Becoming One November 19, 2015

Read John 17:20-26

John 15:15      I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

Proverbs 18:24     One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

John 8:26     "I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world."

John 16:12     "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.

John 17:8      For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.

Romans 7:15     I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

1 Corinthians 2:16     for, "Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

After 41 years of marriage, I know what my husband is thinking most of the time, and we finish each other’s sentences. The Bible says of married people, “They are no longer two, but one flesh” (Matt. 19:6). That oneness isn’t immediate. Becoming one with a spouse takes shared interests and experiences — time spent talking and doing things together.

Something similar happens with long-time friends. We often know, without being told, what our close friends are thinking and feeling because of shared experiences, interests, and conversations. We experience a unity with our closest friends.

Jesus called his disciples friends. Later he prayed for them, “that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Jesus asked God to make us one with him, just as he and the Father are one. But this oneness takes time, conversation, and shared experiences with God. We can begin now to talk to Jesus and listen, as good friends do.