Thursday | Week 13

There is a song from a few years ago called Yield My Heart by Kim Walker-Smith. Lyrics from this song remind me of John 17. Some of these lyrics are:  

Holy Spirt come, Holy Spirit rest in this place.
Teach us how to be one with You.
I yield my heart to You, I yield my heart to You, I yield my heart to You, You’re my King.

At the climax of the song, this line is repeated: 

I am one with You. Nothing in this world could ever keep me from You. 

In John 17:20-26, Jesus prayed above all else that we would be one with Him. He prayed that from this unity or oneness with Him, the world would believe in Jesus as well. 

These lyrics remind me of several powerful truths. I am made one with Jesus when I believe in Him; I need the Holy Spirit to teach me how to live out this unity with Jesus, and I yield to Him as He works in and through my life. Said another way, as I die to myself and my desires, Jesus comes alive in me. Believing, uniting, and yielding. Doing these things will lead to knowing Jesus better. After all, in John 17:3, Jesus defines eternal life as intimately knowing the One true God and Jesus Christ whom He had sent. There is no way to know Him better than to be one with Him. 

Notice that it is God who does the majority of this work. Our “work” is to believe, make room in our hearts to hear, and then yield to Jesus. He promised to do the work of uniting us to Himself and drawing us close. In John 17:26 Jesus states, “I have made You [The Father] known to them [believers] and will continue to make You known in order that the love You have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

When we believe in Jesus, we can be confident that God goes to work to make us one with Him. Jesus prayed for nothing less. 

Response: Take a few minutes to soak in the truth that when you believe in Jesus, in a supernatural way you are made one with the Living God. 

Meditate: “On that day you will realize that I am in the Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you” (John 14:20).