Whatever you ask, I will do…
The dimly lit room; flickering oil lamps throw unsteady shadows across the walls. The smell of roasted lamb lingers, mixed with the sharp sweetness of crushed herbs. Flatbread lay torn and uneven between them, fingerprints pressed into its soft surface.
Fully fed, the disciples rest but they’re uneasy — the kind of quiet that comes when conversation turns heavy. Outside, the city sounds with festival noise; inside, Jesus speaks of leaving.
He takes the bread again, this time to remind them of something more enduring. “Abide in me,” softly said, by a friend who knows His friends will soon lose the sound of His voice.
Then came the words that linger through centuries: “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do.”
Around that table, no one took notes. They weren’t analysing grammar and sentence structure or imagining the theological weight of the word “whatever.” They tried to keep their world from falling apart.
This wasn’t a moment of a mentor teaching his apprentices.
This was a fellowship of friends.
Bread broken. Wine shared.
Simple, earthy symbols of a promise — love holds strong when understanding fails.
Human Hearing
We read these words — “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do” — as if they’re carved in theological stone, static and unbending. But to the disciples, they came through the trembling of human emotion, not distinct doctrine.
His followers left fishing nets, family homes, and predictable lives to learn from a teacher who now speaks of going away. The air is thick with confusion and dread. When Jesus spoke of asking in His name, He wasn’t giving them a secret to a successful prayer life; it’s an invitation — a promise of continued presence when His physical presence soon ceases.
It wasn’t, “Here’s the right way to get results,” but rather, “You can still talk with me. I hear you.”
For them, prayer wasn’t a church discipline yet; it was the extension of friendship. “In my name” didn’t mean invoking a power of attorney — it meant continuing the conversation they’d been having for three years, only now in a deeper, although more abstract way.
The disciples didn’t imagine that saying “in Jesus’ name” at the end of a prayer was a way to guarantee outcomes; something that’s become second nature for many of us. No, they heard it as a way to guarantee belonging.
Perhaps that’s the shift our modern ears often miss. We live in a culture where “asking” is transactional and “names” are brands. We’re trained to measure prayer by results and to view words as levers. But Jesus wasn’t handing His disciples a lever; He was holding open a door.
When Results Don’t Follow
A few months ago I celebrated my 64th birthday. I still access the memory surrounding my decision as a 10 year old boy to live my life for Jesus. And I have, for 54 years with about 30 of those years as an ordained minister.
You might think with all that lived experience, I’d have this life of prayer nailed down. I don’t. I have my fair share of doubts and like any other follower of Jesus, there are times when:
My prayers rise, but outcomes don’t.
When illness deepens. A job is lost and numerous applications denied.
There’s more month at the end of the money and little food on the table. When a daughter doesn’t live to term.
Those who once turned toward you, now turn away.
When reconciliation never comes.
It’s here where I find Jesus’ words, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do,” sting more than they comfort. When you need God most…silence. For those who take Jesus seriously, it raises a haunting question: What did I do wrong?
The disciples knew this ache too. After the resurrection, they faced persecution, hunger, imprisonment — not the visible fruit of a life living for God that resulted in every request being granted. If anything, their lives show us that faithfulness to Jesus doesn’t insulate anyone from lack and loss. Yet their prayers never stopped. Why?
Because the disciples had come to understand that prayer isn’t proof of God’s control, but rather, it’s participation in God’s companionship.
Jesus never promised insulation from pain; He actually assures us of the opposite. However, He did promise abiding — the intertwining of His life and human life so that even in the absence of change, we’re not alone.
It’s Not Cold Comfort. It’s Covenant Comfort.
Let’s be honest: for someone facing trials, trauma or scarcity, presence alone doesn’t always quiet the ache. To say “God is with you” can sound hollow when rent is due or the diagnosis is terminal. The Scriptures don’t deny that tension — they give it a voice.
The psalmists rage, lament, and question. Habakkuk accuses. Job despairs. Even Jesus cried out, “Why have you forsaken me?” None of these prayers are rebuked. They are welcomed into the conversation of covenant faith.
Honestly, I can’t know precisely how God does or doesn’t act directly or indirectly in our lives. So much knowledge and understanding eludes my physical mind. I think maybe, the deepest form of asking in Jesus’ name is daring to speak to God when God seems absent — trusting that the very act of speaking keeps the relationship alive. Prayer may not change our circumstances, but it keeps us from being consumed by them. Even when I question God’s response (and lack thereof) to my requests, I choose to believe that I am His and He is mine.
Abiding as the Answer
Perhaps this is what Jesus was preparing His friends for at that last meal. Not a formula for guaranteed outcomes but a friendship that could carry them through anything that came next.
When He said, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish,” He wasn’t handing out bank cards with unlimited taps — He was handing over His own heart. The “whatever” wasn’t about endless possibilities; it was about shared purpose.
As I imagine that table, bread’s still warm, bottles of wine partially full, laughter echoing — and in the air, the scent of Passover lamb and bitter herbs. The taste and sight of God’s good deliverance and the memory of suffering mingled together.
It’s into that mixture of sweetness and sorrow, I hear Jesus’ soft, still voice, “Abide in me.”
I think about the many prayers I’ve shared with people over the years — prayers whispered in hospital rooms, in quiet corners, in sanctuary seating now distant memories for this pastor from the pasture. Those prayers were faithful and heartfelt. In hindsight, some were answered in ways we could see; most weren’t. And yet, looking back, I see how even silence can hold the weight of presence.
The Miracle of Prayer
So maybe the miracle is this: not that every prayer is answered the way we hope, but that every prayer is gathered into a love that holds us fast even when heaven feels silent.
Later John would catch a glimpse of this mystery in a vision – golden bowls in heaven, full of incense, “which are the prayers of God’s people” (Rev 5:8). Perhaps prayers we think are unanswered, aren’t lost at all. They’re kept. Still rising, a frangrance filling God’s space.
I don’t think abiding erases the ache, but it keeps it company.
Prayer becomes less about getting God to move and more about moving with God — through loss, through longing, through the unknowing — until, little by little, our desires begin to sound like His voice echoing in our own – what would Jesus do if He were me?
That’s what covenant looks like when it breathes.
I admit, it would be easier to believe in a clock-maker God. A God who put all the parts in place, wound the spring and left it run until time runs out, leaving our cosmos to run on it’s own without His involvement. Yet the Bible doesn’t present a world like that. Instead a God, whose fundamental nature is love, initiated a covenant, an invitation where God’s heart and human hearts intertwine — where faith survives not because it always understands, but because it refuses to walk away.
The disciples didn’t walk away. They learned to live by the quiet trust that God’s presence was the promise kept.
And maybe that’s what Jesus meant all along.
“Whatever you ask in my name…” — not because you will always get what you want, but because you’re not left alone in the asking.
A Blessing: The Life That Flows Through The Vine
We began this journey listening to Jesus speak of vines and branches, of life that flows unseen yet bears fruit in time.
Along the way, we traced covenant through ancient empires and weary hearts — from oaths enforced by fear to promises kept by love. We’ve seen how God took the world’s systems of control and turned them into invitations of grace.
And here, at the end, we sit where the disciples once sat — not with certainty, but with hope. The same hope that lets us pray again, even when answers seem slow in coming. That hope reminds us, being heard isn’t the same as being granted, both are held in the same nail-pierced hands.
For the One who invited us to abide still abides with us.
So we keep asking — not to prove our faith is true, but to practice our belonging.
We keep trusting — not because life always makes sense, but because love does.
And we keep praying — because the conversation never ends.
The life of the vine still flows.
And we — branches in the Vine — are still kept alive by grace.
Closing Thoughts
As I said in the beginning, John 15 is one of my favorite Bible passages and this is what I’ve come to believe this passage is about.
It’s not about outcomes — it’s about relationship.
It’s not about controlling what God does — it’s about continuing to turn toward God, even when we don’t understand what’s happening.
Far removed from the ancient biblical world, our modern Western world runs on immediacy and proof. We search Scriptures for strategic solutions for everything from faith to finances. We’ve grown uncomfortable with mystery, and we often mistake delay for absence. But Jesus’ image of the vine and branches reminds us that divine life still moves quietly within and among us — unseen, steady, nourishing.
If these words have helped you rest a little more easily in that unseen grace, then this journey through John 15 has done its work.
May we keep asking.
May we keep abiding.
And may we keep noticing the small ways God’s life keeps flowing through ours — even here, even now.