How is our invisible God made visible?

Are you and your church doing your part?

We'll find out how it's possible today on Truth for Life,

as Alistair beg takes a close look at how the glory of God is displayed

in Christ and his followers. We're looking at John's Gospel, focusing on Chapter 17.

The man who is here praying in John 17 is the one who was once the child asleep on Mary's lap.

One of the dangers of dealing with the church calendar, as it were, in thinking in compartmentalized terms about what's going on and when it's going on, is the danger of actually

considering, for example, the advent of Jesus separate from the death of Jesus. And when we think

about it, the reason Jesus was ever born was in order that he might die. And so when we listen to

Jesus praying here for his disciples,

it's from the lips of the same person who clung to Mary's breast as we just sung about it.

He who is lifting his eyes to heaven, which is the way the prayer begins at the beginning

of the chapter, he who is lifting his eyes to heaven, which is the way the prayer begins at the beginning of the chapter, he who is lifting his eyes to heaven in prayer, was once wrapped tight in

a manger, wrapped up in the way that babies are, and then was on the receiving end of shepherds

who came tumbling in upon the scene, having been the recipients of a celestial

encounter, an angelic message. The Lord Jesus, who is praying this prayer, is the same one as created

the universe. The creator of the universe is now within hours of his death, and he's praying

for his disciples. Now, that is the great claim of Christianity. And John, when he begins his gospel,

begins not with the manger scene, not with the flocks outside

and the Bethlehem fields, but he begins before the creation of the world. And that, of course,

you discover when you read the beginning of his gospel, before the world existed. In the beginning

was the word. That is the very self-expression

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