Are you doubting? Hear Jesus’ prayer – John 17:6-26, Part 1

When I was an undergrad student in Bible college, the college held chapel services every day. One chapel speaker was a guest who gave a sermon, and then started praying. And he didn’t stop praying. The prayer started to become uncomfortably long. Many of us started checking our watches. The speaker’s prayer was eating into the buffer between chapel and the beginning of the next class. Also, his prayer wasn’t so much a prayer as it was a second sermon. Finally, with the prayer showing no signs of stopping, the president of the Bible college walked up on the platform, and mid prayer, he put his arm around the guest speaker and interrupted the prayer! He thanked him for speaking…and praying…and the president concluded chapel and dismissed us. We students got up from our seats wide-eyed.

What are some different ways we communicate?  Asking questions.  Answering questions. Telling stories, both fiction and non-fiction. Singing. Body language, which experts tell us is more truthful, more impactful communication than words. Even listening communicates.  We can talk at someone.  We can share our hearts, our feelings, our needs.  As the guest speaker in that chapel service demonstrated, we can also communicate through prayer.

This week we’re going to observe Jesus doing some communicating in prayer.  Turn to John 17, verse 6.

Jesus and 11 of his 12 disciples are in the Garden of Gethsemane, just outside the city of Jerusalem. It is late Thursday evening, and they are all tired.  Jesus is praying.  The other three Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke also describe this time of prayer, but their accounts all talk about that famous scene when Jesus walks a ways from his disciples, praying that deeply emotional prayer, “Not my will, but yours be done.”  We are about to read what appears to be that same moment in time, but from the disciple John’s perspective.  John tells us that Jesus not only prayed privately, but he also prayed in front of the disciples.  We studied the first part of that prayer to God starting here, when Jesus made with requests for himself.  As he continues his prayer, he now prays for his disciples.

Like the chapel speaker, have you ever listened to someone pray and thought to yourself, “Is this a prayer or is it another sermon?”  Maybe they are just sharing their feelings with God.  Maybe they are trying to teach something to the people listening.  When that happens, I think, “I wonder how God feels about you preaching to us, under the guise of praying to him?  I wonder if he feels used.”

While it is hard to know what is going on in the heart and mind of the person praying like that, maybe they aren’t in the wrong.  In fact, as we’ll see, maybe they learned this approach to prayer from Jesus.  Not all prayer is supplication, which means “making requests,” asking God to supply our needs. 

There are many other forms of prayer, other ways to communicate, to converse with God. It seems like Jesus uses one of those other forms of prayer.  Let me read the beginning of his prayer that is actually more like a conversation with God.

“I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.”

When I hear that prayer, I wonder if Jesus was trying to help those of his disciples who might be doubting.  In just the past few hours, Jesus had shocked them by revealing that one of their own, Judas, was going to betray him.  Then he said that Peter was going to deny him three times.  Those two accusations had to be unsettling.  But with Judas gone and with Peter still there among them, Jesus makes some very assuring comments in the form of a conversation with God. 

Jesus wants his disciples to know that they are really, truly his followers.  He is encouraging them at a time when they were likely feeling uncertainty.  They are hearing him say, “Father God, I can confirm to you that these guys are legit, they are the real deal.  They are true believers, which they have shown by their obedience.” 

That’s a principle I have written about many times.  Jesus doesn’t want believers.  He wants disciples.  Disciples are his followers who show what they believe by their actions.  In other words, disciples are people whose hearts are being changed by the Spirit of God so that their actions are becoming more and more aligned with the heart and ways of Jesus.

Jesus says that these 11, and however many of the other followers, men and women, who were there that night, were true followers, not because they simply said, “I believe,” but because they showed their belief by their obedience.  That doesn’t mean that they were perfect.  It means they strived to obediently follow the way of Jesus.  That is a significant principle we can apply to our lives.  We show what we believe by how we live. So far Jesus hasn’t asked God for anything.  No supplication.  No requests.  Just a conversation with God. 

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