Make His Name Known
A Six-Day Devotional on John 17:1–11
Day 1 — The Hour Has Come
Read: John 17:1–2
"Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him."
Throughout John's Gospel, Jesus speaks of "the hour" as something still ahead.
At the wedding in Cana, He told His mother, "My hour has not yet come" (John 2:4).
Now, on the eve of the cross, He lifts His eyes and says, "Father, the hour has come."
The waiting is over.
The cross stands before Him, and He walks toward it not as a victim but as a Son obedient to His Father's purpose.
Notice what Jesus calls "glory."
It is not relief from suffering.
It is not escape from death.
The glory He asks for runs straight through the cross.
He does not pray, "Father, spare me," but, "Father, glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you."
The cross is where the Father is most clearly revealed and where the Son most fully accomplishes what He was sent to do.
And the purpose behind it all is staggeringly tender: that He might give eternal life to those the Father has given Him.
Long before you ever sought Christ, the Father gave you to the Son.
Your salvation was not a last-minute idea.
It is the fruit of a love older than the world.
Reflect:
What "hour" in your life are you afraid to walk into?
How does it change things to know that Jesus walked into His hour on your behalf?
Pray:
Father, thank You for the Son who did not turn away from His hour. Help me trust that even my hardest moments can be places where Your glory is revealed.
Day 2 — This Is Eternal Life
Read: John 17:3
"And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."
Most of us imagine eternal life as something that begins after we die — a quantity of time stretching past the grave.
But Jesus defines it differently.
Eternal life is not first a length of days; it is a quality of knowing.
To know the Father, and to know the Son whom He has sent — this is life that cannot end.
The word "know" here is not the cool knowing of information, the way we know facts about a stranger.
It is the warm, lived-in knowing of relationship — the way a child knows a parent, the way friends know one another after years of shared life.
Eternal life is friendship with God, beginning now.
This means eternal life is already at work in you if Christ is.
You are not waiting for it to start.
The same life that will fill heaven is the life being formed in you today through prayer, through Scripture, through obedience, through love.
Heaven is not a different kind of life from the one Jesus is now living in you. It is the same life, finally unhindered.
Reflect:
Do you tend to think of eternal life as something far off, or as something already begun in you?
What would change today if you treated knowing God as the very substance of your life?
Pray:
Jesus, You are not only the one I believe in but the one I want to know. Draw me into deeper friendship with the Father through You.
Day 3 — Finishing the Work
Read: John 17:4–5
"I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed."
Jesus speaks as though the work is already finished, though Gethsemane and Golgotha still lie ahead.
So sure is He of His Father's will that the cross is, in His heart, already accomplished.
He glorified the Father not by avoiding the work but by completing it.
Two things press in on us here.
First, Jesus had specific work given to Him by the Father — and so do you.
Not the same work, but real work, given by the same Father.
You were not put here to drift.
There are people to love, tasks to do, words to say, burdens to bear, a life of faithfulness to live.
The Father gives the work; the Father gives the strength.
Second, look at what Jesus asks for: the glory He had with the Father before the world existed.
He is not asking for something new but for what was always His.
This is one of the clearest windows in all the Gospels into the eternal life of the Trinity.
Before there was a world, before there was time, the Son was with the Father in glory.
The one who washed feet that very night is the one who shared the throne before the stars.
Reflect:
What work has the Father given you in this season?
Are you trying to finish it in your strength, or in His?
Pray:
Father, give me grace to finish what You have given me to do — not anxiously, not perfectly, but faithfully. Glorify Yourself in the small, daily obedience of my life.
Day 4 — Your Word Has Reached Them
Read: John 17:6–8
"I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me."
There is a beautiful chain here.
The Father gives words to the Son.
The Son gives those words to His disciples.
The disciples receive them, believe them, keep them.
The whole life of faith is the story of words traveling from the heart of the Father, through the Son, into the lives of His people, and out into the world.
Notice how generous Jesus is with His disciples in this prayer.
He is praying about people who, within hours, will fall asleep on Him in the garden, deny Him at a fire, and scatter in fear.
And yet what He says to the Father is, "They have kept your word. They have received. They have believed."
Jesus sees the seed of faith in them even when the fruit looks weak.
He sees what they are becoming, not only what they are.
He sees you that way too.
If you have received His word, even imperfectly, He prays as though the work is real in you.
Your shaky faith is still real faith.
Your stumbling obedience is still obedience.
The Word of the Father has reached you, and the Son is not ashamed of you.
Reflect:
Where do you feel you have failed Jesus recently?
Can you receive His generous gaze — the way He saw the disciples on the night they let Him down?
Pray:
Lord Jesus, thank You for seeing me with grace. Let Your word take root in me more deeply, until what I believe and how I live grow closer together.
Day 5 — He Prays for You
Read: John 17:9–10
"I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them."
Pause here, because this is one of the most moving truths in all of Scripture: Jesus prays for His people by name and by Person.
On the night of His arrest, with the cross hours away, He is interceding.
And Hebrews tells us He still does: "He always lives to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25).
At this moment, somewhere in the deep life of God, Jesus is praying for you.
He is not embarrassed by His people.
"All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them."
Glorified in them.
In ordinary, struggling believers, Jesus sees His glory shining.
The way you forgive a hard person, the way you keep showing up when you feel empty, the way you trust Him in the dark — He calls that glory.
And He distinguishes His people from "the world" here not to despise the world (John 3:16 has already settled that) but to mark out a particular care.
Like a parent praying over a sleeping child, Jesus holds His own in a special love.
The world is the field He came to save.
But His disciples are the family He came to gather.
Reflect:
Sit for a moment with this truth: right now, Jesus is praying for you.
What would you want Him to ask the Father on your behalf today?
Pray:
Jesus, thank You that I am held in Your prayers before I am ever held by my own. Pray me through this day.
Day 6 — Holy Father, Keep Them One
Read: John 17:11
"And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one."
Jesus is about to leave His disciples in a world that will not love them.
So He prays for two things: protection and unity.
He asks the Father to keep them safe in His name — that is, in the very character and presence of God — and to make them one, with a oneness modeled on the unity of the Father and the Son.
This unity is not bland sameness.
The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, yet they are perfectly one.
Christian unity is not the erasing of difference but the binding of different people in shared love and shared truth.
We are kept together not by agreeing on every preference but by being held in the same Name.
And here is the comfort as the prayer turns toward the disciples being left behind: Jesus is leaving them, but He is not leaving them alone.
He puts them into the Father's hands.
He calls Him "Holy Father" — the only place in Scripture this title appears.
Holy, because He is set apart in majesty.
Father, because He is bound to His children in love.
That combination — holy and Father — is exactly what we need.
A father who is not holy cannot save us.
A holy one who is not our Father cannot embrace us. But the Holy Father can do both.
Reflect:
Where do you most need protection right now?
Where do you most need unity — in your home, your church, your friendships?
Bring those places into the same prayer Jesus prays here.
Pray:
Holy Father, keep me in Your name. Keep Your people one. Where the world tries to pull me apart from You or from Your family, hold me close. I am in the world, but I am Yours.
"I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you."
May you walk through this week knowing that the Son has prayed for you, the Father holds you, and the Spirit dwells in you — until the day you see His glory face to face.
Comments
Post a Comment