In His Name

“John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.’ Jesus replied, ‘Do not prevent him. There is no one who can perform mighty deeds in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us.’” (Mark 9:38-40)

The Lord can use any of us for his glory. He didn’t just allow the Apostles to drive out demons. There were many things that the Apostles still needed to learn. God is all powerful and only goodness comes from Him so anything done in His name will bring glory. For man to do anything “in His name” there is some degree of faith. If man did not believe in God then he wouldn’t do something in his name, faith must be present. We see in Matthew’s gospel that the “disciples approached Jesus in private and said, ‘Why could we not drive it out?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith.’” (17:19-20) The disciples’ lack of faith prevented them from driving the demon out from the boy.

There are many Christians in the world and instead of allowing our different religious beliefs keep us divided, we need to unite ourselves. We all believe in the same Lord so we need to come together and show the world what can be done in His name. Just think if we band together to protect the rights of the unborn we could put an end to abortion. If we changed our mindset and instead of doing things without any thought or for our own sake and did them in His name the world would be a much more loving place. If we saw Christ in every person that crosses our path and reached out to them with love, the simple act of smiling at someone could have a huge impact.

“In the Lord’s name, every action takes on a different aspect. It is as if the most interior impulse that moves us to a deed would sanctify the slightest and most exterior aspect of our action.”  (Adrienne Von Speyr) The Lord sanctifies our action and his love is spread from person to person. We need to come together and do all things in His name. It is through this change in our focus that loneliness, fear, hunger, sickness and demons can be driven out.