Jesus prayed a prayer that is a model for us – 10 ways to pray for and bless people so they are equipped, matured and released as the next generation of “sent ones.”
1. Identify and pray for those the Father has entrusted you with.
John 17:6a, 9 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me.” “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.”
2. Pray Christ is glorified in them as they take on His likeness. May the Father’s spiritual DNA be made manifest in their spirit, soul and body.
John 17:10 “10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine and I am glorified in them.”
3. Equip them to know Christ, to know the whole truth and to obey what the Word says; to do what the Father is doing.
John 17:6b-8, 14a “and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.”“14 I have given them your word.”
4. Recognise the season and place of their calling- and the timing of their release and commission.
John 17:11a “And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.”
5. Pray Father keeps them as His and guards them.
John 17:11-12 “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”
6. Pray they have joy of the Lord fulfilled in themselves.
John 17:13 “But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”
7. Pray they are guarded from the evil one and operate from heaven and in the spiritual realm – even though they still remain in the natural realm on earth to fulfill Father’s purpose here.
John 17:14b-16 “the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”
8. Pray they are sanctified – brought into spiritual maturity and wholeness. Be sanctified yourself as an example to them.
John 17:17-19 “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
9. Pray they abide in Christ and know the Father. And are filled with Father’s love so their lives are a testimony to the Father’s love for all and the power of Christ in us – bearing the fruit of the Spirit and fruitful mission.
John 17: 20-23, 25-26 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” “25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
10. Pray they see the glory of Christ – in the spiritual realm on earth and in the age to come. May Christ be glorified on earth as He is in heaven.
John 17:24 ” 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”
