In Unity and Truth – The Presidential Prayer Team

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. – John 17:17

The seventeenth chapter of John is one of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible. In Jesus’s intercessory prayer for His disciples, just before the crucifixion, He says that He is not only praying for His disciples but also for those who believe after them. That includes all of His present-day followers.

Jesus asks that His disciples will be one as He and God the Father are one. Think about that kind of unity. Jesus said He did not do His own will but the works of the Father. And He asks that His disciples not be taken out of the world but kept from the evil one. Jesus also asks that the Father will sanctify them in truth—God’s Word.

Sanctify means to consecrate or set apart for God’s service and worship. The Father sets His disciples apart for such service and worship through His word. By studying the Bible, meditating on, and practicing His words, you are set apart for His service and in unity with His people.

As you read in John 17 today, echo the prayers of Jesus, that His people may be in unity, kept from schemes of the enemy, and set apart for service and worship through His Word. Do not only pray for the lost but like in Christ’s prayer, pray specifically for those who believe in His name. Pray for the Christian citizens and elected officials of the United States to be sanctified through the truth and be people of integrity, despite opposition from the world. Ask that the Lord would embolden believers to share the truth with those in their circle of influence.

Today’s Verse: John 17:17

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Recommended for further reading: John 17:13-26

¹³But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. ¹⁴I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁵I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. ¹⁶They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁷Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

²⁰“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that 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. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, ²³I 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. ²⁴Father, 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. ²⁵O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶I 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.”