He Will

If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

 - From John 14

We have another troublesome passage here, like the one that caused my friend (described a couple of posts ago) to lose his faith, almost entirely. 

Jesus has just promised Philip, and the rest of the Apostles, that He would do whatever they asked, if they did so in His name. And today, people will say "I've asked Jesus to do things for me, my entire life, in His name. He almost NEVER gives me what I asked."

Well, there are a couple of ways to look at this. Jesus may have been making the promise to The Twelve (or perhaps, just the Eleven - after removing Matthias from the list) only. And the biblical record is replete with examples of the Apostles, in the first generation of the Church, doing greater miracles than even Jesus Himself. This is an easy way to get around this particular problem.

An objection may come up: "Why didn't they ask Jesus to prevent all illness from ever afflicting all of humanity, ever again?" Maybe they did.

Or how about: "In the Name of Jesus, I ask the Lord to make His return right now!"

The possibilities are endless. Why didn't even one of them make such a request to the Lord?

Again, maybe they did. Which was obviously answered, at the time, as "NO."

Or perhaps the Apostles, being so close to Christ, had developed His sense of being rather loathe to do too many miracles. When you think about it, life really would not be so great if everybody went around with access to total omnipotence, manipulating nature (including other people) to bend to their every whim. Life would be boring if we never had opportunities to learn, to change, to grow. 

This present Universe seems to be a training ground, where God is preparing us, via endless troubles and sorrows, to be ready for something infinitely wonderful. I mean, how would we know it's so wonderful, if we had never experienced devastation and loss?

The skilled skeptic will find none of my explanations persuasive. "Oh come on," they would say. And it would be logical for them to do so. 

There's an element of pure faith involved here. When Jesus says "I will do . . . " something . . . and we never see it in our lives; it is easy, (logical, actually) to conclude: "Jesus did not do what He said He would do."

At the time Jesus made the statement to Philip, he was already in place, in His eternal, glorified body. He had become an eternal being. He no longer occupied space in our temporal realm. When we say "I will," it's supposed to be something that everybody can count on. You have committed to doing something that, eventually, we will be able to look back and announce "it's done."

But what does it mean, when an eternal creature says "I will"? 

It means that, in His time and space, it's as good as done. "I will" can mean the same thing as "I have done." And this would be something very difficult for us to grasp, in our own limited, mortal lives. 

When Jesus says "I will," that doesn't mean we should put a time on Him.