Prayer is an interesting exercise. There are all kinds of prayer, of course. We thank God for God's great blessings; we praise God; we simply talk to God. Very often, we also ask God for something-- healing, good weather, success of some sort, all kinds of things. Jesus today (Jn 14: 7-14) seems to be encouraging that kind of prayer. He says: "(W)hatever you ask in my name, I will do." In His next sentance, He says pretty-much the same thing. Quite the promise, if we take it literally. Yet we all know from experience that we pray for things which we do not receive. Sometimes we seek, but don't receive, healing, or good weather, or success. In wars, both sides often pray for victory, but only one side wins. So how do we square what Jesus says today, expansive as it is, with our experience? Maybe part of the answer is that Jesus today is saying what He will do, but Jesus does not mean to suggest that He will do things fundamentally against His own nature. We can ask Jesus to suspend the working of gravity, or stop the earth from rotating around the sun, but for things like that to happen would require the altering of the fundamental laws of the universe God has created. Or we can ask Jesus to make someone love us, but to do that would require that the other person's free will be overcome, thereby interfering with another aspect of the world which God has created. If we are to take literally the word "anything" that Jesus uses, we would be in a situation where we are controlling God, and that can't happen (fortunately, for we'd make a mess of things). God remains God, and our requests in prayer need to be made, and understood, in that context. So yes, Jesus encourages us to pray. And yes, Jesus says He will give us what we seek in His name. But beware of thinking that puts us in charge of the universe. It doesn't. Prayer is an interesting exercise.