Prayer: The Foundation for Our Unity

TEXT

READ Acts 1:6-14

Introduction

Unity is Christ’s Prayer for Us

One of Christ’s last acts before being arrested and crucified was to pray.

John records that prayer in the seventeenth chapter of his gospel. And in that prayer, we get a peek into the things that were on the mind and heart of Jesus before he suffered and died for us.

Think about that for a moment.

Christ was preparing to take on the sins of the world - your sins and mine, your guilt and mine, your shame and mine. His face was set toward his fate - death on a cross, a death that we deserved. And as he prepared himself for that, this is what he was crying to his Father for...

John 17:18–26 NASB95

“As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. “O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

“That they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”

Did you hear that?

Christ’s final prayer was for his people - first, for the twelve disciples. But then, as he says, “for those also who believe in Me through their word.” As we peer over Jesus’ shoulder in the Garden of Gethsemane, we hear that Jesus is praying for you and me.

And notice what he prays for… "that they may be perfected in unity.”

Christ’s greatest prayer for his people is that they would be one. This is the prayer he had in mind as he went to the cross. And why? Because this is why he was going to the cross: that we would be united together in him.

Unity is Cultivated When We Pray With One Another

Unity is Cultivated When We Pray For One Another