Intimacy with God

We've just celebrated Easter, remembering the week leading up to Jesus's death and resurrection. I have been reading through the book of John. Yesterday I read John 16-18, which touches on Jesus's last words to His disciples. And a prayer.

Prayer has always been difficult for me. I don't know why. I still see myself disconnected from God? I think God isn't listening? I know God is powerful enough to answer; I guess I wonder why He would answer me. There are two things I want to address from Jesus's prayer, both of which contradict my inner thoughts.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, Jesus teaches His disciples how to pray. The "Our Father" or "Lord's Prayer" gives us a model of how to pray, first acknowledging God's holiness, humbling ourselves to accept God's will, making our needs known, and asking for the grace to interact with this fallen world.

John 17, Jesus's High Priestly Prayer, as it is called, teaches us something else about prayer. Eavesdropping on Jesus's conversation with His Father -- and ours -- reveals an intimacy that I often feel lacking in my own prayers. "The time has come" -- Jesus knows. How? Because the Father told Him before the creation of the world but also in that moment. There is continual intimacy, an ongoing conversation that we aren't always privy to. Prayer isn't just a few sentences at the beginning and end of the day. That's good, certainly, but ten minutes a day doesn't increase intimacy between people and it won't between people and God. Verse 10 also shows the intimacy between the Father and the Son -- "all I have is yours and yours is mine." Does this apply to us? Can we say that what God has is ours? I believe so; Romans says we are co-heirs with Christ.

Jesus demonstrates the intimacy with God I wish I has, and He also contradicts my inner thoughts, which say my prayers aren't worth answering. John 17:20-26 is Jesus's prayer for us. For future Christians. Not the ones listening right then, Matthew and John and Peter and Thomas, but future believers, Paul and Stephen and Augustine and you and me. We're that important.

Of all the things Jesus could have been thinking about on the last evening with His friends, He was thinking about you. And me.