Have you ever eavesdropped on someone’s private prayer for you? The closest I ever came was seeing my name written in my mother’s Bible with a date. I knew my mother prayed for me and because I recognized the date, I knew how God answered her prayer.
But on the printed pages of our Bibles, captured for us in black and white, we can eavesdrop on the prayer Jesus prayed for us before he went to the cross. Before he paid the price as our sacrificed lamb to take away our sin and return us to the loving arms of our Creator, Jesus prayed for us.
We need to read this prayer again (John 17:20-26) and ask ourselves how we are answering the prayers Jesus prayed for us:
Do we model unity as Jesus prayed that we would?
Do we have a oneness with God that mirrors the relationship Jesus had with Him?
Do we help the world believe in Jesus and what He came to do?
Does Jesus live in us by the presence of his holy-making Spirit?
Do we show the world in ways they can understand how much God loves them?
Are we living as answers to Jesus’ prayer for us?
These are sobering questions to answer before we take our places before the cross on Good Friday. Jesus didn’t die for our excuses; He died for every way we have rejected God’s ways. The call of the cross comes to us through Jesus’ prayer. The ultimate question we must answer is whether it has become our prayer as well:
Not my will, my way, or my perspective.
Only Your will be done in me and by me.
Pictures: Unsplash-Burden, DG,
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