Jesus Prayed

Jesus prayed.

And you know what I ask myself? If Jesus prayed, if he felt like he needed to pray, why do I think I can go without it? In the Gospel of John chapter 17 verses 1 to 5. And Jesus encouraged my heart by telling me that he was inviting me to enter into this wonderful, personal, permanent, privileged, purposeful relationship with himself, with his Father, with his Spirit.

And I want to set this chapter up. So he starts out with the first phrase. He said, after Jesus said this.

So I immediately want to ask, after what did he say? And I go back to chapter 13 and Jesus had told his disciples he wanted to have a Last Supper with them. Now I'm not sure they knew it was a Last Supper. But he told them to prepare the upstairs room. And they went upstairs and you remember that there was a basin of water by the door, there was a towel, but there was no slave to wash their dirty feet.

And they were clowning around the table and that would be a necessary thing to take care of. And then another Gospel tells us when they went into the room, they were all arguing about who was the greatest. And you know it's because Peter said, Andrew, wash my feet. And Andrew said, not me. Matthew, you do it. And Matthew said, not me. James, what are you doing?

And they're all arguing that they're the greatest and they're not about to stoop to do something that lowly. Jesus, the Lord of glory, the night he was betrayed, right before he went to the cross, got up and he took off his robe and he picked up the towel and the basin of water and Jesus washed his disciples' feet, including Judas, who within moments would betray him. And he taught his disciples that you're no greater than your master. And the greatest in the kingdom are the least and you're to serve.

You're not to be served. And then in chapter 14, do you remember when he told them about my father's house? And he talked about heaven and he said, I'm going to prepare a place for you and it has so many rooms, feel free to invite anybody you want.

You know, there's room for everybody. So just pass on the invitation and told them exactly how to get there, that he was the way, the truth, the life. No one would come to the father except through him. Chapter 15, he told them that he was the vine and we're the branches. And if we want to bear fruit that remains, if we want to make an impact for eternity, if we want to have a life of eternal significance, then we're to abide in him. And then in that chapter, he also told us about persecution, remember? That if they hated me, they're going to hate you.

So just deal with it and get ready. In chapter 16, he told how we could deal with it and one way we could be prepared is to open up our hearts and lives to the dear Holy Spirit who would come in his name. And so now we come to chapter 7.

After he said these things, do you know what he's doing? The disciples are beginning to get the picture, aren't they? That Jesus is leaving. They're going to be responsible for his ministry and his visible absence and they're desperate for more of Jesus.

Jesus, don't go. Stay with us. We want to hear more of what you have to say. We don't feel prepared to do this at all and they're just desperate for more. So he's pouring himself into them.

And that's exactly what I want. I want him to pour himself into me and he finishes this wonderful time and I'm assuming they're still in the upstairs room. Maybe they're on their way to Gethsemane, but it seems like they're still in the upstairs room. After he said these things, he looks toward heaven and he prayed and he's not teaching his disciples to pray.

They're overhearing his private conversation with his father. After these things, Jesus prayed and I just want to park right there for a moment. Jesus prayed and you know what I ask myself? If Jesus prayed, if he felt like he needed to pray, why do I think I can go without it?

So whenever I need sort of a good comeuppance, I turn to Luke chapter 3 and I don't know if you can follow with me or not. If you can't, you can just write down the verses because I'm going to track through Luke just to see a glimpse of our Lord's prayer life. In Luke chapter 3 verse 21, it said, as he was praying, the Holy Spirit descended on him. Heaven was open. That was at his baptism. And I wonder when I pray, does heaven ever open? And I wonder why the Spirit hasn't filled me with his fullness.

Could it be that I have yet to be on my knees? And then if you turn over to chapter 5 verse 16, it says Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. And he got off in private and drew a side and a breakaway and just got off by himself and spent time with his father. Chapter 6 verse 12, it says he went out and he spent the night praying to God.

You know something? I don't think I've ever spent the night praying. There have been times when I was sick or I couldn't sleep and I toss and turn on my bed and I sort of pray while I'm rolling around in bed but I don't think I've ever done an all-nighter just in prayer. He prayed all night. And in chapter 9 verse 18, it was when he was praying in private his disciples were with him and he prayed when he was all alone privately with his best friends.

Chapter 8, it says after 8 days he took Peter, James and John with him to a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed. Maybe one reason people can't see Jesus in us and we're not more conformed to his image than we are is because we're not spending time in prayer. His face was changed as he prayed. In chapter 11 verse 1, Jesus was praying and his disciples came to him and they said, Lord, teach us to pray.

Do you know something? He is teaching me to pray just by his example. And I think if Jesus felt the need, you would think he could just live without praying at all, wouldn't you think? And yet we find him praying alone with his disciples out in public in front of everybody. We find him praying before meals. We find him praying at bedtime.

We find him praying all night. We find him praying in the morning and at noon. We find him praying when he's suffering and when he's happy and when he's with his friends and when he's with his enemies. And we find him praying on his face and on his knees and when he's standing and we find him praying when he's hanging on the cross. Jesus prayed. When do you pray?

What's your prayer life like? Jesus prayed and if he felt the need to pray, how much more should I pray? So Jesus prayed and he lifted up his eyes to heaven and it struck me that he was looking for his father and he knew that prayer wasn't just a shopping list.

And listen, God loves our shopping list so I don't want to put that down. He wants us to tell him what we need, what we want, what our hopes and our dreams are. But prayer is more than that. Prayer is talking to our heavenly father. Prayer is developing that relationship with him which is the glory on our knees. And so Jesus looks up into heaven and I have a feeling he's looking for his father's face and he says the time has come and you know what time it was? It's time for the cross.

So you know what that tells me? It was time that he was going to be under the greatest stress and pressure he'd ever known. How do you handle pressure? You know how I handle pressure sometimes? I feel sorry for myself.

I want to escape and maybe go to the beach or take off somewhere and just try to get away from it. Jesus, when he was under pressure, prayed. Oh how I need to remember that. And when the pressure comes on and when I'm stressed to the point I feel like I'm going to break, instead of getting an extra night's sleep, instead of just trying to take off, instead of going shopping, instead of getting something to eat, you know how we do? To pray. To get on our knees and pray. Jesus prayed. And as he prayed we have a sense of this personal relationship between himself and his father because he begins this prayer and he says, Father, now I don't know what your father is like.

And I don't think you know what my father is like. But this was a dramatic change in the perspective of God that people had in Jesus' day. In the Old Testament, God was seen as a God of thunder and lightning and fire. The God of Mount Sinai. The God who parted the Red Sea and the Israelites crossed on dry ground and then he collapsed and destroyed the Egyptian army. And the God who caught Elijah up in a whirlwind and he was a fierce, awesome, majestic, glorious God. The God of Shekinah glory and nobody would have ever thought to call him father.

And Jesus said, Father. And so immediately you think, I wish he hadn't said that because my father was such and such. Maybe your father was abusive.

Maybe he abandoned you. And my father would be the first to tell you that he wasn't a good father. My father never tucked me in bed at night. Never fixed a meal. Never, never, never ran the dishwasher.

Never played a game with me. Never read me a bedtime story. My father was absent a lot in my life, but he wasn't there. He was an absentee father. And I want to hasten to say that the thing my father did for me was to model Jesus. And my mother said she would take Billy Graham part-time more than any other man full-time. So I'll take my daddy part-time more than any other daddy full-time.

It wasn't actually until I got married and had children of my own and saw my husband fathering my children that I realized what I had missed. And I didn't have that kind of, so I don't think Jesus is saying that God is like my father and I don't think he's saying he's like your father. I think Jesus is emphasizing the fact that this is a personal relationship because there's no more personal relationship than between a parent and a child. And so Jesus begins addressing God.

Think of it. The creator. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of Moses.

The God of Mount Sinai. And he addresses God as Father. And he offers us that same personal relationship. And he says, Father, the time has come. And the time was time for his betrayal and his arrest and his torture and his trials and his crucifixion and his death and his burial and his resurrection and his ascension and the time had come. And he says the time has come. So he's speaking. Let's just sum it up by saying the cross.

And he said the time has come. Glorify me, Jesus said. How did God, the Father, glorify God the Son at the cross?

And to glorify would be to reveal the character in a way that would be unique. So how was the character of Jesus revealed at the cross in a way that is unique that wasn't revealed in any other way? And do you know how God the Father glorified his Son at the cross? It was at the cross that God revealed that there is no other Savior. Jesus is the only Savior there is.

And you know what? If there had been any other way, if there was any other Savior, any other way you could have your sins forgiven, any other way you could be reconciled to God, any other way you could get to heaven, don't you think God would have found it? And I wonder if he had to shed a drop of his blood for every sin in my life.

And whatever it was, I think it was much worse than we know. And you're telling me that there are other ways to God besides Jesus? And if that's true, how cruel, how whimsical, how capricious would God be to send his only Son to the cross, to die like that when there was another way?

If there was another way, God would have found it. So I believe when Jesus said, Father, glorify your Son, that he was glorified at the cross because it gives evidence that there is no other way to God, just Jesus. He's the only Savior.

And then he says that I might glorify you. So how was God glorified by the Son at the cross? And Jesus glorified his Father at the cross because Jesus reveals to you and me the love of God.

That's the only explanation for why God would have sent his Son to die on the cross. It's because God so loved you. God loves you. God loves you.

God loves you. He loved you so much that he sent his own Son to die on the cross. Romans 5-8 says, Herein we know the love of God and that he sent Jesus. When you were still a sinner, you didn't even know you needed a Savior. God sent his Son to die on that cross for you. If you had been the only person who had ever sinned, the only person who needed a Savior, God loves you so much, he would have sent Jesus to die just for you. So Jesus glorifies his Father at the cross because he proves that God loves you and God loves me. And I think the cross also reveals that God is a God of judgment, that he will not tolerate sin, that he is holy and he is righteous and he will judge sin, will be held accountable for our sin. But that's where the love of God kicks in because God loves us so much that he stepped in and he took his own judgment on my behalf. So when I put my faith in Jesus, I'm forgiven and I'm saved from the wrath of God. I'll never come under his judgment because it's all been paid by Jesus at the cross. So Jesus says, Father, and he calls him and Jesus said we can call him Abba Father, Daddy, personal relationship.

The time has come for the most precious, stressed, greatest, actually it just split history into it. The cross has come, the time for which I was born has come. So glorify me as the only Savior as I glorify you as the God of love.

And he invites you and me to share in this personal relationship. Something I think I left out in the last session on the Holy Spirit. And if I'm repeating myself, forgive me. But Ephesians 4.30 says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit. We grieve him with our sin, our disobedience, our neglect. And I had to think about that for a while because grief is a love word, isn't it?

You don't grieve for someone that you don't love. And when I received Jesus into my heart and the Holy Spirit came into me, then I felt like the Holy Spirit was assigned to me. That God just said, Anne Lotz has received Jesus, so Holy Spirit, you go inside of her and you stay there until she sees me. And he was sort of stuck there, you know.

And then I read that word and I thought, wait a minute. If he grieves over me, he must love me. And when I do the right thing, he rejoices. And when I do the wrong thing, he grieves that the Holy Spirit is emotionally involved in my life. And Jesus is inviting you and me to enter into the glory on our knees by entering into a personal relationship with his Father and with his dear Holy Spirit.

I can't think of anything more wonderful. The relationship is not only personal, but the relationship is a permanent relationship. Jesus said, I've come to give them eternal life. And listen to me, if you could lose it, it wouldn't be eternal, right? So don't let anybody tell you that once you receive Jesus by faith as your savior and you receive eternal life, that you can lose eternal life.

If you could lose it, it wouldn't be eternal. And you could do nothing to deserve it, right? All you had to do was receive it. So there wasn't any good works that you did. You just received it as a free gift from God. So what makes you think you could do anything to lose it?

You can't. So he says, I've come to give them eternal life. When you receive Jesus by faith as your savior, he gives you eternal life. And eternal life is forever. It's life that never ends. It's not even interrupted by death.

Death is just when your faith becomes sight and your eyes are closed and then they're open to the face of Jesus. Six months before my mother moved our father's house, she contracted pneumonia and we thought she was going to move then. So I went up and spent about three weeks with her. And I remember one day she was lying and she was almost incoherent and a little out of it and coming and going. And I was just standing beside her. I just didn't want to leave her. And I was holding her hand and stroking her head. And finally I felt like the little light was there and she was listening. And I said, I wanted to tell her about heaven. I mean I know my mother taught me about heaven.

So I just wanted to give it back to her. So I said, Mother, you remember Westminster Abbey? Now my mother loves all things English. And she loves London. In fact, beside her bed was a picture book on Princess Diana.

She had a video of Buckingham Palace in her video machine. So I knew she loved Westminster Abbey. And Westminster Abbey is the cathedral in central London where kings and queens are married and crowned and buried and other dignitaries are buried. It's just a grand, glorious cathedral. And I said, Mother, this last year I went to Westminster Abbey and I walked in the door and it's very ordinary looking. In fact, it's probably about the same door that you come into this castle in.

It's just a plain wooden door. You go inside the door and you're in a narthex and it's a small, cramped, dark room. And in the narthex I bought my ticket and I bought my guidebook. And my ticket would get me through the next door that would go into the sanctuary and my guidebook was going to tell me what I would see on the other side. And I said, Mother, I didn't see anybody staying in the narthex so excited over their ticket and looking through their guidebook and then leaving and telling everybody they'd been to the narthex of Westminster Abbey.

The whole purpose of the narthex was to make a transition into the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey. And Mother's eyes were, she was listening, and I said, Mother, this life is like the narthex. And in this life we get our ticket to heaven, praise God, we go to the cross and confess our sin and it gives us salvation and reconciliation, eternal life. And so we have our ticket to heaven and we pick up our guidebook and we read our Bibles and so we know something of not only how to live our life here in the narthex, but we know something of what to expect when we go through that other door and enter into the sanctuary of our Father's house. And I said, Mother, the narthex is just a place to make the transition, but it's not what life is about.

Life is about going through into the sanctuary of our Father's house. And her eyes sparkled. You know that she regained her alertness and got better and better and better after that point and what a comfort that was to me.

On June 14, 2007, at 5.05 in the afternoon, when I saw my mother take her last breath, and Daddy was seated beside me, I said, Daddy, Mother's in heaven. And I knew she was. Her faith had become sight.

You know why? Because when she was a little girl, she had put her faith in Jesus and he had given her eternal life. And her life wasn't interrupted by death at all. Her faith became sight. And she closed her eyes and she opened them to the face of Jesus. Somebody here afraid of death?

Have you recently lost a loved one? People say, Ann, I'm sorry you lost your mother. Which I didn't lose her.

I know exactly where she is. But you know what I mean. And I'm afraid of the pain and the suffering and the hospitals and the needles and the doctors and all the things that can be associated with death. But I'm really not afraid of the moment of death. Or at least I'm not right now.

I'm not that close to it maybe. But maybe when the time comes. But the moment of death for me is the transition from the narthex into the sanctuary. So it's almost something to look forward to.

I don't want to cling to the narthex. I want to be here as long as God wants me here so that I can be prepared for what's over there. But I don't want to stay one minute longer than he wants me to.

I'm looking forward to going to my Father's house and all that he's prepared for me. And I think sometimes we're afraid of death. Because we don't know exactly what's on the other side and we don't know who's going to be meeting us. But when you have a personal, permanent relationship with Jesus, it takes the fear of death away.

Because you don't know what takes place between now and that moment of death. But when death comes, the Bible says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And when I close my eyes here, I open them to his face. And I know Jesus. You know I'm on my pursuit for more of Jesus. And I've spent my life developing my relationship with Jesus. And I long to see Jesus. And so death will just usher me into his presence.

And I know something of what to expect on the other side. Except that the Bible says, even with your best imagination, you couldn't imagine what it's like. Eyes not seen, mind can't even comprehend.

It's just way beyond human understanding. What he's preparing for those who love him. And Jesus said, the relationship that I'm offering you, that I'm inviting you to enter into is a personal relationship. And it's a permanent relationship. It's eternal. You can look forward to going to heaven.

The relationship is not only personal, but the relationship is a permanent relationship. Jesus said, I've come to give them eternal life. So he says, I've come to give them eternal life. When you receive Jesus by faith as your savior, he gives you eternal life. And eternal life is forever. It's life that never ends.

It's not even interrupted by death. Death is just when your faith becomes sight. And your eyes are closed and then they're open to the face of Jesus. You can look forward to going to heaven.

Now here's Anne with this final word. When you come to God through prayer, believing in Jesus' name, you enter into a world of privilege. Doors open, angels attend, mountains move, doubts disappear, fears fade. And he answers, what a privilege. Prayer is simply talking to God in Jesus' name. Pray more.