Welcome to the first week of June and hopefully the start of your summer. I'm

Alan Arnold and you're listening to the Ransomed Hart podcast. Now, I hope each month you've been receiving

the Ransomed Hart newsletter.

These are amazing writings from John

about kingdom-related topics. And we have one out every month. The previous month has

been on union with God and so we wanted to partner our podcast on that same theme. So what you're about to hear is part one of a two-part

series we originally aired in February of 2017 called Union with God. And Union with God is so important because it's really the

epicenter of our Christian life.

Oneness with God is the goal. And so in this first of the two-part series,

John explores how can we overcome what gets in the way

as we cultivate a deep and growing union with God. Here's John.

To get us into the conversation today, I want to read from John, the Gospel of John, chapter 17.

Jesus is praying to his father, but he's doing it publicly, audibly, so that it would be

recorded, so that down through time, we would have the benefit of listening in on Jesus and his

father listening into what Jesus was praying for, particularly as he was about to pass the mission on to the church,

particularly as the events were changing from the

incarnational presence of Christ in Palestine to the presence of the risen and ascended Christ in all of our lives and the

global experience of Jesus. So here's what he says. He's praying and he says,

Father, I will remain So here's what he says, he's praying and he says,

Father, I will remain in the world no longer,

but they are still in the world.

And I'm coming to you.

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