GodReflection: Talking with God.
What if you had the opportunity to eavesdrop on God and listen to him pray? If God were to talk to God, what would he say? In essence that is what takes place in John’s gospel in chapter seventeen.
John, the disciple who felt loved by Jesus, takes us into Holy Presence to listen as Jesus talks to Father God. First, let’s attempt to reconstruct the setting. Jesus and his apostles have just finished the meal in the upper room where he washed the feet of the twelve and shared with them bread and wine to help them understand his actions for all humanity.
He is bread for life and vine for sustenance. His bread-body was about to be broken and his wine-blood would spill—both to bring the eleven and all who would believe in him into his family of forgiven and loved children and siblings.
Last minute instruction begins, not only to get his disciples through the remainder of the evening, but to alert them to what the next three days will bring with their eternal implications. It is more than they can absorb yet his thoughts provide rich lessons to draw from later when the pieces start to come together in their minds.
In the darkness of their secluded garden, he speaks of the future and begins to talk with God with full knowledge the eleven were listening. John follows the four chapters of Jesus’ instructions that surround their meal with his introduction of the prayer. After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed. He talks with God in affirmation of who the disciples are. They are secure in Holy Presence. Within that 
Holy Presence they listen to Holy Conversation between Son and Father about them.
In my Bible, when I reached John seventeen, I applied multi-color highlighters to aid in my own effort to listen over the shoulders of the eleven as they hear Jesus in Holy Presence talk to God about them—and even about us. Allow me to paraphrase from the apostle what he overhears Jesus pray.
- The time is now to show the real identity of your son, the splendor you and I jointly radiate.
- These eleven young men are ours. They have eternal life because they now know you and they know me as the Christ whom you sent. They now believe you sent me.
- I am praying aloud so they can know this prayer is for them. It’s time for me to return to you. I remind them that I reflect you and that reflection is now displayed in them.
- Take care of them and allow their hearts to grow identical to ours. Protect them from evil. Make them holy. Crown them with truth. “In the same way you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world”.
- Sure, I want the eleven to hear how proud I am of them. However, just think about all of those who will join their hearts and their minds with us in the future! Wow! We will all be one—the eleven, you Father, me the Son, and the millions who will join with us in faith and trust throughout future history.
- And as they all grow and mature in our oneness, they will give to the godless world the same evidence they have come to know, that you sent me and loved them in the same way you loved me.
- Father, in closing, I want these eleven young men you gave me to always be with me—right where I am. So, they can see our radiance generated by your love even before there was a world. Until now the world has never known you, but I have known you all along and now these young men know me and know you sent me on this mission. Continue to help them come to know fully how much you love me and how completely your love and my love will become integrated in them.
This Son-Father prayer-talk suggests an observation by the late C.S. Lewis that went something like this when he described prayer as, “The real I praying to the real God.” That is what the eleven overheard.
It seems to me that is a profound lesson for all of us to learn from eavesdropping on God as He talks to God—the real speaking to the real. What do you think?
Stay tuned.
Dr. Gary J. Sorrells
A GodReflection on Let’s Eavesdrop on God as He Talks with God.
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