Heavenly Father, I praise You for today and for allowing me to come back to work. I praise You for the healing that has happened in my knee since the surgery, and that it continues to improve. I praise You for allowing me the time to be off and heal. I praise You for the chance to once again be part of the worship team and help with the music at the beginning of church. Help me today to take command of my day and shake all evil from it, and to be listening to Your promptings in my life.
Jesus said, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” [John 8:31 & 32] Holy Spirit, I desire not just to have salvation but to be a disciple of Jesus. I understand this will cost me everything in life. It will mean the end to my earthly desires, listening to the world and how they feel I should live, witnessing when the opportunity arises, no matter how uncomfortable it may make me feel. I will need to learn to be an intercessor for others and to pray for healing, miracles, and to be aware of the wonder of God.
Help me to learn from Jesus’ longest prayer that started His being an intercessor for us. He still intercedes for us in the throne room. Allow me to listen closely to His words and His heart as He prays: Now I’m returning to you. I’m saying these things in the world’s hearing so my people can experience My joy completed in them. I gave them Your word; the godless world hated them because of it, because they didn’t join the world’s ways. Just as I didn’t join the world’s ways. I’m not asking that you take them out of the world, but that you guard them from the Evil One. They are no more defined by the world than I am defined by the world. Make them holy—consecrated—with the truth; Your word is consecrating truth. In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world. I’m consecrating myself for their sakes so they’ll be truth-consecrated in their mission. I’m praying not only for them but also for those who will believe in me because of them and their witness about me. The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, so they might be one heart and mind with
us. Then the world might believe that you sent me. The same glory you gave me, I gave them, so they’ll be as unified and together as we are—I in them and you in me. Then they’ll be mature in this oneness, and give the godless world evidence that you’ve sent me and loved them in the same way you’ve loved me. Father, I want those you gave me to be with me, right where I am, so they can see my glory, the splendor you gave me, having loved me long before there ever was a world. Righteous Father, the world has never known you. But I have known you, and these disciples know that you sent me on this mission. I have made your very being known to them—who you are and what you do—and continue to make it known, so that your love for me might be in them exactly as I am in them. (Amen) John 17:13-26, the Message