Pray Like Jesus #2

Good Evening, good to see everyone here tonight. Were in and were going verse by verse delving into how to pray like Jesus. Were looking at the final days of Jesus’ life and He is right on the brink of going to the cross suffering and dying, this is near the end of His life, and when your near the end of your life the things that you do are the most important things and the things you talk about are the most important things.

What Jesus does is He stops and He prays the longest recorded prayer that we have of Jesus in all of human history. Here is the homework assignment for you, we need to begin the daily discipline of praying for someone and praying with someone. That is how you build relationship.

In a world where there are so many shallow distant relationships the shortest distance between two people is prayer. As we pray for one another and with one another we are inviting God in to build a relationship with these people.

So for many a start would be to pray with your spouse and yet another step would be to find someone inside the church and just pull them aside and say listen I would like to get to know you and your family better can we hang out sometime and pray together.

Jesus today prays and He prays for you. thats encouraging to me, how many people actively regularly pray for you? How many people do you pray for?

Jesus prays for you. When Jesus is praying it reveals the things that He believes are most important for you and I to know. This passage invites us to live in obedience to His prayer so that it is fufilled through our obedience.

In Jesus tells us the difference bwteen the word and the world.

John 17:6

John 17:6–8 HCSB

I have revealed Your name to the men You gave Me from the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they know that all things You have given to Me are from You, because the words that You gave Me, I have given them. They have received them and have known for certain that I came from You. They have believed that You sent Me.

If you are a Christian you were in the world but you have been chosen by God picked by god out of the world. What Jesus is saying here is first of all, that He is right on the verge of dying. so these are the last words of Jesus He knows He is going to die and that He is going to rise and that eventually He is going to ascend back into Heaven where He came down from once His mission is completed.

What HE prays for us is our understanding of our relationship with the world. Because one day if you belong to the Lord JEsus you will follow Him. You will die your body will go into the grave your soul will be present with the Lord, and then one day Jesus will return your body and soul will reunite together. You will rise from death as Jesus did.

there will be a new Heaven and new Earth everything broken will be healed everything that is wrong will be made right and every tear will be replaced with laughter and Joy amen. Were looking forward to that eternity.

Knowing that this is our destiny, the question is HOW DO WE LIVE UNTIL THAT DAY?

I tell you when Jesus comes back everything will be alot easier. Until that day things are gonna be more problematic. So what He is saying is that we are int he world and that the world is opposed to God. That the world is actually dark and demonic and deadly.

It is not good and glorious or Godly. When He uses this word world its a word that is used in 7 different ways sometimes it refers to the word planet, or all the people, or a nation, or a culture or a fallen system.

Its not talking here about nations or customs, because God loves all nations He loves all races. we see in Revelation that people from every nation tribe and tounge will be gathered around the throne of Jesus worshipping Him forever.

What the world refers to here is a fallen corrupt system. You need to know that God creates and Satan counterfeits, that God creates this wonderful planet and Satan corrupts it through sin. God creates truth and Satan corrupts that through lies. god creates life and Satan corrupts that with death.

God creates light and Satan corrupts that through moral and spiritual darkness. God creates and Satan corrupts, when it speaks of the world it means that God created and Satan has corrupted that in every culture on Earth.

No culture on the Earth is sacred,

all culture is worldliness, all worldliness falls into the category of things which are corrupted

When all is said and done the kingdom of God is going to come down and the kingdoms of the Earth will no longer exist. All there will be is the kingdom of God.

So what God is teaching us through the Bible is that the world stands against God, the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God. So if there is a conflict between what the world says and what the word says, which one needs to change?

The world will say well we need to change the Bible to fit the culture we live in, and that is foolish. The God of Heaven demands that the world needs to change. This is the reason why the world around us hates the Bible and all that follow the Lords commands. so if you love Jesus and your trying to live out biblical principles what your going to find is resistnace and conflict.

When Jesus is praying for us He is praying that we will have a deep and profound confidence in the word of God and willing to endure any resistence from the world that is against the Lord. If people are believing things that are untrue and those things will lead them to death we want them to believe things that are true and lead to life. So what Jesus is praying for first and foremost is a supreme confidence in the word of His Father God.

There are only two ways to view the Bible:

we believe that we have evolved and now stand as an authority over the Bible and that we can pick and choose what to take as true and what to remove because we dont like. this is what our world does and this is how they approach the Bible.

We believe that this is the only truth there is in all the world, it is the only thing perfect we have in this world, we believe we dont change it God sent it to change us, we dont edit it we seek to obey it. At any point we disagree with something in the word of God then we change our veiwpoint.

when we do were answering Jesus prayer. He is going to tell us here in just a few verses “sanctify them by the truth your word is truth.” This is the truth of Gods word we dont change it it changes us. Then Jesus continues by talking about those who are his in terms of a family, those who believe the word of God are part of the family of God. He says it this way

John 17:9–12 HCSB

I pray for them. I am not praying for the world but for those You have given Me, because they are Yours. Everything I have is Yours, and everything You have is Mine, and I have been glorified in them. I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, protect them by Your name that You have given Me, so that they may be one as We are one. While I was with them, I was protecting them by Your name that You have given Me. I guarded them and not one of them is lost, except the son of destruction, so that the Scripture may be fulfilled.

:9-12

I PRAY FOR THEM

This shows us how much God loves us. He is about to be betrayed by Judas He is about to beaten beyond recognition, He is about the violently tortured on the cross the wrath the God the Father was going to pour out on us He is going to pour out on His own Son. But even now as this is going to happen within the next few hours, Jesus takes the time to pray for His disciples and you and me.

Wow what compassion, this has always challenged me, Kyle how dare you ever say you dont have time for the Lord when as He was running out of time on this Earth He was praying for you. We better make time for the Lord. Jesus prays first faces the events of the day second.

How many of you are like me when your suffering your selfish? Amy will tell you if I get the flu, hang it up man, men are the worst we get sick and the entire world stops rotating on its axis and we lay there on the verge of death, and we need a bowl of chicken noodle soup and when I ring the bell come running with aid. Most men are like that, now we will never admit that’s how it is but it is.

We are very selfish people when we suffer and life is hard, its amazing how everyone elses problems pale in comparison to what we are going through.

Jesus shows compassion here because He knows He is about to die and yet He is thinking of us. That amazing.

He is in HIs worst day and He is thinking about you.

HE SAYS I AM PRAYING FOR THEM

NOT FOR THE WORLD