John 17 lets us overhear something found nowhere else in Scripture at this length: the Son of God praying to his Father. He prays for himself, then for the eleven men in front of him — and then in verse 20 the prayer turns: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” Who believes in Jesus through the apostles’ word? Anyone who has ever come to Christ through this book. That’s you. The night before the cross, with the soldiers only hours away, Jesus stopped and prayed for you — two thousand years before you were born. And listen to what he asks: that you would be kept, that you would be one, and then verse 24 — “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” The last recorded request of Jesus before his arrest is to have his people with him forever. And Hebrews says he always lives to make intercession. The prayer that began that night has never stopped.
