More important than “our prayer requests,” says Neil Anderson, are “God’s prayer requests” – what he wants us to want, to seek, and to ask for. As I’ve told myself (and you!) many times, we are invited to pray with God – with Jesus and with the Spirit – not just to him, much less at him. That’s what it means to pray “in his name” and “according to his will” (John 14:13-14; 15:7-8; 1 John 5:14). And so this week, let’s continue to pray with Jesus, as John 17 shows him interceding for his original disciples and for us the night before his saving death.
After asking that the Father and he “be glorified,” here’s Jesus’ second request (verse 11): “protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.” The same plea is continued and expanded in verses 20-23:
I pray… that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Brother and sisters, pray this for our Centennial family this week, especially as we gather on Wednesday evening to open our hearts to one another. Jesus longs for us to be one – as he is in the Father and the Father is in him, and as we are in them – so that the world may believe. Pray that he fill us all with his Holy Spirit for the sake of his glory and desires. That is the best of all goods, and what makes any and every good truly “good!”
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