“My prayer is not for the world, but for those you have given me, because they belong to you. All who are mine belong to you, and you have given them to me, so they bring me glory.”
John 17:9-10 NLT
In His prayer, Jesus now zooms in to pray for His disciples, “those You have given Me”. We must turn to Luke 6:12-13 to find out how they were selected. “One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles …”. In those days there were a number of men who were His followers, but Jesus spent a night in prayer with His Father to make the choices He did. We can only imagine what happened that night. Did Jesus present the men He knew by name, one by one, waiting each time for His Father to respond? Surely, being divine, Jesus would have had God’s view and would have been able to make the decisions on the spot? But when He came to this world, Jesus laid aside most of His divine privileges and had to do what we have to do – pray. And the result of that prayer turned the world of the first century upside down, with eleven of the original twelve men becoming the first Apostles. But if we were praying that night, would we have chosen Judas Iscariot? Jesus even selected the man who would later betray Him. But His Father knew how His plan of salvation would work out.
But what is effective prayer? In its most basic form, it is no more than a conversation with God. Joyce Meyer said, “Prayer is such a basic foundation of a Christian’s relationship with God. It’s how we communicate and fellowship with Him“. I like the quote by Francis Chang, “When you pray, your prayers are heard by the same God who answered Moses’ prayers for water in the desert, the God who gave Abraham and his barren wife a son, and the God who made the slave Joseph second in power only to Pharaoh”. Jesus knew all about prayer and He famously taught His disciples how to pray. And our father God hears our prayers. He is always willing to listen, in fact far more than we are willing to pray.
In His prayer, Jesus said that at this point He wasn’t praying for the world around Him. Instead He was praying for His disciples. He was praying for a specific need, the future of His disciples, as we shall see several times in this chapter in John. Too often our prayers lack the focus they should have, as we lapse into lazy requests or general platitudes. Too often we pray “Bless Auntie Mary” prayers rather than pray the specifics of where Auntie Mary needs to be blessed. And of course our faith that God hears our prayers and will answer them is a fundamental part of our prayer.
Notice that Jesus’ prayer was devoid of the jargon that we often burden our prayers with, as though we think that God will answer prayers loaded with “thee’s” and “thou’s” and “We beseech thee …”. Some have called this the “language of Zion” but God really listens to us as we pray honest and humble prayers in everyday language. Remember the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, as recorded in Luke 18?
Prayers are an essential part of our pilgrim lives. Let us never the importance of conversing in prayer with our Heavenly Father.
Dear God. We confess our poverty of spirit and lack of diligence in prayer. Please forgive us, we pray, and help us grow in our relationships with You. In Jesus name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 