The privilege of prayer & being prayed for - Midweek Message 27th May

Father…glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you…I pray… for those you have given me, for they are yours… I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them… I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message… Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory… I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them. (John 17.1,9,13,20,24,26)

Dear Friends,

Have you ever found yourself in a café (remember them??) and you’re looking around at your fellow customers when your curiosity is suddenly aroused by one particular table. There, two men from different generations and yet bearing a family resemblance, are engaged in deep conversation. The younger is evidently pouring out his heart to the older and the older is giving him his full attention. As they lean in towards one another across the table, their eyes fixed on each other, they seem completely unaware of anyone else. This goes on for some time and you can’t help watching and wondering to yourself: What on earth are they talking about? What  has prompted the younger to speak in such animated fashion? What causes the older to listen so intently? You would love to know but you feel to ask, or even to seek to get closer to eavesdrop further, would be intrusive, an invasion of their privacy. So, you get up, pay for your coffee and leave but still wondering what that conversation in the café was all about.

It strikes me that scenario is very similar to one in which Jesus' disciples find themselves in John 17. It wasn’t in a café. We’re not quite sure where they were. Possibly still in the Upper Room. Possibly in the Garden of Gethsemane but wherever they are, they witness a profoundly intimate conversation between a son and a father, between the Son and the Father, as Jesus, the Son, pours out his heart to God the Father  in prayer - only with one huge and significant difference. They get to hear exactly what is said. Jesus clearly means for them (and us) to hear what is being said because what he says, what he prays, concerns them and all future Christian believers and he desires to share with all his disciples all he enjoys. As we listen, we are given glorious insight into the privilege of prayer, of being prayed for and of belonging to Jesus through faith.

Some would call John 17 the real ‘Lord’s prayer’ and certainly it is the longest recorded example we have in the New Testament of Jesus actually praying. You can hear within it some of the features and concerns that he  taught his disciples to pray in what we traditionally refer to as the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6. Jesus begins this prayer by addressing God as ‘Father’ v1 and that is the privilege he bestows on everyone who trusts and follows him. This then is how you should pray,  he says to us in Matthew 6.9, Our Father in heaven (compare also Mark 14.36 with Romans 8.15, Galatians 4.6) Then we hear his primary concern for the honouring of God i.e. hallowed be your name cf v1,6 ESV, 11,12,26 ESV. There are echoes too of deliver us from evil cf v15  My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.  . So listening in to Jesus we are encouraged to enjoy and use the privilege of praying to God as our Father that Jesus grants and to allow him by his words and example to shape the concerns and content of our prayers. Yet at the same time, we are surely aware that there are things here in John 17 which are unique to Jesus, which we could never pray. Who but Jesus could pray, And now Father glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began (v5)?

What of the blessings of belonging to Jesus? Notice Jesus prayerful desire that his disciples then and now share his joy I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. That joy he knew eternally in the Father and with the Father. That joy he knew in obedience here on earth to the Father in completing the work that the Father had given him to do – the work that would take him to the cross (see John 4.34 & 15.10,11) He wants all his disciples to know that joy. He is praying to that end.  

He further wants his disciples then and now to share and enjoy the Father’s love for them  - amazingly he identifies the nature, the depth and the quality of that love as being the same as that of the Father for him cf  v23 you  he says speaking of and to the Father have loved them even as you have loved me  & again in v26 he prays for his ongoing work on his disciples behalf so that  the love you have for me may be in them.

Christian believers can often struggle to believe in our hearts that God the Father genuinely and deeply loves us, that we truly and eternally and unchangeably matter to him. Often, we do so because of the dark and difficult things that are happening or have happened in our lives. Yet think about the situation in which Jesus prays here.  v1 sets the scene: Father, the time has come  Throughout John’s gospel that phase the time  or in the ESV the hour always refers to Jesus death and all that accompanies and follows it. So, Jesus is about to be arrested, tried unjustly by a kangaroo court,  mocked, spat upon, stripped naked, publicly shamed and humiliated before an angry and self-righteous crowd, deserted and abandoned by his friends and ultimately forsaken by his Father as he is crucified. He knows all that is coming and yet He has no doubt about his Father's love for him and evidently desires that his disciples in all their darkest moments may know and trust that same love for them. He prays with that end also in view. 

Further, beyond those dark moments of their life in this world  he prays that his disciples, then and now, may be with him in the world to come, in his Father’s house (14.2), to see and to share his eternal glory Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory (v24).

Friends, you know as well as I do that prayer can be hard work. We can easily be distracted, easily discouraged. We can struggle to pray or persist in prayer but maybe sometimes that is  because you and I fail to see the privilege of prayer that has been given to us by Jesus – through him, to be able to  know and speak and pour out our hearts to God as Father as he does here. When through Jesus, you catch a glimpse of God the Father’s desire that we speak to him, the lengths to which he has gone to give us access to him and how deep the Father’s love for us actually is then surely we rightly sing, What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.  But even if somehow in the darkness of our current situation, we still struggle to see and enjoy that privilege can we also see the equally great privilege to know that we have Jesus himself the Son of God praying for us, bringing our case, our concerns our needs to God the Father.  When he says here in v20 My prayer is not for them alone (i.e. his immediate disciples the eleven) . I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message that is you and me and all who have responded in faith to the good news of Jesus recorded by his apostles in the New Testament. He is praying for our protection, for our perseverance, for our joy, for our experiencing God’s love.

I often recall a story one of my theology Professors used to tell of a young woman who was a Christian and came on one occasion to him when he was in his first charge as a minister. She was in a dark place and almost thoughtlessly, he asked her, ‘Have you prayed to God about it?’ And she looked at him in despair and said, ‘I can’t pray’ To which he replied, ‘Well… remember that Jesus prays for you’ That thought, that reality lifted her spirits. Let it lift yours and mine too. As we listen in to this most intense and intimate of conversations in John 17, let’s remember as the author of the letter to the Hebrews puts it  he (Jesus) is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them (Hebrews 7:25)

Yours in that encouragement and privilege,

David

PS In the light of this let me further encourage you to take the chance that the Thy Kingdom Come initiative provides, particularly this Saturday (30^th May) to join with our fellow Christians all across the world to pray for others to come to know the Father through Jesus – to see His kingdom grow. If you can, ‘Zoom’ in!