Now Available on Kindle Living The Life!: Daily Reflections

On The Upper Room Discourse Re-Release For Lent 2024

Holy Saturday, April 7, 2012

Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. ‘Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’ 
John 17:24-26

I desire”. It is Jesus’ desire, it is Jesus’ passion, that sets the tone in His prayer for all who will believe in Him. Because Jesus’ desire is always the same as His Father’s desire (John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38) we are assured that it is the Father’s desire to grant Jesus what He asks for His own. We can know that those whom the Father has “given” to the Son will be kept safe. They will see the Father’s glory and forever live in His love.

This is the purpose for which the Father sent His Son, and the purpose towards which Jesus’ life points: to bring us close to the Father’s heart. It is the Father and the Son’s pleasure that we forever share in their life and glory. While Jesus does not say that the whole world will come to the Father, His arms are open wide to all. Throughout the ages of eternity the Father has longed and desired to draw you close to His heart.

Amazingly, Jesus prays that the same love the Father has for Him be in us: “so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them”. Who can fathom the boundless love of God for us! He loves us as He loves His own Son.

A love enraptured Apostle Paul writes of God’s ineffable, unimaginable love: “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (I Corinthians 2:9).

Bible commentator, Bruce Milne, remarks on Jesus’ loving and passionate prayer for us:

The beloved longs for the lover’s presence. So Jesus, in these final moments, as the last grains of sand trickle through the hour glass before his rendezvous with darkness, gazes across the rolling aeons of the future and anticipates the embrace of his beloved bride in the glory that is to be.

Have you come to rest your eternity on Jesus, and His desire to draw you close to the Father’s heart?

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.
–Dallan Forgaill (5th Century Irish saint and poet)

REFLECTION

What are there in Jesus’ words today to know; to feel; to do?

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