“I pray for them.” — John 17:9.
HE ever liveth to make intercession for us; and so while you have been silent to Him, He has been praying for you. If His hand has been upon you so that you could not pray, why need you be mourning over this, when your merciful and faithful High Priest has been offering up the pure and sweet and costly incense of His own intercession? But if your heart condemns you, and you know you gave way to indolent coldness when you might have roused yourself to more prayer, will it not touch you to recollect that, in His wonderful long-suffering, Jesus has been praying instead!
What confident and powerful petitions for His disciples he was pouring out when He said, "I pray for them." And how gracious of Him to let us overhear such breathings of Almighty love on their behalf. If He had said no more than this, we might have tremulously inferred that, being always the same Lord, He might give us a remote share of some reflected blessing from this prayer. But He anticipates a wish that we should hardly have been bold enough to form, and says: “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Him through their word.” Have you believed on Him through their word ? Then you have His plain and positive assurance that He was praying for you then, that verse by verse you may take that prayer of prayers and say, “Jesus prayed this for me.” And now that He is the centre of the praises of heaven, whence no other echo floats down to us, what is our one permitted glimpse of the continual attitude and occupation of this same Jesus? “Who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." That is what He is doing for you now.
Praying for His children
In that blessed place,
Calling them to glory,
Sending them his grace;
His bright home preparing,
Faithful ones, for you;
Jesus ever liveth,
Ever loveth too.