Dear Friends,

Welcome to the new friends who have just subscribed and welcome back to our old friends. My prayer for you as you read this message is that Jesus Christ would come alive and be real to you as never before. I have no message of my own. My message is to tell and re-tell the ever-living stories of the Gospel of Christ. My hope is that these messages would put a fire in your heart and cause you to run for your Bible and read the old stories with new eyes.

The 17th Chapter of St. John's Gospel is the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.

It is the prayer of our Great High Priest. It is the longest continuous prayer of Jesus in the Gospels.

This prayer is of such a high order in the Spirit that one must be in an attitude of prayer even to read it or hear it.
One must approach this prayer with holiness, with reverence, with hushed voice, with a stillness of heart.

In this prayer, we are listening to Jesus speaking with His Father in Heaven. We are eavesdropping into the Holy of Holies.

We are permitted to hear the very conversation between God the Father and God the Son. We are enabled to hear this conversation through the work of God the Holy Spirit.
We are listening to God speaking with God. We are in the very presence of the Most Holy Trinity.

What do we hear in this prayer? We hear Messiah Jesus, our Lord and Savior, pray for three things.
1. He prays for Himself.
2. He prays for the welfare of His disciples after his exodus from the earth.
3. He prays for all who will become believers in the future, through the ministry of the apostles and those who come after them and follow in their footsteps.

Jesus teaching ministry is at an end. Jesus ends his earthly ministry by letting us see His relationship with the Father.

Jesus lets us hear the prayer He prays for you and me, yea these many years ago, yet ringing true today and down the halls of history to the end of time.

The tone of the words are those of a son, who has been sent on a mission to a far country, and now is returning home to His beloved Father.

His mission is complete; he has accomplished the work His Father sent Him to do. His final hour has come.

His Father has given Him authority over all flesh. His job is to give eternal life to all those the Father has given him. He has accomplished this task and none have been lost except for Judas the traitor, and Scripture foretold that he would be destroyed.

Eternal life is that those may know the Father and Jesus Christ, the son, through the workings of the Holy Spirit.

There is so much one could say about this prayer. Perhaps the most familiar, and difficult, portion is in verse 21:
""that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me." John 17:21, NKJV.

As we look about us, we can see that the followers of Jesus today are anything but one.

There is more continuous splitting off than coming together. The world sees more disunity than unity in Christianity.

What are we to make of all this in the light of Jesus' High Priestly Prayer that we all may be one as He and the Father are one?

We don't know what an undivided church would be like, and we all tend to think it would be when all the other churches changed to be like our church. We do know it would take a sovereign act of God to bring it about, and it will not happen based on our feeble efforts to unify the church, though we should continue to hope, pray and work for unity.

It will happen in God's timing which is always perfect.

We also know such a church would be glorious beyond what we can imagine, with a chorus of Praise going up to God from all parts of the world. We know the world would see the church as God intended and be drawn to it. When the light of Christ shines into the darkness of the world, there is new birth, new life everywhere.

Can you imagine the music, the choirs of tens of thousands singing together, preaching that rings to the glory of God, the Lord's Supper celebrated by hundreds of thousands at the same time, offerings that would be stacked so high, the people would be asked not to bring any more.

The homeless would be housed, the poor would be fed, the prisoners would be visited, the grieving would be comforted, and the sick would be healed.

And all creatures would hear the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. When the world sees the church united, a harvest of souls would begin greater than anything the church has yet seen.

Jesus said to the Father, "I have manifested your name to the men whom you have given me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to me, and they have kept your word."

Remember, this is God talking to God. God says, "I have made known your name, your power, your character to the men you have given me." God, himself, has given these men to God. This means that God, who created these men, has given them to God.

The Bible says no one can snatch God's own people from God's own hand.

God the son says to God the father: ""I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours." John 17:9, NKJV.

There are a few things we can know.
1.These people belong to God.
2.The world hates them.
4. God loves them.

They are not of the world just as Jesus is not of the world

They will go to be with Jesus who has given them the gift of Eternal Life, and they will live with him forever.

Jesus was given to us as a gift from God. He bestowed upon us the gift of Eternal Salvation. There is much we cannot know at this time about the separated, scattered and divided peoples who call themselves the people of God.

And Jesus, the Good Shepherd, has told us he has other sheep who are not of this flock. Jesus has our flock and other flocks who may not look like us.

But his sheep know his voice, and follow when he calls.

And when Jesus tells his heavenly father: "that they may all be one, just as you and I are one," this we know.

If Jesus says it, it is true, and will come to pass.

For Jesus is Lord!

May you find blessings in the presence of the Lord this day.

Father Hammond

Visit my church's website at (www.shepherdsheartcec.org). Previous messages may be read here under Saints Alive (archive). I would also love to hear from you as to how Saints Alive touches your heart. Write a note to me at (dhammond2@cox.rr.com).

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