Women’s Ministries Praying with Jesus By Emily Woodard, Women’s Ministries Spiritual Life
of our churches participate. The 2025 study (started by some in Fall 2024) is in chapters 13-17 of John’s Gospel using Dr. Sinclair Ferguson’s book, Lessons from the Upper Room: The Heart of the Savior (Ligonier, 2021) connection point to prayer in this study, for within these chapters is Jesus’ own longest recorded prayer, one that the disciples had the privilege of listening in on, and one that John, with the help of the Holy Spirit, recorded, so that we There is rich theology to be mined in John 17 as Jesus pours out his heart to his Father about the plan of redemption and those whom the Father has given to the Son. There is encouragement for the believer and the church about God’s purpose in the world and the church’s place in that purpose. And, there is also much to be learned in this chapter from Jesus about prayer. Earlier in his min- istry, Jesus’ disciples had asked him to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1f), and here in the upper room they are able to observe the master class on prayer. Dr. Ferguson points out that this prayer of Jesus’ has been known as the “High Priestly Prayer” since the Reformation, and explains that while John doesn’t use the term ‘high priest’ for Jesus, “the prayer follows a pattern that governed the ministry of the high priest on the Day of Atonement” (p. 179). On the Day of Atonement, as described in Leviticus 16, the high priest moves
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house (vv. 6, 11), and then a sin offering for the people (v. 15). In John 17, Jesus (vv. 6-19), and then for those who will believe in Jesus through the ministry of the disciples (vv. 20-26). Of course the parallel is all the more poignant as, short- of Atonement pointed toward. He is the Great High Priest who “entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12). And, it is precisely because of this work that was accomplished by our Great receive mercy and grace in our time of need (Heb. 4:14-16). In the beauty of God’s Providence, as Jesus prays and prepares to go to the cross, an event which will eternally secure our access to God, he also provides a wonderful lesson and example to us of how to approach God in prayer. It is helpful to note the context of Jesus’s prayer. Many of us are familiar with the great display of humility as Jesus washed his disciples feet in the up- per room, (John 13:1-11), and with his enlightening teaching on the person and work of the Holy Spirit (e.g., 14:15-26, 16:4-15), his “I am” statements in 14:6 and that this intimate time of teaching comes when Jesus’ own spirit was troubled (13:21), and when he “knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world” (13:1). In the midst of all the human emotions that came with facing his own death, Jesus not only served and encouraged his disciples, he also showed them an example of expressing trust in God through prayer.
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or the past few years, as the opportunity has arisen to write the Prayer Emphasis article for the ARP Women’s Ministry, I have sought to tie the subject of prayer into the ARPWM annual Bible study in which many
prayer, Jesus prays for himself and that the Father would glorify him (vv. 1, 5). Ferguson says, “There is no other prayer in history quite like this” unique to this point in the history of salvation, and it is also a reminder to us that the accomplishment of our re- demption is ultimately about bring- ing glory to God. In the same vein, the purpose of our lives, our chief end, is to bring glory to God. How often do we start our prayers with that thought in our minds? Jesus will go on to pray for his disciples, and even for us (“those who will believe in me through [the word of the disciples],” around the glory of God.
In verses 6-19, Jesus prays for the disciples in the upper room with him. These were the men to whom Jesus manifested God’s name (v. 6, cf.,1:14, 2:11) and who had come to believe that Jesus was sent from God (v. 8, cf., 11:42). And in part because the Father them from the evil one” (v. 15), and to “sanctify them in the truth” (v. 17), we have the New Testament. We may not often consider the preservation of the written word of the apostles as we come to the Lord in prayer, but God’s breathed-out word? Has scrip- ture saturated our minds and hearts so that we can speak God’s words back to him as we pray?
In the last portion of his prayer, Je- sus prays for the whole of the church yet to come, for disciples who aren’t in the room with him but who will come to faith through the ministry of those who are. Notably, Jesus prays for the future believers “that they may be one” (v. 21), and makes the re- quest three times in three verses (vv. 21, 22, 23). The repetition clues us in to the importance of what he is ask- ing but so too his reasoning: “so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (v. 21). In the providence of
The Associate Reformed Presbyterian
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