At the Last Supper, the about-to-die Jesus blessed His 12 disciples just as the dying Moses blessed the 12 tribes of Israel. (John 17). He prayed to His Father that they would receive eternal life in the hereafter. Then He prayed for their preservation.
“Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me,” (John 17:11)
They were already His disciples, given to Him by His Father, consecrated to Him and working miracles in His name, yet He prayed that they should be kept by the Giver. By extension, that is a prayer for all of us, and another example of prayer.
All that we have comes from God. Yet, we should daily pray that they are kept by God, for His own honor. If with all humility, we readily acknowledge that all that we have received from God are still His, we can argue that it is in His interest to preserve them. We need God’s power to keep us, and anything He has given us in His grace.
And so we pray that God will keep us by His promises. We pray that He will keep our lives, our spiritual and temporal blessings and our knowledge and reverence of Him. We pray that He will keep our talents, that He will keep us interested in what we do for Him and for His sake, that He will keep us in His precepts and keep us from sin, that He will keep us from the enemy of our souls.
This daily request for God to preserve all what He has given us is based on our understanding that there is an enemy lurking around, waiting to take them from us if we slip and give him a chance. We stand upon God’s love for His glory and His honor when we humbly acknowledge that we do not belong to ourselves, therefore it is His responsibility to preserve what belongs to Him. As we yearn for His glory in everything we do and ask for, may He respond to that yearning by answering Christ’s prayer for us.
Hilltop Thoughts, Valley Strengths 