Praying for the Glory of God

With the opening line of John 17, John shifts abruptly from teaching to praying. Having devoted four chapters to giving us the lessons Jesus taught the night before his crucifixion (John 13-16), he then turned his attention to an extended prayer which Jesus offered to the Father on that fateful night (John 17). This prayer of Jesus (which happens to be the longest of his prayers recorded in Scripture) provides us with in-depth truth about God himself, his plan for the world, his purpose for believers, and about prayer itself. Even though Jesus turned from teaching to prayer, and from speaking to the disciples to speaking to God, he still teaches us as he prays.

In our eagerness to learn what his prayer can teach us, we should not overlook the obvious but noteworthy fact –Jesus prayed. This is noteworthy for several reasons.

1. First, he had already made promises to his disciples (John 13-16). He promised them peace and joy, strength and provision, answered prayer and spiritual power through the Holy Spirit. He promised a close relationship with himself and with the Father. He said that they would triumph over the world. Having made these guarantees, he prayed for the Father to bring these things to pass, even though the outcome of these promises was certain.
2. Second, he prayed knowing what God had already done. For instance, he knew that the Father had already given him people from the world who would receive eternal life (John 17:2). If God had already given these people to him, then why did he pray about it? Why did he pray about something which God had promised from the beginning of the world and from eternity before that (Matt 25:34; Rev 13:8)?
3. Third, he prayed as a man who is also God. Since he is God, then why did he pray to God? The answer to these questions help us better understand the nature of prayer and the important role that it plays in our relationship to Jesus as those who follow in his steps. As the Son of God, Jesus knew what God would do. He knew what God had established for eternity. He even knew whom the Father “had given to him,” yet he still prayed. This suggests that prayer is less about getting God to do something that is uncertain and more about depending on him and submitting to his will.

Jesus did not pray because he harbored feelings of doubt, uncertain whether God would do what he was asking him to do. Nor did he pray with anxiety, wondering whether the eleven disciples would fail at their task. In addition, though the opening lines of his prayer are requests for himself (“glorify your Son” and “glorify me”), he did not pray selfishly for his own benefit, despite the agonizing suffering he knew he would soon endure. Instead, he prayed with a greater purpose in mind: for the glory of God the Father. Christlike prayer focuses on the glory of God.

We need this reminder. We need it because our prayer lives easily shrink into a jumbled assortment of various requests for health, wisdom, blessing, guidance, conversion, intervention, and so many other things that we believe we need from God. In our many prayers, we may fail to focus on what really matters. What really matters is not that God does all the things we are asking. What matters is that he receives the glory he deserves.

What is the glory of God? It is placing God in his rightful place. It is making his priorities our priorities. It is giving him the attention that he deserves. It is causing people to know him as he really is. When we pray, we often fail to focus on the glory of God. We pray for things that do not correspond with his will. We make requests for selfish reasons other than his glory. By listening to the prayer of Jesus, you learn what true prayer is like – the kind that aims like a laser beam on the gleaming glory of God.

I. He prayed to God directly.

When Jesus prayed, he “lifted up his eyes to heaven” (John 17:1). This does not teach us a form we must follow when we pray, meaning that we should “lift up” our eyes when we pray versus raising our hands, bowing our heads, kneeling on the ground, etc. (For more about physical postures in prayer, click here.) Instead, it teaches us to be aware of whom we are praying to – the God of heaven who is above us in every way. He is “high and lifted up” (Isa 6:1) and is “over all things” (Eph 4:6). Our audience is God himself, not people around us, not our own personal thoughts, and not some imaginary, illusory being.

Furthermore, Jesus spoke to God directly as “Father.” John indicates that he did this frequently, giving at least twenty instances (John 5:17; 6:32, 40; 8:19, 38, 49, 54; 10:18, 29, 37; 14:7, 20, 21, 23; 15:1, 8, 15, 23, 24; 20:17). By speaking to God this way, he varied from the Jewish custom of praying to God indirectly as “heaven” (e.g., the prodigal son in Luke 15:18), or as “our God” in a plural and indirect way. These indirect approaches were attempts at not using God’s name in a vain, frivolous, or disrespectful way. However, Jesus recognized that to use God’s name in a frivolous manner was a matter of the heart, not the mouth. When he spoke to God as Father, he did not use this title as a repetitious mantra or a habitual pattern of speech. Instead, he spoke to God with full awareness of his identity, his presence, and his relationship to him.

By praying to God “in heaven” and by speaking to him as “Father,” Jesus prayed the same way that he taught us to pray. He taught us to pray to God as “our Father in heaven” (Matt 6:9). When you pray, do you approach God with a clear awareness in your heart that God rules over all things, and do you approach him as a loving Father who deserves your respect and desires your closeness?

II. He prayed according to the purpose and plan of God.

Jesus not only prayed to God as his Father in heaven, but he also prayed with a full awareness of his need to follow the will of God. This is nothing more than the proper extension of understanding who God is. Just as any child should follow the will of his or her parent, Jesus prayed with a heart focused on the will of God, not his own personal desires. He did not pray as a spoiled, selfish, privileged child hoping to get his way. He prayed as a submissive child, seeking to obey his Father’s will.

Jesus recognized that his “hour had come” (v. 1). This is noteworthy because throughout this gospel, he repeatedly emphasized that his hour had not yet come (2:4; 7:6, 30; 8:20). This changed abruptly, however, as he prayed to the Father in this moment. He knew that his hour had come at last.

In this prayer, Jesus showed sensitivity to God’s timing. As the awful moment of his suffering arrived, he did not resist God’s will. As he would soon state during his trial before Pilate, he knew that he had come into the world for this moment and for this cause (John 18:37). With this purpose upon him, he would not shrink back from his Father’s will. Though we know that Jesus did wrestle with the intense agony of the cross, even sweating blood in his duress (Luke 22:42), it is remarkable that John does not give attention to this theme. From what John records, the prayer of Jesus did not focus on his suffering. It focused instead on accomplishing the will of God, even in suffering.

In this prayer, we learn that Jesus recognized a correlation between his success and the Father’s success. When he prayed for the Father to glorify him (which seems to be a selfish prayer), he immediately associated this request with a parallel commitment to glorify the Father (v. 2). He knew that by asking the Father to accomplish his purposes through his death, he would therefore bring glory and attention to the justice and love, faithfulness and majesty of the Father.

Jesus also recognized the purpose for the authority that the Father had given him. Authority over all people is a massive privilege, yet Jesus never misused his power. Instead, he concentrated this authority on securing eternal life for the people whom God had given to him for this purpose. By concentrating on eternal life, he set aside any other personal endeavors. Perhaps you remember how he turned down the temptations of Satan to rule the kingdoms of the world and to demonstrate his divine power in ways outside of God’s plan (Matt 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13). By resisting these detours and focusing instead on giving eternal life to those whom the Father would give him, he limited the scope of his final work to what the Father had already provided and assigned.

What did it mean to give eternal life to the people God had already given him for this purpose? Jesus describes this as far more than a quantity or length of life. He portrays it as a quality of life, as in restoring people to a close relationship with God. He describes God here as the one and only (not one of many) and the true and genuine (not generic or imaginary) God. Eternal life includes a close relationship with both the Father and the Son (John 17:3). The way that John records this indicates that knowing God the Father and knowing the Son are the same experience, because the Son and Father are the one, same God. This also indicates that you cannot know the Father as God without knowing the Son as God, too. To know the Father and to know the Son are inseparable experiences.

Next, we learn that when Christ prayed, he did so having already demonstrated his commitment to the Father’s will through prior obedience (John 17:4). John has emphasized this point throughout the book and Jesus affirms it here. He had submitted to the Father’s will in everything. On a previous occasion, he told the crowds, “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38; cf. John 4:34; 5:30). Even when he agonized in prayer at Gethsemane that same night, when his inner turmoil intensified to the highest degree, he would submit to the plan of God. He would pray, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matt 26:39; cf. v. 42).

Here in this prayer we see that Jesus affirmed the deep conviction of his heart that he had come to do the Father’s will and, until that moment, he had done so completely. This in mind, we should recognize that Jesus did not enter suddenly into prayer because of an alarming need for God. He did so with the quiet, peaceful confidence that he had lived according to the will of God until that moment and he intended to keep on doing the same. Like Jesus, when you live in obedience to the will of God, you pray with calm confidence and settled peace in the will of God, not with lurking restlessness and doubt.

III. He prayed with an eternal perspective.

As Jesus prayed, he focused on something other than the excruciating suffering he was about to experience. He focused on the glory he had shared with the Father in ‘eternity past’ (John 17:5). Earlier in the same sentence, he also focused on the glory he would eventually share with the Father in ‘eternity future’ once again, on the other side of the cross. By praying this way, Jesus established an eternal perspective, focusing on the big picture of what God was doing.

The “big picture” of these eternal realities overshadowed, in his mind, the “shadow of death” which was looming over him (Psa 23:4). Though Jesus was about to experience the traumatic pains of death by crucifixion, he did not focus on this here with any detail. He focused instead on the greater eternal realities at play.

We easily fail at this. We fill our prayers with fear of the shadow of death and the immediate trials that are upon us. Instead, we should “lift up” our eyes to the God of heaven who inhabits eternity and realize that he is working out far greater and more significant things through our immediate suffering which will bring him greater glory (Rom 8:28). When we focus on the eternal glory of God in our prayers, we allow his purposes to overshadow the shadow of death, which is upon us in the present.

Some Important Personal Lessons

As we consider the way that Jesus – the Son of God and perfect man – prayed, we can learn important lessons in prayer for ourselves.

1. Pray with a greater awareness of God’s eternal purposes at work for his glory and less awareness of the immediate suffering that you presently endure.
2. Remember that God always keeps his promises. Nestled in this prayer of Jesus are the words “whom you have sent” (John 17:3). God promised a Messiah soon after mankind sinned. Four-thousand years later he sent him into the world at the pinpoint perfect time (Gal 4:4). The more you understand of the will of God as revealed in Scripture, the more you grow in confidence as you pray according to Scripture (1 John 5:14-15). You must know the will of God to pray with confidence. You know the will of God from the Word of God. God will answer your prayers – no matter how much time transpires – when they reflect the will of God.
3. Knowing that Jesus prayed, even though he knows all things, you should pray with greater attention to depending on God and less attention to getting things from God. Let your prayers be an opportunity to bend your desires to the words and the will of God, not the other way around.
4. Pray according to the will of God. This requires you to study the Word of God to know his will. For example, consider how Christ prayed for “as many as you have given [me]” (John 17:2). He did not pray that everyone in the world would receive eternal life, but for “as many as God had given.” We know, of course, that “the Lord is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). This teaches plainly that God does not desire anyone to perish. This does not teach that God intends to save everyone. You see, prayer is not a matter of picking a verse and quoting it in your prayer. Rather than asking God to save everyone in the world based upon this verse, it would be more accurate and in line with his actual plan to pray, like Jesus prayed, that God would save “as many as will believe on Jesus.” I guarantee that God will answer this prayer. In all that we pray, we should grow in our understanding of what God says in his Word, and then bend our prayers accordingly. Consider things that you are praying about or should be praying about in your life right now. Are you praying about those things in a biblical way, understanding what the will of the Lord is (Eph 5:17)?
5. Ultimately, pray with the underlying, driving desire that God would be glorified, both the Father and the Son. Pray that in all your requests that the result would not be mere answers to your prayers and having your life problems solved. Pray that the result would be drawing attention to the person of God – his character and his majesty – and to his plans and purposes.
   
   

Thomas Overmiller serves as pastor for Faith Baptist Church in Corona, NY and blogs at Shepherd Thoughts. This article first appeared at Shepherd Thoughts, used here with permission.