Two Vital Means to Effective Prayer—the Blood and the Name of Jesus
In a previous post, “What’s the real significance of prayer?”, I pointed out that real prayer is to contact God in our spirit and to absorb God Himself. Prayer is our spiritual breathing (John 20:22) and drinking (4:15).
But if we’re going to enter into this significance of prayer in order to absorb God, we need to use two vital means to effective prayer—the Lord’s blood and the Lord’s name.
In this post we’re going to consider how we can apply these two “means” so that we can pray effective prayers that have true value before God and result in our contacting and absorbing Him.
In speaking of a “means,” dictionary.com defines it as “something that is the medium, method, or instrument used to obtain a result or achieve an end: [like] a means of communication.”
Similarly, our communication, or our fellowship with God in prayer, requires some “means.”
Our first means to contact God in prayer is the Lord’s precious blood.
Heb. 10:19 says:
“Having therefore brothers, boldness for entering the Holy of Holies in the blood of Jesus.”
This requires a little explanation. The Holy of Holies is the place of God’s presence. First, it’s the highest heavens where God’s throne is. Second, it was the innermost part of the Old Testament tabernacle and temple where the high priest would meet with God before the Ark of the covenant. Third, it’s now the believer’s regenerated human spirit where we can have fellowship with God and enjoy His presence (Phil 2:1). It’s where Christ as the life-giving Spirit dwells in us and where we come in prayer in order to contact Him (Rom. 8:10). (You may want to read my previous post about these two spirits—God’s Spirit with our spirit.)
But how can fallen people like us, come into God’s holy presence when we are still so sinful, fleshly, disobedient, and rebellious toward God? The answer is the blood of Jesus!
Our own conscience condemns us and Satan, the accuser, is waiting to condemn us. Our own virtue will never give us the boldness to come to God—not in a million years. So whenever we come to pray, we need to learn how to employ the blood of Jesus.
How can we do that? First, we need to confess any sins, wrongdoings, or failures that we’re conscious of when we come before Him.
1 John 1:7 promises the following:
“If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin.”
Then verse 9 continues:
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
So when we confess, He cleanses us from every sin.
Toward God everything is clear—forgiven and forgotten. But Satan doesn’t give up. He’ll keep accusing us as long as we’ll listen to him. So we need to take another step and apply the blood of Jesus to defeat the enemy.
As Witness Lee said in the first stanza of his hymn on “Prayer—In the Holiest,”
The veil is rent and opened is A new and living way; With boldness thru the precious blood, We come to Thee to pray.So whenever we open to the Lord in prayer it’s very good to begin with the blood. You may want to pray,
“Lord Jesus, I come to forward right now boldly to Your throne by Your own precious blood. I thank You that Your blood is constantly speaking for my forgiveness and cleansing. It satisfies God, appeases my conscience and shuts the mouth of Satan, the accuser. Under Your blood’s full covering, I open to receive more of You—to absorb all that You are as my supply.”
Our second means to contact God in prayer is the Lord’s highest name.
We’ve seen that in order to pray vital prayers to absorb God we need the cleansing of the Lord’s blood. That takes care of the separation of sin and guilt and all the accusations from Satan, the accuser.
But there’s still another problem. We have no standing before God in ourselves. We’re not acceptable to God. In ourselves we have no base to ask anything from Him. To meet this need, God has given us a second means—the name of Jesus.
In John 15:16 Jesus said:
“…that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give you.”
What did Jesus mean when He said to “ask in My name?” His name implies His Person. So it means that before God, it is His Son, Jesus who is asking. It’ is as if He is a very rich man who sent us to the bank with a check or money order endorsed by Him. It’s His name that the heavenly bank must honor.
So to pray by means of the Lord’s name is to pray in the Lord’s name. And to pray in the Lord’s name is actually praying in the Lord Himself. It is such that in God’s eyes it is as if the Lord Himself is praying the prayer.
God highly regards His Son’s name, and Satan and his angels tremble at this name.
So now we need to learn to pray in this God exalted name (Phil 2:9-11). We can simply pray something like this,
“Father, we come boldly to You in Your Son’s highest name. We don’t pray in ourselves, based on any merit of our own. Father, You have exalted the Son to the highest place and given Him the name that is above every name. It’s in His name that we ask…”
You may also want to sing this hymn by ME Barber on “Prayer—In the Lord’s Name.”
If you’ve enjoyed this post and found the blood of Jesus or the name of Jesus as a vital means to pray effective prayers, I encourage you to leave a comment to help the rest of us to enter into a more effective experience of prayer.
Additional Resources:
This post is based on Lesson Seven of Lessons for New Believers by Witness Lee, entitled “Prayer.” You can read it online at ministrybooks.org.
For more appreciation of the effectiveness of the Blood of Jesus, you may also enjoy reading Chapter One of The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee and a short booklet, The Precious Blood of Christ by Witness Lee, available in Volume One of Bibles for America’s free literature series.
Photo credit: Clark Russell
About Tom Smith
Hi. My name is Tom Smith. I'm the writer behind Holding to Truth in Love, and I love the Lord Jesus and His life-giving Word. Please feel free to send me an e-mail through the contact page if you have any questions. I hope you'd take a moment to subscribe to the Holding to Truth blog. Then you'll be sure not to miss a post. Thanks!
For us to pray “by means” of the Lord’s name is to pray “in” His name. We need to see that our praying “in the name” of Jesus is our being “clothed” with Him. When we pray in this way it is as if the Lord Himself were coming before God to pray. Such prayers are acceptable to God and will surely be answered by Him (John 15:16; 16:24).
When we come to pray, we not only breathe the Lord in… we also fight the spiritual battle. In this battle, Satan doesn’t want us to win which is why he does not stop on bothering us. But thank the Lord for His blood! By applying the blood, Satan is shut up. What a provision!
What you said reminds me of what Watchman Nee pointed out in chapter one of the Normal Christian life. Speaking of the Blood of Christ, he said operates effectually in three ways, Godward, manward, and Satanward. First, it satisfies God. Second, it cleanses our conscience. Third, it silences the accuser of the brothers. May we learn to employ its three-fold effectiveness whenever we come forward to God in prayer. Thanks for the important reminder.
This matter of the blood of Jesus is wonderful – and crucial. We can never approach God based on our merit. Regardless of our condition and our assessment of ourselves, we can simply come to God through faith in the blood of Jesus. God knows the value of the blood of His Son, and we can boldly approach God through this precious blood.
Thanks for this helpful post.
I really appreciate the fact that our approach to God is always based on the blood of Christ and never on our own merit. I really appreciate what Watchman Nee said in chapter one of the Normal Christian Life. This chapter on “The Blood of Christ” is a real classic. He says,
“What, after all, is your basis of approach to God? Do you come on the uncertain ground of your feeling,…? Or is your approach based on something more secure, namely, the fact that the Blood has been shed, and that God looks on the Blood and is satisfied?…Your approach to God is therefore always in boldness; and that boldness is yours through the Blood and never through your personal attainment.” (p. 14)
May all the believer be strengthened by this vision to come forward to God’s throne boldly through the Blood of Christ.
Thanks for strengthening this point.
Thanks Brothers for opening my eyes to see the two vital means to effective prayer; the blood and the name of Jesus. Amen we have two ways to to gain God ‘s attention in our prayer and to satisfy His righteous requiremnts through the cleansing of His blood, and to answer to all Satan’s accusations. Hallelujah! Then the name of the Lod Jesus to claim His authority to intercede for us even in our pray through His Name it is just the same as He Himself praying. Lord Jesus brings into this kind of praying and confessing through the blood and Your Name.
Amen!! Bro Acton
I’m reminded that these 2 vital means to come to God in prayer–the blood and the name–are portrayed in the pattern of the tabernacle service. For the priests not to die (hence to be vital) when they entered into the tabernacle to burn the incense, required the sprinkling of the blood from the altar and the clothing with the priestly garments. They couldn’t enter without either. It’s by the blood of the offerings–signifying the blood of Christ–God’s righteousness was satisfied regarding our sinful deeds. It was the priestly garments–“in the name” of Jesus, implying the the Person of Christ, with whom were clothed–that God’s holiness was satisfied for what we are in ourselves. It is only in this way that we can come to the incense altar to join Christ in His intercession.
Thanks for such a reminder that effective prayer does not depend on my efforts to convince God but rather prayer depends on the accomplished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross! Through Jesus Christ and his shed Blood, we are able to converse with God – Amen!
Praise the Lord for these two provisions–the Lord’s blood and His name. The blood deals with the negative problems that hinder our approach to God and shut Satan, the accuser’s mouth. We need to apply the blood of Jesus to come boldly to God’s throne in prayer (Heb 10:19). Postively, the Lord name is our authority in prayer. We’re “writing checks” in prayer that already have His “signature” on them. God honors such “checks”–such prayers, because to God, it is His Son praying in our praying. By these two provisions we have the effective means of prayer. May we be bold to pray by the power of the blood and in the authority of name of the Lord–in union with Him as the praying One in us.
I’ve experienced, in my prayer, an immediate breakthrough and a greater anointing by approaching by the Blood and resigned to the Name of Jesus.
Christ’s blood opened a new and living way for us to enter the Holy of Holies (Heb. 10:19). Whenever we come to pray, we need to apply the blood of Jesus as our way of entering into our spirit for fellowship with the Lord (1 John 1:7-9).
This has really touched my prayer and spiritual life about God. How to and when to use THE NAME OF #JESUS and THE BLOOD OF #JESUS
Stanley, glad the post touched your experience of God. I often realize that I need the blood of Jesus just to come to God. As sinners, we have no basis to approach God but the redeeming blood of Jesus that answers all His righteous claims, appeases our conscience and shuts the enemies mouth. Then we can fellowship with God in the name of Jesus His Son. This is not something that we tack onto the end of our prayer, but a divine reality we pray in–the Person of Jesus Christ Himself. When we pray IN His name it is to God as if His Son is the one praying…and it is. That is because genuine prayer is the Lord Jesus, praying in our praying!
I HAVE BEEN BLESSED TODAY ,READING YOUR ARTICLES on TWO VITAL MEANS TO EFFECTIVE PRAYER THE BLOOD AND THE NAME OF JESUS. I THANK MY LORD FIRST I THANK MY LORD FOR USING YOU TO HELP SOMEONE LIKE MYSELF THAT HAS A HUNGER TO GET ALONE TO PRAY . YOU HAVE GIVEN ME THE PROPER ODER TO GO TO MY ALMIGHTY GOD. I FELT SOMETHING WAS MISSING.
YOU SEE I STARTED A NEW STUDY TIME SEEKING TO KNOW MORE ABOUT MY LORD AND I WANTED GUIDANCE. I WENT TO THE BOOK OF PROVERBS BECAUSE I M SEEKING GODLEY WISDOM TO BE ALL GOD HAS CALL ME TO BE .I’VE BEEN IN THE VINEYARD FOR MANY YEARS TRAINING TO HELP THE NEEDY THE ELDERLY AND THE LOST FOR YEARS. I NEED TO HAVE MOORE POWER TO MY PRAYER LIFE ” IT CAME TO DAY”. THANK’S TO MY LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST .
Maudrey, I’m glad you found our post on Two Vital Means to Effective Prayer – the Blood and the Name of Jesus to be helpful in your Christian life and service. Applying these two means gives us the boldness we need to come before the Lord to receive His mercy and find His grace for our timely help (Heb. 4:16). The best help I’ve found in coming to the God’s word is to pray with the Word, turning the very words of the Bible into my prayer, petition, thanks and praise to the Lord. For more appreciation on this point I encourage you to read our post 12 Tips on How to Pray-read the Word of God to be Spiritually Nourished. By pray-reading God’s Word we enjoy Christ as wisdom to us in so many ways (1 Cor. 1:30). The real help that we can render to people is to minister to the them the very Christ with whom we have been nourished (1 Tim. 4:6). By praying back to the Lord, the words which He has breathed out will make our prayers powerful before Him. We hold Him to His own word. We can even tell the Lord, “Lord, You must do as You have spoken. Lord, we claim the promise of Your word.” Yes, we thank Him for His timely supply. I would also encourage you to follow the links to the referenced Bible verses which include some very helpful footnotes from the Recovery Version. Thank you for sharing the help you have received.
I am to find this website l want to grow more spiritually l have a questions I we pray in the name and in the blood at the same time do we have to mix it up
These two means of prayer are spontaneous and flow out normally as we pray to the Lord. When we come to the Lord we may realize that we are sinful and need of cleansing in order to come into the presence of our righteous God. At that moment we simply confess to Him according to the inner consciousness in our conscience. At that moment, we apply the blood of Jesus to have fellowship with Him (1 John 1:7, 9). At the same time we need to realize that the One in whom God delights is Jesus His Son. we may call on the name of Jesus in our coming to pray (1 Cor. 12:3). Then, in His Spirit, we pray prayers that are Christ praying in us. God is pleased when we pray in the name of His Son (John 15:16) and answers these prayers (although, not always in the way we expect). The real answer is that we gain more of Christ (Phil. 3:8-9). For further help on this point I highly recommend reading Lesson Seven of Lessons for New Believers by Witness Lee, entitled “Prayer.” You can read it online at ministrybooks.org.