It is a meaningful thing to know that others are praying for us — to know a fellow Christian has taken up our burden, our deep concern, our anxiety or sorrow and prayed to the Lord about it. How much more meaningful should it be for us, then, when we consider that Jesus Himself prays for us?
The fact that Jesus intercedes for us is well known and is rightly rooted in Romans 8:34 and Hebrews 7:25. But recently I was struck by this truth in John 14:16, where Jesus says to the disciples, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever.” What caught my attention afresh was the familiar confidence in the wording, “I will ask the Father.” Notice as well that what He will ask for is something audacious, amazing — something that would seem ridiculous, impossible, too much to ask for on our own. Jesus will ask the Father to send God the Holy Spirit to dwell within us.
These first disciples were worried by Jesus’ statement that He would be leaving. He comforts them with this truth that they cannot yet understand, but one that this side of Pentecost we can better understand though not fully grasp. Think about it. The reason we are not left alone, distant from God, is that Jesus asked the Father to send us His Holy Spirit — the Spirit of God dwelling in still-sinful-though-redeemed human beings.
If Jesus can secure that for us, what else can He get? If He has secured for us the Holy Spirit, then surely we should trust that He will supply all else we truly need. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). The very Son of God, who upholds the universe by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3), also uses His words to intercede for us.
Notice also that the One He will ask is His Father. Jesus is not having to persuade a grumpy God. He is appealing to the God who sent Him for our redemption, the God who is already favorably disposed to us as believers, as we can see from the fact that He is also willing to be called our Father and for us to be known as His children (1 John 3:1). This God is committed to our care.
The great Scottish preacher Robert Murray McCheyne once said, “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.”
So then, fellow Christian, Jesus prays for us, and He does not merely mumble our names. He prays audacious prayers, things beyond what we could imagine or think. And He does not beseech some distant God, but His very own Father, who has shown how great is His love for us. Can we not then go forth today to face any challenge, to brave any foe, to attempt any task that He gives us? For, if God be for us, who can be against us? B&R —Van Neste is vice president for university ministries and dean of the School of Theology & Missions at Union University.
