Sermon Tone Analysis

Jesus Prays For Us (If we could See it)

In , and in other passages, we see that Jesus prays for us.

It’s amazing that the eternal son of God, prays for you and prays for me.

We say things like that but do we truly feel the weight of those truths, or I should say do we truly shed the burdens we carry knowing that Jesus prays for us.

We can’t see him praying for us.

But Scripture still says Jesus prays for us.

Imagine you are in your home, and you are facing a bunch of different challenges.

Financial, martial, parenting, stress, temptation, discipline…and imagine if you could actually SEE Jesus in the next room in your house on his knees praying for you.

Praying to the Father for you…if you could actually SEE that it would embolden you and embolden me to face any challenge and any enemy in life.

But the fact is that even though we can’t see Jesus praying for us, he still prays for us.

In , we see Jesus praying for us…it was a far reaching, deeply emotional prayer called his high priestly prayer.

And in this prayer, Jesus prays for you and for me…that may seem confusing to hear that Jesus prayed to God when Jesus IS God.

Jesus was like, Hi God, It’s You, Me…but even though we can’t comprehend it fully, he prayed for us in specific ways…one thing he prayed for relates directly to this series on friendships…he prayed for the kinds of friendships he wants us to have...

This morning we continue our series called Everyone Needs a Friend and we have seen in this series that Jesus' plan and prayer even for us is that we would experience friendships on the deepest possible level.

Jesus prayed an emotional, far reaching prayer in called his high priestly prayer.

And he prayed for you and me…that may seem confusing to hear that Jesus prayed to God when Jesus is God.

Jesus was like, hi God, it’s you, me…but that is above our pay grade to understand…but after he prayed for his 12 disciples, he prayed for us:

“Just As”, Bond of Father/Son, Dream Team

Jesus shows us what his desire is for our friendships with one another when he prayed that we would be one.

That we would be unified.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there.

He defines the kind of unity he is praying for with the two words, “just as.”

I pray that they, us will be one, will be unified, just as…just as what?

Just as I and my Father are one.

Just stop for a moment and think about that kind of intimacy.

We are talking about the relationship between the eternal Father and the eternal Son.

Jesus said, that is my prayer for you…that you would have that same kind of Father and Son intimacy with one another that I enjoy with my Father.

Jesus is saying I don’t want you to just tolerate each other, I don’t want you to have surface relationships, I certainly don’t want you to quit on each other, I want you to have friendships on the deepest possible eternal relational level.

I have said in this series, Everyone Needs a Friend, that everyone needs a Dream Team of Friends…and that may sound far fetched and idealistic…and it is…but a dream team of friends still doesn’t even come close to the depth of friendship that Jesus was praying for us to have with one another.

So when I say idealistic things like we need a dream team of friends, and everyone needs these types of friends....I am still not coming close to plumbing the depths of what Jesus’ prayer was for us when it comes to friendships.

That’s incredible.

Christ Types

And so we have seen through Scripture that there are different kinds of friendships that we all need in our lives.

Everyone Needs a Nathan/Barnabas/Paul/Timothy

And so we have seen through Scripture that there are different kinds of friendships that we all need in our lives.

I want them to be one just as I am one with my Heavenly Father.

That is a very high bar for friendships--to be so unified, to be so close to another that you are one with them in the same way the eternal trinity of father, son and Holy Spirit are one.

And so we have seen that there are types of Christ, meaning there are people in the Scripture who remind us of Jesus, who point us to Jesus, flawed people, deeply flawed people in fact, who aren't there to be examples to us, but are there to point us to someone else, to Jesus.

And so we can learn from them....so we have seen that there is a dream team of friends we need in our lives and that we need to be these types of friends in other peoples' lives.

So we have seen that everyone needs a Nathan...a person who can speak hard truths into our lives, especially when it comes to blind spots at any time, for any reason.

We have seen that everyone needs a Barnabas, a Barnabas is an encourager.

Someone who stands by you even when the chips are down.

And we saw last week that everyone needs a Paul...the Apostle Paul was a mentor to many people.

Specifically he mentored a younger pastor named Timothy.

We all need a mentor in our lives...and this week we will continue the theme of mentoring and see that we all NEED to be mentoring others.

Everyone needs a Timothy on their dream team of friends.

In fact you should be mentoring more than just one Timothy.

In the first few weeks of the series we saw that everyone needs a Nathan...a person who can speak hard truths into our lives, especially when it comes to our blind spots.

We have seen that everyone needs a Barnabas, a Barnabas is an encourager.

Someone who stands by you even when the chips are down.

And we saw last week that everyone needs a Paul...the Apostle Paul was a mentor to many people.

Specifically he mentored a younger pastor named Timothy.

We all need a mentor in our lives...and this week we will continue the theme of mentoring and see that we all NEED to be mentoring others.

Everyone needs a Timothy.

A Nathan may wound you, but that is a faithful wound.

We have seen that we also need a Barnabas, an encourager.

We saw last week that everyone needs a Paul…Paul was many things, but he was a great mentor of many.

One of the most famous mentoring relationships in Scripture is the friendship between Paul and Timothy.

Paul, an older man mentored Timothy a younger man, and we have two books of the Bible that are letters from Paul to Timothy mentoring him.

So everyone needs a mentor, someone who is pouring into you on an ongoing basis.

And so last week we saw that everyone needs a Paul, everyone needs a mentor, and today, everyone needs a Timothy, someone you are mentoring, a mentoree.

First, I want to look at why we don't want to mentor.

I don't know about you, but I question if it will work.

I am so pragmatic and the Gospel is anything but pragmatic.

We have a hard time believing that our mentoring will mean anything.

We have a hard time believing that people will change since generally people don't change.

In other words, many times we believe nothing good will truly come of mentoring another.

And we could believe that for a variety of reasons.

We may think that nothing good can come of those we would be mentoring.

Or perhaps we think that we can't possibly be mentors ourselves, that nothing good could possibly come from our mouths to another that would be considered mentoring.

Or it could be good old fashioned laziness or selfishness that makes us not want to be a mentor.

Mentoring is One of the Typical “Bullets”

This has been a tough sermon to prepare.

Not because I don’t have enough material, but because I have way way too much material.

I could preach for two hours on this.

I won’t.

But I could.

And as I have studied for this sermon, I have seen that mentoring is a need in the church and we should probably do a whole sermon series on it at some point.

Mentoring as a Bullet and Definition

But another reason why this has been a tough sermon to prepare is because Mentoring, and all things related to mentoring, is one of the typical “bullets” pastors have in their preaching guns.

What do I mean by that?

I have said before that when it comes to preaching, and when it comes to ministry philosophy, and when it comes to life, I as a pastor, have realized that I truly only have one bullet in my gun.

Or one kind of bullet I should say.

And that bullet is Jesus.

That one bullet is the Gospel of Jesus, that bullet is Nothing but Jesus, and Jesus is not just for those who aren’t Christians, Jesus is for those who have been Christians for decades.

Jesus doesn’t just save us, Jesus sustains and changes us.

So my job and calling as a pastor is to preach Jesus in a million different and creative ways…but to always be preaching nothing but Jesus.