5-17-2026

“LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY!”

Text: John 17:1-11

Sunday May 17, 2026 – Easter 7

Trinity – Creston/Mount Ayr

       Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!  Our text for today is the Gospel lesson from John 17 that was just proclaimed.

Let Us Pray: Dearest Jesus send your Holy Spirit to remind us that coved in your saving work, we can confidently take any situation to you in prayer and be confident in your good and gracious will.  Amen.

Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:

We’ve come to the end. Our celebration of the great days of Easter finds its culmination and completion next Sunday, on Pentecost. The white of Easter will be replaced with fiery red. But our Lord has one more Easter lesson to teach and for us to learn.

That teaching and learning revolves around prayer. We all learn to pray at some point. It isn’t something we’re born into this world knowing. Instead, we must be taught.

Our parents, other family members, our church, and our pastors all teach us how to pray. Jesus taught his disciples and us how to pray in his own prayer, the Lord’s Prayer. But his last full-blown lesson to his disciples before he dies is also about how to pray and what to pray for.

It’s the very night before Jesus will be crucified. He and his disciples have left the Upper Room, having celebrated the first Lord’s Supper, and they’re on their way to—or perhaps have arrived at—the Garden of Gethsemane.

Now, in his true teacher way, Jesus teaches us how and what to pray for by actually doing it.

By Jesus’ Own Prayer, He Teaches Us to Pray.

   I.   Hear what Jesus himself prays for.

A.   Jesus prays for his glorification (vv 1–2, 4–5).

1.  The work the Son has done has glorified the Father: gathering and teaching these disciples, preparing them to proclaim Christ after Jesus’ return to the Father, going to the cross (which Jesus already counts as accomplished).

2.   Now Jesus prays that the Father would glorify him. This is not self-serving; the Son is glorified by fulfilling his Father’s will, especially by going to the cross.

3.   It is for mankind’s benefit so that all would know the Father and the Son as the only true God.

B.   Jesus prays for God’s name to be manifest (vv 6–8).

1.   Jesus had made God’s name manifest every day by his Word. Every word Jesus spoke was God’s, in God’s name.

2.   Everything God had given him to do—caring for those in need, his miracles, his cross—also manifested God’s name.

3.   Now Jesus desires that God’s name contin­ue to be manifest in his Word and Sacra­ments.

4.   This, too, was for our benefit so that we would believe God had sent Jesus to be the Savior.

C.   Jesus prays for us (vv 9–11).

1.   Jesus is going to the Father, no longer in the world, but we are, with all its troubles.

2.   Therefore, above all, Jesus prays that we would be kept safe in the name of the Father; in other words, that we would not lose our faith.

3.   Jesus’ prayer also invites us to take every daily care on our hearts to the Lord as Creator and Savior. (Give examples.)

4.   Even at our most difficult, we know, by faith, that he is here with us to help us all our days.

 These things on Jesus’ final prayer list he is, obviously, teaching us to pray for as well. But when the prayer of the perfect pray-er is put on our sinful lips and hearts, there will be additional things his prayer teaches us to ask—things Jesus didn’t need to be given.

II.   For what else, then, is Jesus’ prayer teaching us to pray?

A.   Jesus teaches us to pray for faith.

1.  Jesus had the perfect faith; we, not so. We live in the same sinful world with all its troubles, but without his perfect trust. (Give examples.)

2.   Yet he has given us faith (v 8). We believe that he died and rose for us.

3.   We pray that our faith would be strengthened so we may see all the blessings he has for us: his hand behind our best days, his presence in every difficult or dangerous moment. (Give examples.)

So we may know him more intimately, personally through his Word. And may love our neighbor more eagerly. (Give examples.)

B.   Jesus teaches us to pray for forgiveness (v 9b).

1.   Jesus prays that he’s not praying for “the world.” But hearing that, we shudder! How often we act just like the unbelieving world! (Give examples.)

2.   Jesus had no need to ask forgiveness, but we do!

3.   And Jesus surely wants us to pray for forgiveness, for he has earned it for the whole world! That’s exactly what he accomplished on the cross.

4.   He even forgives us for our failures to pray for and to speak his name to the world. Let us realize, after all, that Jesus deeply desires no soul to remain part of that unbelieving “world,” but to repent, believe, and be joined to his kingdom!

C.   Jesus teaches us to pray for eternal life (v 3).

1.   Death could not hold Jesus! The eternal Son was returning to the Father to rule forever.

2.   But we pray that we will hold to our own eternal life won by his death on the cross for our sins.

3.   And, yes, we do pray, too, for the whole world, that the Holy Spirit might convert them also to share in eternal life.

Conclusion: Lord, teach us to pray all that! Amen.

Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.  Amen.