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After Jesus finished saying this, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your Son, so that the Son may give glory to you. For you gave him authority over all humanity, so that he might give eternal life to all those you gave him. And eternal life means knowing you, the only true God, and knowing Jesus Christ, whom you sent. I have shown your glory on earth; I have finished the work you gave me to do. Father! Give me glory in your presence now, the same glory I had with you before the world was made. “I have made you known to those you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me. They have obeyed your word,and now they know that everything you gave me comes from you. 8I gave them the message that you gave me, and they received ...

“If you love me, you will obey my commandments. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, who will stay with you for ever. He is the Spirit who reveals the truth about God. The world cannot receive him, because it cannot see him or know him. But you know him, because he remains with you and is in you. “When I go, you will not be left all alone; I will come back to you. In a little while the world will see me no more, but you will see me; and because I live, you also will live. When that day comes, you will know that I am in my Father and that you are in me, just as I am in you. “Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. My Father will love those who love me; I too will love them and reveal myself to them.” Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “L...

Do not be worried and upset,” Jesus told them. “Believe in God and believe also in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house, and I am going to prepare a place for you. I would not tell you this if it were not so. And after I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to myself, so that you will be where I am. You know the way that leads to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; so how can we know the way to get there?” Jesus answered him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me. Now that you have known me,” he said to them, “you will know my Father also, and from now on you do know him and you have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father; that is all we...

After Jesus said this, he went off and hid himself from them. Even though he had performed all these miracles in their presence, they did not believe in him, so that what the prophet Isaiah had said might come true: “Lord, who believed the message we told? To whom did the Lord reveal his power?” And so they were not able to believe, because Isaiah also said: “God has blinded their eyes and closed their minds, so that their eyes would not see, and their minds would not understand, and they would not turn to me, says God, for me to heal them.” Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him. Even then, many of the Jewish authorities believed in Jesus; but because of the Pharisees they did not talk about it openly, so as not to be expelled from the synagogue. They loved...

The next day the large crowd that had come to the Passover Festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 1So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Praise God! God bless him who comes in the name of the Lord! God bless the King of Israel!” Jesus found a donkey and rode on it, just as the scripture says, “Do not be afraid, city of Zion! Here comes your king, riding on a young donkey.” His disciples did not understand this at the time; but when Jesus had been raised to glory, they remembered that the scripture said this about him and that they had done this for him. The people who had been with Jesus when he called Lazarus out of the grave and raised him from death had reported what had happened. That was why the crowd met him — because they heard that he ...

When you love someone, you want to express that love. You want to make them feel all your love. But how? I am a rational person. Most of the time I will think before I act. Helpful in most cases. My actions are thought through well. But sometimes my emotions rise above the surface. Like when I feel how much I love my wife, I will buy her flowers. An act of love. I listen to my heart. We look at the story again but this time focus on Mary. In this story we see an act of love by Mary. She wants to show her love to Jesus. She bought expensive perfume for Jesus. Let’s say No. 1. I don’t have to give expensive perfume to my wife (if only I could afford it!) but if I do, I’m sure she would feel loved. That’s Mary’s reason. She expressed her heart by giving this expensive gift. She wants to show ...

Deeply moved, Jesus went to the tomb, which was a cave with a stone placed at the entrance. “Take the stone away!” Jesus ordered. Martha, the dead man’s sister, answered, “There will be a bad smell, Lord. He has been buried four days!” Jesus said to her, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believed?” They took the stone away. Jesus looked up and said, “I thank you, Father, that you listen to me. I know that you always listen to me, but I say this for the sake of the people here, so that they will believe that you sent me.” After he had said this, he called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” He came out, his hands and feet wrapped in grave clothes, and with a cloth round his face. “Untie him,” Jesus told them, “and let him go.” Many of the peopl...

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had been buried four days before. 18 Bethany was less than three kilometres from Jerusalem, and many Judeans had come to see Martha and Mary to comfort them over their brother’s death. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “If you had been here, Lord, my brother would not have died! But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask him for.” “Your brother will rise to life,” Jesus told her. “I know,” she replied, “that he will rise to life on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will live, even though they die; and all those who live and believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, L...

A man named Lazarus, who lived in Bethany, was ill. Bethany was the town where Mary and her sister Martha lived. (This Mary was the one who poured the perfume on the Lord’s feet and wiped them with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.) The sisters sent Jesus a message: “Lord, your dear friend is ill.” When Jesus heard it, he said, “The final result of this illness will not be the death of Lazarus; this has happened in order to bring glory to God, and it will be the means by which the Son of God will receive glory.” Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he received the news that Lazarus was ill, he stayed where he was for two more days. Then he said to the disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” “Teacher,” the disciples answered, “just a short time ago the...

It was winter, and the Festival of the Dedication of the Temple was being celebrated in Jerusalem. Jesus was walking in Solomon’s Porch in the Temple, when the people gathered round him and asked, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? Tell us the plain truth: are you the Messiah?” Jesus answered, “I have already told you, but you would not believe me. The things I do by my Father’s authority speak on my behalf; but you will not believe, for you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never die. No one can snatch them away from me. What my Father has given me is greater than everything, and no one can snatch them away from the Father’s care. The Father and I are one.” Then the people...

As a kid you are told not to go with strangers. It’s hard to know who to trust. Can Jesus be trusted? Isn’t that what they told you when you were young? Only go with people you know!  But how do you know if you can trust someone? Often because you know them personally. One night I went out to dinner with a good friend. We were talking and the waitress came up from behind us and said she knew my friend. But he didn’t know her. They had never met. But she recognized my friend by his voice. He is the writer of the devotional  ‘A Miracle Every Day’ and he records the messages every day. She listened to his messages often so when she heard him talking, she recognized his voice! In this part of Jesus’ life, he is sharing a story. A parable. Jesus is a great storyteller. He explains tha...

They took to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. The day that Jesus made the mud and cured him of his blindness was a Sabbath. The Pharisees, then, asked the man again how he had received his sight. He told them, “He put some mud on my eyes; I washed my face, and now I can see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “The man who did this cannot be from God, for he does not obey the Sabbath law.” Others, however, said, “How could a man who is a sinner perform such miracles as these?” And there was a division among them. So the Pharisees asked the man once more, “You say he cured you of your blindness — well, what do you say about him?” “He is a prophet,” the man answered. The Jewish authorities, however, were not willing to believe that he had been blind and could now see, until they called his...