Silas
Beloved of All
Your meditation on the prayer of Jesus in John 17 touches the heart of what He wants for His people, and it is good to bring these requests before the Lord.
Jesus prayed that His joy might be fulfilled within His own. That joy is not dependent on outward circumstances. There is an example in Scripture of a man who feared God and hated evil, and those two always go together. To fear the Lord is to turn from evil. That man held fast his integrity even when everything was stripped away, and he was able to say, shall we receive good from the hand of God and shall we not also receive what is hard, and in all of this he did not sin with his lips. That kind of settled trust is part of the joy Jesus gives, a joy that remains when the world does not understand.
You quoted His words, I am not asking that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one. That is exactly how God deals with His children. He does not always remove us from trial, but He places a hedge of protection around us and keeps us from being overcome by evil. The enemy is allowed to go to and fro, but he can go no further than God permits. God sees the end from the beginning and His wisdom is far broader than ours. We do not always understand why the righteous suffer or why the wicked seem to prosper for a time, but we can trust that God will not cast away the one who walks uprightly before Him, and He will not fail to judge evil in His time. It is dangerous to judge by partial observation as the friends of that suffering man did, because only God knows the whole story.
Jesus also prayed, sanctify them by the truth, Your word is truth. To be sanctified is to be set apart and cleansed by that truth. The Scriptures teach that happy is the one whom God corrects, so we should not despise His chastening. He uses His word to turn us from the pit and to keep our lives from perishing. With God is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding. That wisdom cannot be bought with gold or jewels, it is found only as we reverence Him and let His word do its work in us. As He sanctified Himself for our sake, we are sanctified as we receive and obey that word.
He prayed for unity, that all who believe through the message of the apostles may be one, as the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, so that the world may believe that the Father sent Him. That unity is not merely outward agreement but being in Him together, sharing the glory He has given, being perfected together so the world may know that the Father loves us even as He loves the Son. And He closed that prayer by saying He had made the Father's name known and would continue to make it known, so that the love with which the Father loved Him may be in us, and He Himself in us.
So we join Jesus in that prayer for you. May the Lord fill you with His joy, keep you from the evil one while you remain in the world as His witness, cleanse and set you apart daily by His word which is truth, and deepen your fellowship with the Father and the Son. May that fellowship knit you together with other believers in true unity, so that those around you may see and believe that Jesus was sent by the Father. And may the Father's name and His love be increasingly known in your heart, with Christ dwelling in you.
Jesus prayed that His joy might be fulfilled within His own. That joy is not dependent on outward circumstances. There is an example in Scripture of a man who feared God and hated evil, and those two always go together. To fear the Lord is to turn from evil. That man held fast his integrity even when everything was stripped away, and he was able to say, shall we receive good from the hand of God and shall we not also receive what is hard, and in all of this he did not sin with his lips. That kind of settled trust is part of the joy Jesus gives, a joy that remains when the world does not understand.
You quoted His words, I am not asking that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one. That is exactly how God deals with His children. He does not always remove us from trial, but He places a hedge of protection around us and keeps us from being overcome by evil. The enemy is allowed to go to and fro, but he can go no further than God permits. God sees the end from the beginning and His wisdom is far broader than ours. We do not always understand why the righteous suffer or why the wicked seem to prosper for a time, but we can trust that God will not cast away the one who walks uprightly before Him, and He will not fail to judge evil in His time. It is dangerous to judge by partial observation as the friends of that suffering man did, because only God knows the whole story.
Jesus also prayed, sanctify them by the truth, Your word is truth. To be sanctified is to be set apart and cleansed by that truth. The Scriptures teach that happy is the one whom God corrects, so we should not despise His chastening. He uses His word to turn us from the pit and to keep our lives from perishing. With God is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding. That wisdom cannot be bought with gold or jewels, it is found only as we reverence Him and let His word do its work in us. As He sanctified Himself for our sake, we are sanctified as we receive and obey that word.
He prayed for unity, that all who believe through the message of the apostles may be one, as the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, so that the world may believe that the Father sent Him. That unity is not merely outward agreement but being in Him together, sharing the glory He has given, being perfected together so the world may know that the Father loves us even as He loves the Son. And He closed that prayer by saying He had made the Father's name known and would continue to make it known, so that the love with which the Father loved Him may be in us, and He Himself in us.
So we join Jesus in that prayer for you. May the Lord fill you with His joy, keep you from the evil one while you remain in the world as His witness, cleanse and set you apart daily by His word which is truth, and deepen your fellowship with the Father and the Son. May that fellowship knit you together with other believers in true unity, so that those around you may see and believe that Jesus was sent by the Father. And may the Father's name and His love be increasingly known in your heart, with Christ dwelling in you.
