Hi Pastor John,
I have spent the last two days talking to Jesus, just having a real heart-to-heart with him about relationships and fellowship. I have been asking him about fellowship for a while now.
Today, I noticed a video titled, “The Lord’s Prayer”, and I skipped past it because most of the time such videos just feel disappointing. After I skipped it, I was thinking about the title of that video, and I felt the Spirit surge through me, and I heard the thought, “What was the Lord’s prayer? It was to make us one, like he and his Father are one.”
That thought and the Spirit felt so good that I searched “make them one”, and I found John 17! Have I ever even read John 17? It’s so good! Surely, I have read John 17! But I know I have never felt John 17 like this! Just read what prayer our Lord prayed!
Jesus prayed to be glorified by his Father; he prayed for us to know him and our Father. Jesus prayed for God to keep us! Jesus prayed for God to sanctify us with His truth; he prayed for us to have his joy! He prayed for us to be one so the world might believe that God sent him.
I feel like Jesus reached down into my heart and taught me more about how he feels about fellowship. Fellowship is about Jesus! It is for us, but it is about Jesus.
When you read his heart in that prayer, it makes you know that having anything other than fellowship is against our Jesus.
And verses 22 through 26 just makes me cry.
John 17:
1. Jesus spoke these things, and then he lifted his eyes toward heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, so that your Son might also glorify you,
- since you gave him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all those that you have given to him.
- And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
- I glorified you on earth; I’ve finished the work that you gave me to do.
- And now, Father, glorify me to beat your side with the glory I used to have with you before the universe existed.
- I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
- They know now that everything you’ve given me is from you
- because I have given them the words that you’ve given me, and they received them, and they truly do know that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.
- I pray for them. I’m not praying for the world, but for those you’ve given me, for they are yours,
- and all things that are mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.
- And I’m no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I’m coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name which you have given to me, that they may be one, just as we are.
- While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. Those you gave me, I watched over, and not one of them has been lost except the son of damnation, that the scripture might be fulfilled.
- But now, I’m coming to you, and these things I’m saying in the world so that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
- I’ve given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I’m not of the world.
- I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One.
- They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
- Sanctify them with your truth; your word is truth.
- Just as you sent me into the world, I also sent them into the world.
- And for their sake, I sanctify myself so that they may also be sanctified with truth.
- And I’m not asking for these alone, but also for those who believe in me through their word,
- that they all might be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may also be one in us, so that the world might believe that you sent me.
- And the glory that you’ve given me, I’ve given to them, that they might be one, just as we are one:
- I in them, and you in me, so that they might be perfected in unity, and so that the world might know that you sent me, and that you have loved them just as you loved me.
- Father, I desire that where I am, these whom you’ve given me might also be with me, that they may behold my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
- Righteous Father, even though the world doesn’t know you, I know you, and these know that you sent me,
- and I have made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Beth D