If Jesus offered to pray on your behalf, what would you ask Him to pray for? In His High Priestly Prayer in John 17, Jesus prayed for His disciples, distinguishing them from the world, declaring them to be agents of His glory, and asking the Father to keep them in His name. In the following excerpt from the sermon “‘I Am Praying for Them,’” Alistair reminds us what being a genuine disciple of Jesus entails.
The testimony of a disciple of Jesus is not “I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf and clean up my act. I’ve decided to get involved in church. I want to get involved in a community.” The issue in all these things is all about community, as if community is the answer. It’s what kind of community that you’re in is the question. So the community groups at Parkside are not about getting together and singing “Kumbaya” and scratching each other’s backs, but they’re actually about getting together and seeing what the Word of God has to say, because we want to abide in the Word of God. “Who else would you go to?” they say to Him. “There’s nobody else we could go to, because this is what has happened to us.”
The certainty that … the disciples express, is no mere emotional fancy. The Bible is clear. Jesus told the story: The Word of God is sown, and the response to the Word of God is various. In some cases, it is instant bloom followed by instant fade, a surge of emotion and then followed by immediate collapse …. Then others, when they hear the Word of God, they can’t wait to get out at final hymn, because there is a scratching at their ears, and they fear it might be God Himself calling them to Himself, and the devil says, “Get out while you can. Get out fast!” Those are those amongst the stones, where the seed fell. It had a little bit of a movement, but it was gone. And then the others, who along the journey of life choked—choked by riches and by selfish preoccupations and so on.
The Bible is very, very clear. Do you believe? Would you tell your friend at work that you have come to know that God is the living, loving, seeking, saving God?
You see, if you’re a disciple, you belong—you were chosen from eternity—you believe what the Bible says, and you behave in line with your believing. That is why, you see, the lordship of Christ is stumbled over by many …, because what they decided was the influence of our culture in relationship, for example, to LGBTQ—they decided that they would succumb to that notion rather than believe the clarity of the Word of Jesus, that they would readjust their notions of marriage rather than believe what Jesus has said about marriage. And as soon as that is opened up as a point of departure, it’s just a wholesale collapse from that point out.
So, Jesus is praying for His disciples.
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