As we often do, I'm going to take our text this morning from our upcoming Wednesday night study.

So would you turn with me to John 17?

John chapter 17 and verse 1 will be our text for the morning.

John 171, it says,

These words spake Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven

and said,

Father, the hour has come,

glorify thy son,

that thy son also may glorify thee here in chapter 17 we have quite the shift for the past three you know chapters and several weeks we've been in these chapters

in chapter 14 15 and 16 Jesus is giving what we call

his upper room discourse. That is, with the disciples in the upper room, right before he's to be

apprehended and taken and crucified, Jesus gives this message to the disciples. But in chapter

17, it shifts gears as Jesus turns from talking with the

disciples. Now it says he lifts his eyes up to heaven and starts to pray to the Father, which is in

heaven. And this is the prayer of Jesus. The whole chapter, we'll look at this in depth. It's so much. It's such a deep prayer and it's important prayer. We'll look at this in-depth. It's so much. It's such a deep

prayer and it's important prayer. We'll look at that on Wednesday night. But I want to draw your

attention to the one little phrase that I find intriguing when you kind of look at this phrase

throughout the scripture. It's something that sort of triggers, I think, something that's important.

And that is Jesus. The little phrase here, it says, these words spake Jesus, and he lifted up his

eyes to heaven. If I were to say, as a pastor today in a normal church, let us pray, then what do we do?

Man, we bow our heads and close our eyes.

And that's okay.

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