The world will go limping until Christ’s prayer that all may be one is answered. Charles H. Brent.
The most ignored prayer is the prayer Jesus prayed for Christians living today.
One prayer. For today. But ignored.
It must have gone something like this:
Father,
I pray they will live long and prosper. I pray they will win elections and their constitutional rights be upheld. I pray they enjoy good health, and avoid the obvious sins. I pray they will embrace correct doctrine and find effective ways to silence those who don’t. I pray their preachers will be entertaining, their music not too loud, their TV inoffensive. I pray they will have good quiet-time habits, and write inspiring blogs. I pray their diets work, their children succeed, their marriages last. I pray they get good jobs, they live where they want to, among the people they prefer. May life be easy and painless and undemanding.
Amen.
Oops, wrong one. That was my prayer. Try again.
I pray that they may all be one, Father! May they be in us, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they be one, so that the world will believe that you sent me. John 17:21
Oh. That was the prayer? That people would be so astounded by Christians’ love for God and each other they’d come looking for the same?
That Christians would be known as people who,
- let go of our grudges,
- reject our unkindness and
- cynical delight in someone else’s fail?
- Who speak up for the silenced,
- and are silent when we’d rather vent,
- and stop avoiding,
- start embracing,
- and love one another with the self-denying love of Christ?
It’s a costly choice to be the Father’s answer to the one prayer Jesus prayed.
Oswald Chambers: The Prayer Of Jesus
“Are you helping God to answer that prayer, or do you have some other goal for your life? There is one prayer which God must answer, and that is the prayer of Jesus–
The things we are going through are either making us sweeter, better, and nobler men and women, or they are making us more critical and fault-finding, and more insistent on our own way. The things that happen either make us evil, or they make us more saintly, depending entirely on our relationship with God and its level of intimacy.” Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest.
Have you embraced Jesus’ prayer for you?
