God. We see the promises, and we see the places where it doesn’t seem like they’ve been true. A lot of the Psalms really question God on this. We talked about a few months ago--the psalmist cries out “How long O Lord? How long will you hide your face from me?”

tells us: “Those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…”

See in our walk with God there are going to be those moments of darkness.

What is this saying?

Our destiny is to be conformed into his image, so of course the more we grow the more we’re going to be about what He’s about!

Our destiny is to be conformed into his image, so of course the more we grow the more we’re going to be about what He’s about! (Explain “In Jesus Name”) And he’s made the impossible possible. Because it won’t be just us working--He’s the one doing it!

See we’ve spent our lives dreaming about getting invited to play a part in something amazing. In something important. But the call has already come. Our job is to step into that, and fix our eyes on Jesus So as we move forward as believers, God is going to do a mighty work. And he’s going to be doing that work through us. And Jesus is the inspiration for those works: We’ve seen him working. We’ve Seen him loving people. We’ve seen him love sacrificially. We’ve seen him fearlessly proclaim God’s truth. But he’s not just our motivational poster to keep us going. He’s the power behind the work. As we learn to walk with Him, to pray as He would. To seek what He would seek. He’s going to work. And he’s going to change us. And that’s going to change the world. See we’ve spent our lives dreaming about getting invited to play a part in something amazing. In something important. But the call has already come. Our job is to step into that, and fix our eyes on Jesus

Rabbit trail?“God will never give you something you can’t handle”???