His Prayer for us Part 2

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 His prayer for us Part 1



John 17: 4-19

We’ve established context, and we’ve talked about the first three verses of John 17.  After asking to be glorified for doing the work His father gave Him, He turns his attention to the second main part of this prayer, that is focusing specifically on praying for His disciples.
Here Jesus affirms that these disciples:
  • were given to Him by God the Father from the world
  • have kept God’s word
  • know that everything Jesus told them is from God
  • have received His words
  • know the truth that God sent Jesus, and know that He came from God
He asks on behalf of the disciples that God has given him, and then states that they belong to the Father.  This sets up the next part of this passage where Jesus claims to be one with God the Father, boldly stating “what’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is mine”, then testifies that they (the disciples that God gave to Him from the world) have glorified Him, the Son.
Are you catching all the glorifying going on so far?  The disciples have glorified Jesus, Jesus glorifies the Father, and asks that the Father glorify Him.  That is a lot of glory being passed back and forth.  As He reminds the Father again of the faithful work He has done with them so far, Jesus requests four specific things for His disciples:
  • for their protection
  • for their unity (or oneness)
  • for His joy to be made complete in them
  • for their sanctification
I wonder what would happen if we, the Body of Christ, began to faithfully pray Jesus’ prayer here, each for the other.  I want to add this into my prayer book so that I can remember it.  Can you imagine, if we prayed for protection and unity like we prayed for our health, or our finances?  Or for our brothers and sisters to have God’s joy made complete in them?  How about the big five-syllable word there?  The million dollar word, sanctification.  Nobody even talks like that anymore, maybe we should know what it means before we start putting it on our brothers and sisters in Christ…and ourselves!

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Comments

  1. Lora Dolores8:54 am, September 12, 2013

    The message of Our Blessed Lord to us in John 17 is so beautiful! Thank you for this awesome post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Melanie Jean Juneau8:56 am, September 12, 2013

    clear,concise and filled with truth-thanks

    ReplyDelete

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