People Wanting More

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Southeast Christian Church

Nov 25, 2020

Jesus didn’t spend much time with people whose main motivation was to challenge Jesus. In fact, he didn’t seem taken aback when his followers ditched him when it got too hard (John 6:66). Jesus was after the sick, the wounded, the hungry, the broken, the searching, the curious, the humble. He welcomed people who had nothing, but were hungry for what Jesus had to offer.

As we pursue unity, we need to look around our inner circle of believers and ask ourselves: How hungry are they for the things of God? We cannot be unified the way Jesus prayed if we agree to disagree or resolve to just get along. We can experience complete unity when we come together under one purpose - to pursue Christ together. When we are all walking toward Christ, we can move toward unity. If even one person decides to walk in an opposite direction, we will start to divide. And when one person walks away, others are bound to follow.

Jesus, in his perfect unity with the Father, was always walking toward the Father. People were hungry for what Jesus had, so they followed him along his way. When we follow Jesus together, we can walk in unity just as Jesus prayed. As we start to be distracted by things of this world that threaten to pull our attention away from Jesus, we can count on our community to pull our focus back to what is most important. Other people may be able to join together in pursuit of a similar passion, but if that passion isn’t Jesus, then they will never achieve the oneness that we were made to experience with one another and with our Father.

Reflection/Discussion Question: Are you and the people in your inner circle hungry for the things of God?

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When we look at the divisive, angry, hostile, opinionated, polarized world, we can read Jesus’s prayer for unity in John 17 and believe that he was just being optimistic: “That’s really sweet that Jesus would want us to be so unified like he is with the Father, but look at us. That’s never going to happen.” When we put our faith in people, we will fail, but when we put our hope in God, even this prayer is possible. And yet, it still feels too idealistic to us. It feels far-fetched and impossible. We can start to make concessions for his prayer: “Maybe he meant it metaphorically. Or maybe he’s just praying for the unity we will have in Heaven.” The problem with us making concessions for Jesus’s prayer is that he doesn’t need concessions at all. He wasn’t being idealistic when he prayed for complete unity of all believers. Jesus knew that what he was going to accomplish on the cross would open the door for all believers to be in perfect unity with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus knew that believers would do greater works than he did when he walked on this earth because they would accomplish more for the Kingdom as a unified front than he could as a single individual. Jesus knew that it was good for him to go to the Father so that we could unite and carry on his mission. What we see time and time again throughout the Bible is that when God says he is going to do something, he gets it done. We can trust that when Jesus asked the Father to do something, he will get it done. Will we submit to his authority and rebel in pursuit of selfish ambition? Reflection/Discussion Question: What seems to be standing in the way of believers being completely united?

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They May Be One

According to the world, unity is keeping the peace. The world is satisfied if we agree to disagree, get along, keep it non-violent, sign treaties, and generally keep our hands and opinions to ourselves. This pursuit of “unity” reveals our human hearts are so willing to settle, when Jesus has something better than we could imagine. Jesus prays a bold prayer in the garden on the night of his crucifixion. He doesn’t pray boldly purely for the sake of being bold. He prays because he is fully aware of what God can do. Jesus prays that all of us may be one, but he goes even further to define what he means by this unity: “just as you are in me and I am in you” (John 17:21b, NIV). While it’s hard to wrap our minds around the separate, but oneness of the Trinity, we know that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are the most perfect example of unity that we can find. We cannot grasp the gravity of this oneness this side of Heaven, but we can understand that this kind of unity is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Jesus prays, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:22-23, NIV). Jesus prays for complete unity—that there would be no divisions among us. He prays for such unity between us, himself, and the Father that we would reflect the love of Jesus to the world. It can be so easy to get discouraged by people who walk away from Jesus because we can obviously see that they never knew the real Jesus, but we have to ask ourselves: Would they have walked away if we were living out the unity that Jesus prayed for? Reflection/Discussion Question: What are your initial thoughts when you read about the kind of unity Jesus prayed for?