The Lord’s Greatest Prayer

You can take your Bible and open to John, Chapter 17. This chapter is unparalleled in Scripture. It is unique among all the portions of Scripture because it is the prayer of our Lord, the Son of God, to the Father. It deserves careful attention. In all honesty, one could be lost for a lifetime in this chapter. It’s truths are so far-reaching, so high, so wide, so deep, so elevated, that it’s almost impossible to extract yourself from the chapter, or from any verse, or even any phrase. The words are simple enough and direct enough, but the truths are really beyond comprehension. The best we can do is touch the edges of these great realities that are in this chapter.

You know what is behind this chapter, so this chapter will bring many things to your remembrance. If someone were to approach this chapter not knowing the rest of Scripture, they would be served well to spend a lifetime here, using this as a launch point to go backward and forward in the revelation of God. But for us, this is a capstone of four other chapters: chapters 13, 14, 15, and 16. Those chapters record the words of our Lord to His disciples the night of the Passover on Thursday night of Passion Week, the night before His crucifixion. That night, He spent hours upon hours with His disciples. First the Passover meal, then Judas was dismissed. He instituted the Lord’s Supper at that point. He continued to teach them.

They left the upper room. They have walked to the city of Jerusalem. And as they’re walking, He continues His instruction to them, full of promises, full of pledges, and full of warnings, and full of threats. He tells them that He is leaving, He will die, He will rise, and He will go back to the Father. He is promising them everything they will ever need. All the resources of heaven will be at their disposal through prayer. They will know the truth because He will send the Holy Spirit who will bring them the truth.

He is promising them peace and love and joy and every virtue. But as He stands on the brink of His own death, the disciples are afraid, worried, full of doubt, anxiety. They can’t even imagine a world without the Lord they had been with for three years. The deeper they go into the night, the greater their fears become. Our Lord is endeavored to allay those fears, and even bring them joy be making all the promises that are contained in 13, 14, 15, and 16. But they’re hard-pressed to embrace them because all they can think about is Him leaving, Him dying.

But all that instruction, all that promise, all that warning is now past, and chapter 17 is a prayer that He prays to the Father, and what He prays to the Father is that the Father would fulfill all the promises He has made, that the Father would bring to fulfillment all the work that He has done. This is a prayer that is remarkable because it demonstrates the humiliation of Christ in a unique way. He is, after all, God, who made everything that is made; and without Him was not anything made that was made. He is God who upholds the entire universe by the word of His power, according to Hebrews 1. He is God who will come to reign and establish His rule in the earth, and then in the new heaven and the new earth forever. He is God of very God. He is the Creator, the Sustainer, the Consummator of the universe.

But in His incarnation set aside his prerogatives, and submitted Himself to the Father. And so in an act of that submission, He prays that the Father will fulfill everything He has promised. As such, He gives us the most magnificent example of the need for prayer. If the Son of God who controls all things, if the Son of God who is the ruler over all things, if the Son of God who is sovereign over all things, if the Son of God who knows all things, who has all power is in a position of depending on God to fulfill all His words, how much more are we dependent on God?

You know, the Bible talks about the fact that in ministry, the apostles, Acts 6:4, were given to prayer and the ministry of the Word, prayer and the ministry of the Word, because we can minister the Word, and we can be faithful to the proclamation of the Word. But unless the Father activates the Word in the lives of the people, then it falls on deaf ears, it accomplishes nothing. So we are called then to a lifetime of teaching and preaching, supported by a lifetime of praying that the Father will bring to pass all that He has revealed that we have proclaimed. If Jesus, in His perfection, in His absolute righteousness, but in His humiliation was dependent upon the Father to fulfill His Word, we are far more dependent on the Father who are frail and weak and sinful.

So here we have a model of prayer from one who seem to us at first not even to need to pray; but He did pray. In fact, He prayed throughout His entire life on earth. He prayed daily He prayed moment by moment. How else can we understand that He is God, in full communion with God, other than to see that as constant, unbroken communication. I suppose we could say there was never a time when He wasn’t praying, when He wasn’t communicating with the Father.

The gospels tell us that He prayed; they tell us that a lot. What they don’t tell us is what He said. They don’t tell us that. Oh, maybe a statement or two here and there. At the grave of Lazarus, He prayed to the Father, and then He said, “Lazarus, come out.” At Gethsemane, He prayed to the Father and said, “If it be Your will, let this cup pass from Me.” At the cross He said, “Into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Very brief, very rare, are the actual words that Jesus prayed.

A remarkable prayer is given to us in Matthew 11:25. Here we have some of His words to the Father: “I praise you, Father – ” verse 25 “ – Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them unto infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.” That’s about as extensive a prayer as we have, just a couple of very brief verses, until we get to John 17.

And now we have this lengthy chapter running all the way down 26 verses. Every single word comes from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ and is part of a prayer to the Father. This is what the great-grandfather of that tragic pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, called “a thunderbolt fallen from the sky.” This chapter has been called the Holy of Holies of Scripture. It is the most elevated, the most glory-filled chapter in the Bible. It is, of course, the prayer above all prayers. But it is also the chapter above all chapters, because it alone is where we see the communion between the Son of God and the Father.

Here, we are ushered into the throne room of God. Here, we eavesdrop on the communion, the eternal communion between the Son and the Father. The veil is drawn back. We’re admitted into the Holy of Holies. We approach the inner communion of the Trinity. The secret place of the Most High God is opened for us. Here, we need to remove our shoes and listen, and humble ourselves with reverent hearts because we are on the holiest of all ground.

You say, “Well, now wait minute. What about the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name,’ and so forth? What about that? Isn’t that the Lord’s Prayer?” It’s called the Lord’s Prayer, but it’s not the Lord’s Prayer. It is a prayer that Jesus taught the disciples to pray. It is a pray that He said, “Pray this way.”

But He did not pray that prayer. He could not pray that prayer. He never prayed that prayer, because that prayer says in part, “Forgive us our trespasses, our sins.” He told us to pray that way. He didn’t pray that way. That was the disciples’ prayer. That’s our prayer. That’s a pattern for our prayer.

John 17 is the real Lord’s Prayer.    The great Philip Melanchthon, friend of Martin Luther, gifted theologian during the Reformation, gave the final lecture of his life; and in that final lecture, he lectured on this prayer. Part of what he said I quote: “There is no voice which has ever been heard, neither in heaven or in earth more exalted, more holy, more fruitful, more sublime, than the prayer offered up by the Son of God Himself.” Plain words, yet incomparable majesty. Simple words, yet profound mystery.

Not too many weeks ago, Patricia and I were over in Scotland and we were visiting the home of John Knox on the Royal Mile on High Street. John Knox is a kind of hero to me, the great Scottish reformer who preached so powerfully, whom God bless so mightily – the real shining light of the Scottish Reformation.

John Knox was on his death bed on High Street, and he asked that the Bible be brought and read to him as he lay dying. He wanted to hear the Psalms – there were certain psalms that he particularly loved – and then he wanted to have read Isaiah 53. “But most of all – ” he said “ – please read John 17, because that is the place where I first cast my anchor.” It was John 17 that God used to bring the great John Knox to salvation.

This prayer really marks the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, but it also looks forward to what followed His earthly ministry, and that was His heavenly ministry. And His heavenly ministry was a ministry of interceding for His people at the very throne of God. Jesus could have prayed silently as He always had. The New Testament could have been assembled and this left out. But Jesus wasn’t silent that night. He prayed openly, and there’s every reason to believe that the disciples heard this prayer, and it’s recorded by the Spirit of God through the apostle John so all of us can hear it as well. Why? Because it is a model of what He is now doing, interceding for us.

Look, we have four gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John – to tell us of the 33 years on earth what He did during those 33 years. We have four books. We have only one chapter to tell us what He’s doing now, and has been doing over the last 2,000 years, and will do until redemption is complete. Here is the one glimpse into the Christ who has been exalted and ever lives to make intercession for us. This is what Jesus is doing now.

As I said, He on earth was in unceasing communication with the Father. But there were also special times of prayer. At His baptism, He was in prayer. When He began His public ministry, in Mark, chapter 1, it says He rose a great while before dawn and went out and departed into a solitary place and prayed. When He was about to select the original twelve apostles, Luke says He went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer. And while in prayer, He was transfigured, in Luke 9. And as you know, He died with a prayer on His lips. But, again, in most cases, we have no idea what He said, until we get to John 17.

And this isn’t how He prayed while on earth; this is how He now prays in heaven, interceding. Here, we see our great High Priest. This is His mediatorial work, as the mediator between God and man. This prayer belongs to us as a gift from heaven so that we now know the content of our great High Priest’s intercession for us.

Now, the prayer is divided into three parts. The first five verses, Jesus prays for Himself. And then starting in verse 6, He prays for the apostles that are with Him on that very night. And then He closes the chapter by praying for all believers through all the future. But starting in verse 6, everything He prayed for the eleven, He prays for all His people through all history. So He starts by praying for His own glory, and then He prays for the glory of His own people.

It is a prayer for glory. It is a prayer that the Father would bring Him to glory, and bring the disciples to glory, and bring all of us to glory. It is that interceding prayer that holds us until we stand before Him in heaven. It is this intercession that is the reason why nothing will ever separate us from the love of God, which is ours in Christ Jesus.

The best we can do this morning is just to look at verse 1. And I promise you, I’m not going to take 26 weeks to do this, but it had to be introduced. Look at verse 1: “Jesus spoke these things.” That simply goes back and gathers up chapters 13, 14, 15, and 16, all that He had said that night in the upper room, and subsequent to that as they were walking in the darkness through the city of Jerusalem. Luther called them His table talk, sitting around the Passover table.

But that’s all done now; there’s nothing more to say. He closed it out with verse 33: “In the world, you have tribulation. Take courage, I’ve overcome the world.” He ends His long night of teaching, promising, and warning with a statement of absolute final triumph: “I have already overcome the world.” The victory is good as in. It is as if it has already happened. “Yes, I’m going to die. Yes, you’re going to be hated, you’re going to be persecuted, you’re going to be imprisoned, you’re going to be thrown out of the synagogue, you’re going to be martyred. But I promise you, I have overcome the world. The world will hate you because it hated Me. But I will triumph in the end, and you will triumph in Me.” That’s how He wrapped up the evening in the darkness with the eleven.

Having done that, it says in verse 1, “He lifts up His eyes to heaven.” That’s a familiar gesture on the part of one who’s praying biblically, a common one, as He looks toward heaven, toward the God to whom He prays, His own God and Father. It’s a magnificent gesture; one that He made without hesitation – unlike the publican in Luke 18 who was so burdened with His own sin that it says in Luke 18, “He wouldn’t lift his eyes up to look at heaven, but he looked down and pounded his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’” He didn’t feel even worthy to look heavenward. Well, there’s no unworthiness in Christ. There’s no sin in Christ; He lifts His eyes.

Somebody might say, “Well, praying for Himself?” Yes, yes. He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” That’s the nature of His prayer. It is a prayer, first of all, for His own glory. So that, having been glorified, He can then bring many sons to glory.

Somebody might suggest that there’s a selfishness in this. Jesus praying for Himself seems self-seeking; that’s because we are fallen creatures full of sin, and we understand that we have no right to ask for glory on our own merit. But Christ was not asking for something He didn’t deserve. In fact, He says, “Father, glorify You Son.” And in verse 5 says, “Just glorify Me with the glory I had with You before the world began. Just take me back to the eternal glory, which is always mine by right. It is a prayer for the glory that belongs to Him, the intrinsic glory which is His by virtue of who He is. First He says, “Father, Father.” And He repeats that down in verse 5, and verse 21, and verse 24: “Father, Father.”

It is fascinating to me to understand that God, who could have used any kind of human analogy, any kind of metaphor, any kind of word picture, to describe the relationship of the Lord Jesus Christ, the second member of the Trinity, to God, the first member of the Trinity. But God chose Father and Son. God chose Father and Son.

Why? Well, certainly because it is a way to emphasize shared nature, to emphasize shared nature. But it’s more than that. It is not just shared nature, it is intimate familiarity. It speaks not only of the fact that He was one in nature with God, but that He had a relationship with God that is described as loving care.

Handley Moule, years ago the Bishop of Durham in England, said about this statement: “Father.” “When Jesus says Father and the Christian stands by His side and listens, he knows that the eternal and ultimate God is personal. The poor sinful man, looking up into the heights immeasurable finds and touches with trembling but real faith close beside Him, no mere abstract cause, no blind tendency, no simple nature personified and deified by fancy or by wish; but one who knows, wills, and loves unspeakably, with a fatherly tenderness that cannot be imagined.

As Father, He is the personally holy, personally faithful, personally gracious caretaker. He is the Father, nothing less than all that can be denoted or implied by that dear and loving term. He is the Father, first of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then of the needy sinner who repents. He is Father, for He is Living Author of our personal life; Father, for our very nature was made in His image; Father, for He has begotten us again unto a living hope. He is Father, so that we are to Him immeasurably more than even the work of His hands.

We are to that eternal love His dear and precious possession. His delights are with the sons of men. As a Father, He pities the child of this mortal family with the pity which only a divine heart could know. Our Lord says, “Father, Holy Father, righteous Father, loving Father.” And we embrace that fatherhood as well. We have become children of God, and He is our Father also, with all that that means.

So with that introduction of Father, He then makes this statement – very important: “The hour has come. The hour has come.” He’s been saying for a long time, going all the way back to the 2nd chapter of John, “The hour has not come. The hour has not come. The hour has not come.” Now, “The hour has come.”

In the 12th chapter, which was at the beginning of this Passion Week, He started to say, “The hour has come.” And now He is just hours from the cross. “The hour has come.”

It’s an amazing statement. It’s an amazing perspective that I think is important for you to understand. Jesus is conscious of this. Every event, every circumstance, every day, every moment, every hour in the history of the unfolding drama of divine redemption is planned by God. Everything is under a divine timetable and by divine appointment. Jesus recognized that: “It’s not My hour. It’s not My hour. My hour has not come. My hour has come.”

There is an absolute sovereign, unalterable precision with which God operates His redemptive drama. And His working in the Son’s life, and His working in your life and my life, it operates on a divine schedule. Nothing is whimsical. Nothing is loosely ordained. God sovereignly predetermined history – not just in movements, but in singular moments, singular moments. History and redemptive accomplishment is a matter of divine moment by moment, materializing of God’s sovereign, divine plan. If you are His, you have been on a precise and exact divine timetable. And Jesus knew that; it was true of Him. The hour had finally come.

What hour? What time was it on the redemptive clock? The hour was the crux of history; literally, the crux of eternity. It was the event of forever, and the event of time; the event of the ages, the crossroads. Two eternities were about to meet: eternity past and eternity future, and they would meet at the cross. The hour had come in which the Son of Man, the Son of God, would end His humiliation, would terminate His labors; and He would do that by becoming the sacrifice for sin. And the application of that sacrifice would extend backward through all of human history to every person who had ever believed, and forward through history to every person who would ever believe. He would, in that moment, become sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. It was the hour that fulfilled the divine design, when before the foundation of the world, God ordained that Christ be crucified; and before the foundation of the world, God wrote down the names of those for whom His crucifixion would be, an effective sacrifice for their salvation. It was the moment when all the pre-time, pre-creation, divine purposes of God reached an apex.

It was also the moment in time that had been long awaited. It was the hour when all prophecies of salvation were fulfilled, when all promises of salvation were fulfilled, when all the specific prophecies of Messiah were fulfilled, when all the types and all the symbols were fulfilled. It was the hour of which the prophet spoke and every godly person longed to see. It was the hour of triumph over the prince of this world. It was the hour of dismissing the old and ushering in the new. It was the hour of salvation, when all that God had promised in salvation was then made possible: no, made actual. Christ actually died for all who believed throughout all of human history going back and going forward. It was the hour of the cross.

In the 12th chapter of John, verse 23, Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” In verse 27: “Now My soul has become troubled. What shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name. Then a voice came out of heaven: ‘I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.’”

This is that hour, the hour of the cross. He anticipated it almost a week earlier. He was revolted by the prospect of knowing the wrath of God, the judgment of God: sin-bearing, being punished for all the sins of all the people through human history who would ever be redeemed. It troubled Him profoundly beyond anything we can imagine. But what was He going to say: “Save Me from this hour”? Of course not. “For this hour I came into the world.”

Here is it, the all, the everything, the climax, the glory hour; to blot out the power of the curse, to reconcile sinners to God, to illuminate the obscured spiritual kingdom. This is the hour. God planned that hour from eternity past. Peter said that on the Day of Pentecost: “This has all happened by the pre-determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” This was God’s plan from the very beginning.

Go back to Isaiah 53, it’s all laid out in detail there, hundreds of years before it came to pass. What does He mean, “The hour has come”? He means the cross; and, subsequently, the resurrection; and, subsequently, the ascension; and, subsequently, the coronation. As the King of Glory, He will be nailed to a cross, made sin for His beloved people, to bear the wrath of God. Such a moment it was that the sun refused to shine; darkness prevailed. Such a moment it was, that the earth rocked and reeled. Such a moment it was, that graves opened and dead people came out. There had never been a moment like it, and never would be again.

To the disciples, the death of the Lord seemed like the worst of all things, the impossible nightmare. A cross was an instrument of shame; but to Christ, it meant glory, full glory. And so He says, “The hour has come; glorify Your Son. Glorify Him at the cross as the One fulfilling all the prophecies, as the One fulfilling all the pictures of sacrifice, as the Mediator, as the Representative, as the Substitute, as the Anointed One, as the Lamb of God.” Jesus saw glory in the cross. He saw glory in the cross. So do we. We even sing In the Cross of Christ I Glory.

 On this side of it looking back, we understand what it was. He is praying, “Father, grant that by means of this event on the cross, I may be glorified.” We look at the cross, and we look at the resurrection and the ascension and the coronation of Christ that followed, and we see glory in all of it. But there would be no glory without the cross – not for Him, because the Father required the cross; and certainly not for us.

It is interesting to me that you see Him say, “Glorify Your Son,” because that is not something any of us could ever say. We could never go before God and say, “God, I deserve to be glorified.” If Pharisees had been around when He said that, they would have torn their clothes at the blasphemy, they would have assumed. But it was glory that belonged to Him, as verse 5 says. It was the glory that He had before creation. He desires full and due glory, the glory that comes to one who has been perfectly obedient to the Father throughout His life, the glory of being the perfect Lamb of God and doing the will of God, even on the cross when He prayed in the garden, “Let this cup ass from Me.”

That is a prayer we should expect. We should expect one who is perfectly holy to have a profound version to becoming the bearer of judgment for sin. But He quickly adds, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.” It’s glory in obedience that He seeks. He prays for the Father now to take Him to the cross, through the cross, out of the grave; take Him to heaven and sit Him at His right hand; to crown Him with a diadem of glory.

And while we know he deserves it, some has criticized this as being selfish. That doesn’t make any sense if you look at the end of the verse: “Glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You.” And that’s exactly what I just read you back in chapter 12, verse 28: “Father, glorify Your name, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have glorified it, and I’ll glorify it again.”

This is the remarkable reality of the Trinity: the Son seeks to be glorified so that He can glorify the Father. The Father is glorified in the humiliation and obedience of the Son. The Holy Spirit gives glory to Christ, Christ gives glory to the Father; the Father gives glory to the Son. The perfections, the absolute holy perfections of the Trinity give to us a perfect demonstration of the utter absence of any self-seeking whatsoever, as if they would pit each other against each other. The Son receives honor; the Father receives honor; the Spirit receives honor. The Spirit gives honor to the Son; the Son passes honor to the Father; the Father passes it back.

In John 5, you’ll remember verse 23: “So that all will honor the Son – ” Jesus says “ – even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.”

Just as a footnote, let me say this: you cannot honor God unless you give equal honor to His Son Jesus Christ. What that means is, any religion that tries to honor God, but does not give honor to Christ as revealed in the New Testament in truth gives no honor to God.

The 7th chapter of the gospel of John, verse 18: “He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory. But He who is seeking in the glory of the One who sent Him, he is true, and there’s no unrighteousness in him.” What an amazing statement. Jesus says, “I seek the glory of the One who sent Me.”

Here again is this incredible reality that in the Trinity, there’s nothing like sinful pride. There’s nothing like self-seeking. Each member, wanting with all power and all duty and all obedience, to give glory to the other. This, our Lord made clear on so many occasions, that while He wanted His own glory, it was the glory of the Father that was the end goal.

In the 11th chapter of John, He says regarding the sickness, “The sickness will not end in death, but for the glory of God so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.” Even in His miracles of healing, He was being glorified, but giving glory to God. That glory then is passed around in a remarkable way in the Trinity.

 There’s another illustration of this, the 13th chapter. Jesus says in verse 31, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him immediately.” Do you see? This is this profound reality that one member of the Trinity wants glory for Himself so that He can glorify the other.

Just really an amazing illustration of something that is beyond our comprehension. So ironically it would be through the most shameful possible death, in the most horrible way, hanging virtually naked, nailed to a cross, that the Son would give glory to the Father, as well as receive from the Father glory to Himself, because the Father would raise Him from the dead and set Him at His right hand where He belonged.

What the disciples thought then was the most tragic outcome possible was, in fact, the most triumphant outcome possible. What they thought was all shame, the Lord knew was all glory. They saw tragedy; Jesus saw triumph. He did it “for the joy set before Him, that’s why He endured the cross,” Hebrews 12:2.

And again I remind you: having first sought His own glory in this prayer, He spends the rest of the prayer seeking the glory of those who the Father has given to Him as His own; and that encompasses not only the eleven that night, but all who would ever believe. This prayer is the great High Priest praying. The first part of the prayer, verses 1 to 5, has been answered. He was glorified. He was glorified out of the grave. He was glorified in His ascension when angels took Him into the clouds. He was glorified by being seated at the right hand of the Father. But starting in verse 6, the rest of this prayer, He is praying even now for you and me; and He will pray it until He brings us to glory.

Nothing can ever separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus – nothing – for a lot of reasons. For one, the atoning work of Jesus Christ finished your salvation forever. For another, He has granted you already eternal life which cannot perish – the life of God in your soul. But for another, the Holy Spirit in you, as the seal of God’s final exaltation of the believer, secures you to glory. And for another, the great High Priest is ever-living to make intercession for us, to bring us to glory. That’s how the prayer begins, that He would be glorified. And in those opening five verses, we’ll see next time, there are some specific reasons that we should add our praise to the glory that belongs to Him, and was affirmed to Him by the Father. We’ll look at that next time. Let’s pray.

We have been so long, Lord, in these chapters; and we’ve been a long time in the gospel of John, 16 chapters; and we’ve lived now for a few years with our Lord and with all the distress and all the humiliation – all the shame that was heaped upon Him; all the unbelief; all the hatred, persecution, threats, misunderstandings. We even lived with the hard-headed and hard-hearted disciples whom He taught more ably and more profoundly and more powerfully than any group had ever been taught in history; and yet they didn’t understand, they couldn’t understand. We just feel like we’ve been lifted out of the dirt; we’ve been pulled up into the heaven lies.

All of that is in the past now, and we hear our Lord talking to You, our Father and His Father, with perfect communion, perfect understanding; and we have now come to heaven, in a sense. We’ve left this world and we’ve come into the holy place and then the Holy of Holies, the Throne Room; and it is elevating, it is exhilarating, it is thrilling to our hearts. All those years on earth, and we know so much about His ministry. And since then, all the centuries in heaven, and we have just this precious chapter to describe that work that He is now doing: make it a treasure to us in every way and every aspect as we mine its glorious riches.

Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your work on the cross. Thank You for Your work on our behalf in heaven that will one day guarantee our eternal presence with You in glory. It’s why we’re here; it’s why we worship. May we follow Your example of prayer and obedience for Your glory. Amen.

Copyright ©2007, Grace to You. All rights reserved.  Used by permission.

This article originally appeared here at Grace to You.