Jesus' Prayer For You

“I DO NOT PRAY FOR THESE ALONE, BUT ALSO FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN ME THROUGH THEIR WORD; THAT THEY MAY BE ONE, AS YOU, FATHER, ARE IN ME, AND I IN YOU; THAT THEY ALSO MAY BE ONE IN US, THAT THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE THAT YOU SENT ME. AND THE GLORY WHICH YOU GAVE ME I HAVE GIVEN THEM, THAT THEY MAY BE ONE JUST AS WE ARE ONE;” John 17:20-22


If you could ask Jesus to pray for you, what would you ask Him to pray? Perhaps you would ask for wealth or fame or eternal security. Would you ask for health or joy or greater virtue? Jesus is ever-interceding before the Father for you and I, but look at how He prayed, for his disciples, but also all of us who believe in Him through their words;
“I DO NOT PRAY FOR THESE ALONE, BUT ALSO FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN ME THROUGH THEIR WORD; THAT THEY MAY BE ONE, AS YOU, FATHER, ARE IN ME, AND I IN YOU; THAT THEY ALSO MAY BE ONE IN US, THAT THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE THAT YOU SENT ME. AND THE GLORY WHICH YOU GAVE ME I HAVE GIVEN THEM, THAT THEY MAY BE ONE JUST AS WE ARE ONE;”

Dear ones, Christ knows nothing of casual “Sunday Relationships”; His desire, His design is that we share life and that life eternal. How are we to relate to one another? Look at the relationship of His Disciples; they left family, fortune, home and possessions to follow Christ and before He left He ask the Father to make it a permanent relationship and soon baptized them in the Holy Spirit, that the impossible become reality.

I have always seen Church Membership and the Marriage Covenant one and the same. I believe we are to carefully follow God to where we are suppose to be and unless blatant, unrepentant sin akin to adultery enters in we are to do the impossible and having covenanted together, grow there. “What, for the rest of our lives?” What is the Disciples example to us? What is Christ praying here?

Thank God the Holy Trinity cannot strive against itself and fall apart. Is that not the relationship that Christ is praying for us to experience?

He never intended for us to be jumping from place to place, church to church, every time we got our feelings hurt, or we like the worship somewhere else better or the programs “over there” more than where we are. What “programs” did the Disciples enjoy? Do you think Peter was the best Worship Leader in the entire known world? Do you think, for a minute that the Disciples all got along with one another all the time? Apparently not; look at this prayer; “THAT THEY MAY BE ONE, AS YOU FATHER, ARE IN ME, AND I IN YOU”. Christ asks His Father to engraft us into a “Trinity Relationship”; we are to be so tightly knit together that the world cannot see me without seeing you. That is why it is written, “THEY WILL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR LOVE”.

God calls us to something more. God calls us to something permanent. God calls us to something impossible, by man; but the only way to continually grow in Him; that we be ONE, even as He and the Father are One. Amen!