In and Within 29 Our Witness Protection Program

[HKHaugan]

We are privileged to be seeing the Lord Jesus at prayer in John 17. Again this is not Jesus teaching about prayer. This is Jesus personally praying. If you let yourself go into His prayer session and visualize yourself standing by watching Him pray, a whole new dimension takes shape. His words are not just nice sweet words from a nice wise teacher. These are words of spiritual destiny. Jesus knows that His choices in every next moment will determine the future. They ring with the chords of intensity. He alone can pray this prayer. It is as though you see Him in a kind of agony, a kind of almost desperate pleading into which you are drawn. As you listen it is not a concern about dying, or pain or self-centered fear. What draws you in is the way He puts His Father, His disciples and others ahead of Himself.

We can only surmise His mind’s travel. It looks like His humanity is being lifted up as though everything is flashing before Him, His time growing up from childhood, being in His family, wandering the Galilean countryside, the incidents of His encounters both loving and hostile, His baptism, the Temple incidents, the donkey ride into Jerusalem and now this, His coming death. In His earthly life so much has happened and so much has been laid upon Him. The world does rest upon His shoulders. Of this He is aware and His way is the way of personal sacrifice through death.

Again as you stand there watching Him what goes through your mind? Where has your life been? As we look forward to our own end what are we praying? Have I lived every next moment to please and glorify the Father? Watching Jesus at prayer and realizing He has been praying for me throws my mind, my heart and my spirit down at His feet. I can only repeat the centurion’s words, “I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my roof but say the word only and my servant shall be healed (Lk.7:6-7).” But we are here by His grace and it’s by grace we pray and know that our prayers are heard. So by grace we continue.

Vs.11-12 “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. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.”

None of us will remain in the world but a short while. The generation that is immediately behind us needs our prayer. Can we feel for them, reach out to them and share the wisdom we have accumulated with them? True, younger generations usually don’t listen too often to the experience of their elders. But it is not human wisdom they share but spiritual reality that is their treasure. What we look for from the older generation is not how to be successful by world standards but how they have spiritually handled the relational opportunities they were given. It is their reliance on Scripture and what it meant to them that we look forward to hearing. Isn’t that what Scripture is about?

When the writer of Hebrews says ‘we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (12:1),’ it is the word ‘witness’ that describes the elder’s spiritual wisdom, those still here and those in Heaven, that helps sustain each new generation of believers. When Jesus, just before He ascended, said that we are to be His witnesses in this world it is our personal witness to His work in our lives that we pass on. So it is not the rambling sentimentalities of older people that we follow but their testimony and their witness to the Lord Jesus that lives on for all of us. This then means that our prayers must include strengthening, building and remembering the events and experiences of the Lord and His Spirit working in our lives. Further it means we pray for open hearts to receive the substance of our testimony and witness.

Then we come to the word ‘protect.’ It’s used twice here and once in vs.15. The Lord prays for the protection of the disciples, which now covers us as well. We pray for those who are witnesses that they maintain the integrity of their witness, that they be protected from the tempter who will try to isolate them from God and from their own sin that would derail their witness. Prayer is our way from the Lord for protection of all believers in their witness. And it is prayer in the name of Jesus, the name means to save, the name that has power because the Father and the Son are One, “Save me O God by your name…(Ps.54:1).”

Jumping to vs.15 Jesus uses the word ‘protect’ for the third time. He uses it to ask for protection against the ‘evil one’, the devil. The devil has his spirits of fear, pride, deceit, lust, anger and so on, to neutralize our witness. It is our task to see prayer as the power we have in the Spirit to ‘protect’ our brothers’ and sisters’ witness. Spell out before the Lord what spirits you believe the devil is using to attack believers.

Prayer is the real ‘witness protection program.’