1 Chronicles 29:11 (English Standard Version)

 Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

Once again, my routine brings me back to the point where I want to hear from the Lord. Yesterday made it clear enough to me that I should address my prayers to God the Father and yet once again I find myself addressing the One in charge, the Lord.

This seems so old school and having been saved by Christ’s work on the Cross, and a sincere desire to follow Jesus, I find myself focused on HIs Word and tell myself if I am to do any good in this world, I will find my directions here in His Word.

That attitude seems to forget that nothing gets done without the will of the Father being done. Our prayer is specific on that point, “thy will be done”. The Father’s glory is His Son and as such we tend to want to sidestep the will of the Father by trying to glorify the Son.

Jesus sits on the right hand throne of God and all things have been placed in His hand. In saying that, have we forgotten that He is again One with the Father and does not sit on that throne alone?

Do we seek the Father’s will or are we only concerned with those things that trouble us?

If we are to be One with God as His Word implies, then our orders come down in a very specific manner. The Father makes His will known to the Son, the Son speaks and the Holy Spirit tells us what the Son has said. The Unity of the United Trinity is once again in a position to act.

So the sectrest to see the power of God to act in this world is not focused on our whining but rather on what is right and just according to the Father’s will.

John 16:24

Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

I can hear Father God on the throne of heaven when He hears my prayers, “That doesn’t sound like You at all Son?”

Now that is a wake up call.

John 17:20-26 English Standard Version

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

When I woke up the television was playing the gospel of John. The narrator was doing a dry emotionless reading and all the words were there but all the passion was drained out of it. I got up, made coffee, kissed my wife and turned on my bible app and read chapters 15, 16 and 17 of the gospel of John.

The above prayer was the conclusion of those sections before John begins chapter 18 with Jesus’ betrayal. I am always stirred up to read His Word here and this section begins with a reminder that Jesus is praying for all of us who believe because of the Word.

Doing a cold reading, without emotion, flat, meaningless, the Word does not touch us. It is the abiding presence in which we know Him and the Father who sent Him. This is not hyperbole, it is the experience of being One with God and with one another. Only those of us that believe are included in this experience.

We might want to say that He did not know us when He prayed this to the Father but now that we believe we cannot say that is true. He did now and cared enough to leave His Word that shows us He is God and as God knows all things. In this way we can take His Word as a personal prayer and that it was not given to anyone but to you and me alike. That is being One.

His Word is not cold and passionless. It is love personified.