The Prayer of Jesus - FOR THE TRUTH

The Prayer of Jesus — The Greatest Prayer Ever Prayed

Every prayer in Scripture is significant. But there is one prayer that stands apart from all the rest.

Not the prayers of the patriarchs — Abraham interceding for Sodom, Jacob wrestling through the night at Jabbok, Moses pleading for Israel in the wilderness. Not the great prayers of the Psalms — David crying out from the depths, Solomon dedicating the temple, Nehemiah confessing the sins of his people. Not even the Lord’s Prayer — the model prayer that Christ taught his disciples when they asked him how to pray.

The greatest prayer ever prayed is the one recorded in John chapter 17.

It is the prayer that the eternal Son of God offered to his Father on the night before his crucifixion — the night when the weight of everything he had come to accomplish was pressing down upon him, the night when the shadow of the cross fell across everything. And in that prayer, Jesus did not pray primarily for himself. He opened his heart to his Father and prayed — for his disciples, and for everyone who would ever believe in him through their message. For the church he came to create. For us.

The Prayer of Jesus by Warren Wiersbe is a rich, accessible, and genuinely illuminating exploration of this extraordinary prayer — showing what it reveals about the priorities of the Son of God for his church, and why those priorities must become the priorities of every believer and every congregation that gathers in his name.

The Night of the Greatest Prayer

To understand John 17, you need to understand when it was prayed.

It was the night of the Passover meal. Jesus had washed his disciples’ feet. He had spoken to them at length — the great farewell discourse of John 13 to 16 — preparing them for what was about to happen, promising them the Holy Spirit, warning them about the world’s opposition, and assuring them of his continuing presence and love. And then, before he led them out to the garden of Gethsemane where Judas would come with the soldiers — before the arrest, the trials, the crucifixion — he lifted his eyes to heaven and prayed.

The prayer lasts twenty-six verses. It is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in the Gospels. And it is unlike any other prayer in Scripture — not a cry for help, not a confession of sin, not a request for protection, but a window into the heart of the Son of God as he contemplates the completion of the work the Father sent him to do and intercedes for the people who will be the fruit of that work.

Listening to this prayer is one of the most intimate and one of the most theologically significant experiences that reading the Gospel of John makes possible. Because in it, Jesus reveals not just what he is praying for — but why. Not just his requests — but his priorities. Not just his heart for his disciples — but his vision for the church that will be built on their witness, across every generation, until he comes again.

Warren Wiersbe opens up that vision with the clarity, the warmth, and the pastoral insight that have made him one of the most trusted Bible teachers of the twentieth century.

The Six Priorities of John 17

At the heart of The Prayer of Jesus is Wiersbe’s careful, biblically grounded exposition of the six great priorities that Jesus reveals in his prayer — the things he cares most deeply about for his church, the things he asks his Father to accomplish in and through his people, the things that must therefore be the priorities of every believer who takes the prayer of Christ seriously.

The Glory of God The prayer begins and ends with glory. Jesus prays that the Father will glorify the Son so that the Son may glorify the Father — and the vision of mutual glorification that opens the prayer sets the tone for everything that follows. The church exists for the glory of God. Every ministry, every gathering, every act of service, every relationship within the body of Christ is meant to reflect and display the glory of the Father and the Son. Wiersbe shows how this priority — the glory of God as the supreme goal of everything the church does — is not a theological abstraction but a practically transforming conviction that reshapes the entire orientation of Christian life and ministry.

Truth Jesus prays that his disciples would be sanctified in the truth — that the Word of God would do its work of making them holy, shaping their thinking, forming their character, and equipping them for the mission he is sending them into the world to accomplish. Wiersbe opens up what it means for the church to be a community of truth — shaped by Scripture, committed to sound doctrine, speaking honestly with one another, and proclaiming the truth of the gospel without compromise or distortion to a world that desperately needs to hear it.

Assurance Running through the prayer is Christ’s desire that his people would know the security of their relationship with him — that they would not be lost, that none of those the Father has given him would be snatched out of his hand, that the love of the Father for the Son would be in them. Wiersbe draws out the extraordinary pastoral comfort of this dimension of the prayer — showing that the assurance of the believer rests not on their own faithfulness but on the intercession of the Son of God who prays for them and keeps them.

Obedience Christ prays for a church that keeps his word — that takes his commands seriously, that demonstrates the reality of its love for him through the obedience that love produces. Wiersbe shows how obedience is not the opposite of grace but the fruit of it — the natural, joyful, willing response of those who have been transformed by the love of God and who want to live in a way that reflects and honours the one who gave himself for them.

Unity Perhaps the most searching and most personally challenging section of the prayer — and the one that Wiersbe engages with most extensively — is Christ’s prayer for the unity of his people. He prays that they would be one as he and the Father are one — a unity so real, so visible, so genuinely supernatural in its character that the watching world would be compelled to recognise that the Father had sent the Son. Wiersbe shows what genuine Christian unity looks like, what threatens it, what produces it, and why it matters so profoundly for the church’s witness in a divided world.

Holy Living The prayer closes with a vision of a church that is in the world but not of it — present in the midst of the world’s hostility and brokenness, but distinct from it in character, in values, in the quality of its life together. Wiersbe opens up what it means for the church to be holy in practice — not withdrawn from the world but genuinely different from it, living in a way that reflects the character of the God it worships and that makes the gospel visible in every dimension of its communal life.

What This Book Will Help You Do

Understand the prayer of John 17 in its full depth and significance — what Jesus was praying, why he was praying it, and what it reveals about his heart for his church
Engage seriously with the six priorities that Christ reveals in his prayer — and examine honestly how those priorities are reflected in your own life and your own church
Find genuine personal comfort and assurance in the knowledge that the Son of God is interceding for you — that your security rests not on your faithfulness but on his
Develop a deeper understanding of what genuine Christian unity looks like — why Christ prayed for it, what it requires, and why it matters so much for the church’s witness
Understand how truth, obedience, and holy living are not burdens imposed on the church from outside but the natural fruit of genuine encounter with the God who is himself the source of all truth and holiness
Be genuinely challenged and encouraged by the vision of the church that Christ prays for — and motivated to pursue that vision more faithfully in your own life and community
Use this book as a resource for personal devotional reading, small group discussion, or pastoral reflection on what the church is called to be and how the prayer of Christ shapes that calling

Who Should Read This Book?

The Prayer of Jesus is ideal for:

Every Christian who wants to understand what Jesus prays for his church — and what that means for their own life and their own congregation
Pastors and church leaders wanting a rich, accessible, biblically grounded reflection on the priorities of Christ for the church that will inform and renew their vision for ministry
Christians who struggle with assurance of salvation and need the comfort of knowing that the Son of God himself intercedes for them and keeps them
Small groups wanting a short, discussion-rich, personally searching study on one of the most significant and most intimate passages in the entire New Testament
Anyone who wants to understand more deeply what genuine Christian unity looks like — why Christ prayed for it and what it costs and produces in practice
Readers of Warren Wiersbe who have been served by his accessible, warm, and biblically faithful Bible teaching across his many other works
Christians in India navigating the specific challenges of church unity, holy living, and faithful witness in a diverse and often hostile cultural environment — and needing the vision of Christ’s own prayer to renew and direct their commitment

About the Author

Warren Wiersbe was one of the most prolific and most widely trusted Bible teachers of the twentieth century. Serving as pastor of Moody Church in Chicago and later as general director of Back to the Bible, he authored more than 150 books — including the beloved Be series of expository commentaries that have equipped pastors and laypeople around the world for decades of faithful Bible study and ministry. He is known above all for his ability to open the Scriptures with clarity, warmth, and genuine pastoral insight — making deep biblical truth genuinely accessible and genuinely applicable to the real challenges of Christian life and ministry.

In The Prayer of Jesus, he brings all of those gifts to one of the most extraordinary passages in the entire New Testament — and the result is a book that is both theologically serious and genuinely personally enriching for every reader who engages with it.

About the Wiersbe Mini Books Series

The Prayer of Jesus is part of the Wiersbe Mini Books series — a collection of short, accessible, and theologically rich books by Warren Wiersbe that address key biblical texts and themes with the depth and clarity that have made him one of the most trusted voices in evangelical Bible teaching. Each mini book is designed to be read quickly but to leave a lasting impression — opening up a specific passage or theme in a way that is both biblically faithful and genuinely practically useful.

Other titles in the Wiersbe Mini Books series are available at forthetruth.in.

The Prayer That Continues

John 17 was not a prayer for one night only.

The writer to the Hebrews tells us that Christ — now ascended to the right hand of the Father — always lives to make intercession for his people. The prayer of John 17 did not end when Jesus rose from the garden and walked toward his arrest. It continues — in the ongoing, unceasing, all-sufficient intercession of the Son of God who loves his church, who prays for her glory and her unity and her holiness, and who will not rest until every one of those the Father has given him is safely home.

That is the extraordinary comfort and the extraordinary calling at the heart of this book. The Son of God is praying for you. He is praying for your assurance and your obedience, your unity with your brothers and sisters and your holiness before a watching world. And he is doing it not with the uncertain prayers of a fellow creature, but with the perfect, always-heard, eternally effective intercession of the one who sits at the right hand of God and who loves his church with a love that nothing in heaven or earth can diminish.

The Prayer of Jesus is an invitation to hear that prayer — and to live in the light of it.