Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Would Jesus Pray for You? | The Gospels | John 17:20-26

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

What did Jesus pray for his followers? Why is Christian unity so important? How can God's love change the way we relate to others? In today's episode, Tanya unpacks John 17:20-26 and explains why unity isn't something we manufacture, but something that flows from knowing we're already deeply loved by God. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: John 17:20-26

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. Like many of you, I'm getting ready to send kids back to school. For us this year, it's grad school and college and high school. And if I'm being honest, as we go through these transitions in our family, the things that are most natural to pray for them are things that give them safety and success, even comfort in the moment.

Things like health and friends and wisdom. over relationships and finances. Those are the desires behind a lot of my prayers. I think a lot of what I ask God to do comes from a place of worry instead of a place of vision and hope. But what if we made a list of what we thought Jesus would want for them? And for us, what would Jesus pray for us? What would make that list?

I think I would include faith, perseverance, wisdom, patience, and of course, love and humility. But what Jesus really did pray for us, the ones that he called future believers in the hours just before he went to the cross is actually kind of surprising. Jesus prayed that we would have unity akin to the relationship he experienced with the father. What strikes me about this prayer is that Jesus prayed for unity, first and foremost, so that we could know what it was like to experience the love that he had with the father, to experience a relationship that would carry him to the cross for us and for our past,

present, and future forgiveness. And Jesus didn't just want us to experience the unity for ourselves, but he wanted us to live it so deeply and fully that the rest of the world would see his glory. It would be something so unlike what the world experienced otherwise, something so unlike our flesh, that those who saw it and experienced it would know that it was from above. Let's get into our Bible passage for today. So John 17 is a unique opportunity to see the heart of Jesus. As he was preparing to leave his disciples and thinking about the people who would come after him, he prayed for us. We are the future believers he's talking about when we get to this part of John chapter 17. He prays, may they all be one as you, father, are in me and I am in you.

May they also be in us so that the world may believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you have given me so that they may be one as we are one. Do you hear the repetition here? There's a lot of it. I am in them and you are in me so that they may be made completely one. The world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Okay, let's look at what this prayer teaches us about unity. What is Jesus saying?

Well, first, number one, the unity we experience as believers is empowered by the relationship between father and son. We need to make sure we don't think it's something about us or our righteousness that makes Christian unity work. It's not about us. It is a gift for us to experience the love of the Father and the Son, and it is available to us because of Jesus. Second, Christian unity is not possible without Jesus. It is a vertical relationship with our Savior that gives our earthly relationships true unity. We cannot try harder to be selfless people without dying to self as a result of our great love and trust in our Father. Our efforts to be caring, compassionate, and humble will fall flat without a living relationship with our Savior,

who practiced perfectly caring, compassion, and humility. Third, Christian unity is what draws others into the heart of God. Merely talking about God and telling people what to do is not what Jesus meant when he asked that the world would experience the love of the Father just as he had. I think he means that it is experiencing the love of a community rooted in devotion to Jesus Christ and to one another that reveals the heart of Jesus. And four, Christian unity is not perfect all the time. If it was, Jesus would not have had to pray for us to have it. He knew we would experience times when we felt distant from our father and this would impact our horizontal relationships. He knew we would be constantly fighting the idol of selfishness that threatens to harm all of our relationships. Therefore, he prayed that we would continually reach for and desire the unity of the Father and the Son as a source of power and hope and strength to be as one here as we will be as one with our Father in heaven one day. Here's what I want us to take from this as we go into the rest of our week.

The relationship that you are most worried about right now probably isn't the one that needs to be solved. at least not at first. You do not have to manage your feelings, expectations, desires, and conflicts alone. You have a relationship with the one that knows you intimately. The one who said he calls you by name and leads you just like a loving shepherd. The exhausting work of managing your words and actions to present a version of yourself that is palatable to the world is not what God is looking for. He already knows the real you and he wants to be with you wherever you. you go. Paul says in Romans 8 that there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God. He writes, for I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present,

nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ, Jesus, our Lord. You are not on eggshells with God. You are his sheep and his handiwork. He is not going to leave you to yourself and your relational abilities to connect with him, he seeks you out and finds you, calling you to himself. What this means for you. Look up. Find your real joy in knowing you were loved by the Father.

Your relationship with God has been secured by Jesus and his work on the cross. You are secure in His love. And look around. Find your joy in loving others just because you were already loved. You are not trying to earn God's favor by serving and listening, but you are helping others experience God's love by giving them what he has already given you. And pray. Ask God to keep his promises to you to make you like a strain planted by the water never far from his overflowing love.

You can look to Psalm 1 verse 3 to find the words to pray. Lord, make me like a tree planted beside flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season and whose leaf does not wither, whatever he does prosperes. Amen.