Do You Feel It?

 Have you ever been prayed over? 

I mean “laying on of hands” prayed over?

I have on a few occasions, but the time I never will forget was when I was in the 7^th grade. We had a lay witness team come to our church.  It was a revival movement of the Methodist Church during the 70’s.  A team of youth and adults would come to a church for a weekend.  They stayed with families within the church and just witnessed through a series of meetings.  For the youth, it culminated in a prayer circle on Saturday night.  A chair was placed in the center of the circle of youth and anyone desiring prayer came forward.  Other kids from the circle were invited to come forward and touch their friend and pray for them.

In the volatile emotional world of teens, there was a lot of crying and soul searching.  The beauty of the chair and the circle was that there were no divisions.  Star jock had his hand on the biggest nerd of the group.  Cute cheerleader held the hand of the shy wallflower.  We cried and prayed and our youth group was never the same again.  At the altar call on Sunday morning I went forward and gave my life to Christ.  As an adult, I think it was an acknowledgement of something that had been transpiring since I was a child, but it was a turning point none the less.

In the scripture for this Sunday, I think back to that time.  Jesus is praying for his disciples.  Put yourselves in their place.  He has washed your feet.  He has shared bread and wine with you.  Saying it was His body and His blood.

Now He has told you that He truly is going away and some type of Holy ghost is going to take His place. And now He is praying for you.  You can almost feel His hands on your head.  Feel that as you read these words take from John 17:

   “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. ² For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. ³ Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

¹⁰ All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. ¹¹ I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.

The word that kept coming back to me in reading this was “glory”.  Looked it up in the Greek and it means to cause the dignity and worth of some person or thing to become manifest and acknowledged.  Jesus was to about to be glorified. 

 You might say, he had been.  But you see, what Jesus had revealed of Himself was not a piece of lint in comparison to the majesty of His glory.  And in being revealed, it would in turn glorify God. Not in the earthly sense, Jesus was approaching the most degrading, humiliating part of His life.  

But don’t you see, we are to enter a Holy Week that traces the trip to that point.  All of Christendom was born on the cross that Jesus died.  Talk about glory!!

He tells God that glory has come to him through the disciples.  Take a look around the table.  You have fishermen, zealots, collectors – a rag tag bunch of men.  But men who have given up livelihood, homes, and family to follow an intinerant preacher.  They have glorified Jesus by their very presence at His side.

But Jesus does not stop there, He includes us…

  ²⁰ “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their ²² I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— ²³ I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

He has given us His glory. He has deemed us worthy by His death and resurrection.  We are to be included.  Though we may never have seen His face, nor heard His words.  We are worthy of His blood and His gift.

Wow!

   ²⁴ “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

Lord, I am humbled by this gift

Because right now, I see all those that have stood in Your presence between me and this time

I see Christians that gave up their lives for your Word to be proclaimed. 

That were persecuted for a printing a page from your Word

That came to these shores to seek religious freedom

I feel the hands of my grandfather and grandmother that took me to their little country church to worship

My parents that insisted I attend church every week and learn more about you

And the legacy that has burned in my bones and I have passed on to my children and grandchildren

May the flame never die!


Amen