Another passage has Jesus saying, “Whatever you ask in my name will be given to you.”

That seems hard to swallow on the surface. When I was a boy, I admit that I wanted a robot like the one on Lost in Space. So I asked in Jesus’ name that he provide one for me – overnight. You might guess the rest of the story; no robot was forthcoming.

As an “adult” who had become separated from my faith in God, I simply decided that verse didn’t mean what it said, or that it was exaggerated, or had been added by some scribe along the way and that Jesus never actually said it.

Now I know differently.

I believe that what Jesus was saying is very similar to your “heart’s desire” passage; when we are aligned with His heart and His mind, and when we are in tune with His desires, only then are we truly asking “in His name”. And when we are truly asking in Jesus’s name, we are asking for the same things that HE wants.

It can sound like a word game, as you point out, but I believe it speaks a much deeper truth. When we are being childish and worldly, we ask for robots (or other worldly things that may or may not be in the will of God); when we “have the mind of Christ” then we ask “in His name”… and those things he always gives us. As promised.