18 "“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” 22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?”23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.
25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.28 You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. 30 I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, 31 but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here."
John 14:18-31
The third great reality unfolded in these verses has to do with the life of prayer. In 12, our Lord's words about going to the Father to be our Advocate have a significance for prayer. It is because of His advocacy that our prayers are answered. Not for our much pleading, but because Jesus died, are our prayers heard. His death is our only plea at the throne of grace. In the book of Revelation Jesus is represented as adding incense to our prayers to make them prevail, and that incense symbolises the merits of His blood and righteousness. Prayer is heard not for the good in us but for the good in Him. It is this that lies behind the idea of praying 'in His name', a phrase occurring frequently in the Upper Room discourse (13, 14; 15:7, 16; 16:23, 24, 26). What do the words mean? A name, in Biblical thought, is the revelation of personality (cf. 'Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins'). To pray, therefore, in His name must necessarily mean to pray in line with what He represents. And since Jesus came into the world with a redemptive purpose in view, then prayer in His name is possible only when we are at one with Him in that purpose, and in what He was concerned to do in the world. Since this is so, it becomes clear that the important thing is not what we pray, but what we are when we pray what we pray. Everything depends on whether we are morally and spiritually aligned with Christ and His redemptive purposes; if we are, we shall pray in His name, if we are not we cannot, even though we speak with the tongues of men and of angels. This is perhaps the biggest lesson we can ever learn about prayer - to have discovered that what matters is what we are, not what we say.