What Does God Want from Us, Anyway?
What Does God Want from Us, Anyway? (Gospel of John) – March 15th, 2026
Canadian University chaplain and Christian thinker, Shiao Chong, wrote a series of articles addressing life’s big questions, including “Who Am I?” “Where Am I?” “Why Am I Here?” and “What’s Wrong with the World?” In his most recent one, Chong describes 20th century Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s unusually short (just 35 seconds!) stage play, Breath: “It begins with a dark stage. Then you hear the sound of a newborn baby’s cry, followed by a breath being drawn slowly in. Simultaneously, the lights slowly go up on the stage to reveal a pile of garbage. Then, the breath is slowly let out and the lights go dim until the stage is in darkness again. There’s a second cry, and the play is over. Beckett’s message seems pretty clear: Life is garbage, over in a single breath. For Beckett, life is meaningless. There is no purpose to our individual lives.” Chong concludes that most of us, however, do not agree with Beckett.
According to a 2022 Gallup Poll, 72% of the world’s population say that they believe in God, whether or not they belong to a religion. Sixteen percent say that they do not believe that any God exists, 10% are not sure. These statistics bring to my mind a very insightful observation from C. S. Lewis in a 1944 interview recorded the book, God in the Dock: “One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
Contemporary author Geneen Roth pragmatically notes, “To discover what you really believe, pay attention to the way you act — and to what you do when things don’t go the way you think they should. Pay attention to what you value. Pay attention to how and on what you spend your time. Your money. And pay attention to the way you eat.” What we believe is evidenced by how we act, how we live.
Christians like us gather together to worship God in churches all over the world precisely because we believe that Christianity is a statement which is true and therefore of infinite importance! Billy Graham wrote, “When we give our lives to Christ and believe in Him, our lives will be different. We’ll no longer live only for ourselves, but for Christ and for others.” That brings us to today’s topic, a question: What does God want from us, anyway?
The Old and New Testaments and many Christian writers down through the ages have written about this.
Micah 6:8 says, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
In Mark 12:38-41, Jesus fielded a question from a scribe, “‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’”
Jesus said in Luke 10:41-42, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part.” Cuban American historical theologian Justo L. González notes that as Mary “just sits at the feet of Jesus and listens to him,” her choice to do this one thing highlights the radical obedience that the kingdom demands.
Hebrews 10:23-25 instructs us to “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
James 1:27 tells us that “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
Second century bishop of Lugdunum, Irenaeus, wrote, “For the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God.”
Sixth century bishop of Rome, Gregory the Great, wrote, “Before men, it is a virtue to bear with one’s enemies, but before God, the virtue is to love them.”
Eleventh century Burgundian monk, Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote, “The reason for loving God is God himself; and the measure of our love for him is to love him without measure.”
Thirteen century Italian mystic and Doctor of the Church, Catherine of Siena, wrote, “Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.”
In My Utmost for His Highest, early 20th century Scottish evangelist and teacher Oswald Chambers wrote, “Our Lord never tolerates our prejudices— He is directly opposed to them and puts them to death … God pays no respect to anything we bring to Him. There is only one thing God wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender.”
Those are all good and challenging answers to the question: What does God want from us, anyway? They are wise, life-giving, beautiful invitations and instructions to live by that lead us, disciples of Jesus, Christ-followers, the church, deeper into the life of flourishing, wholeness, and delight!
Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God. Love God with all of your passion, prayer, intelligence, and energy, and love others as well as you love yourself. Sit at Jesus’ feet, listen to Jesus, radically obey Jesus. Keep a firm grip on God’s hope-giving promises, be inventive in encouraging love and helping out, keep worshiping together and spurring each other on. Reach out to the vulnerable and displaced while guarding against hypocrisy and indifference. Cultivate your vision of God. Love your enemies. Love God without measure. Be who God meant you to be. Unconditionally surrender to God.
Today as we continue our journey through the Gospel of John, we are looking today at Jesus’ prayer immediately before his betrayal and crucifixion, in John 17. Jesus’ prayer brings together everything in John’s Gospel up to this point. Jesus’ prayer also gives us two assurances and a very important answer to the question: What does God want from us, anyway?
John 17:1-8 – “After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.”
The first assurance that Jesus’ prayer gives us is that Jesus is glorified.
Prayer was a regular and essential part of Jesus’ life. Almost all of his recorded prayers are simple, brief, and profound. John 17 stands as the exception, the entire chapter being a single prayer and Jesus’ last recorded words before his arrest. Jesus prays aloud so that his followers (then and now) can listen and learn. John presents Jesus’ prayer in such a way that we, too, can pray with him, as countless millions have done for 2000 years.
In this first part of Jesus’ prayer, Jesus prays for himself, pointing to his fulfillment of ancient prophecies about the Messiah.
Daniel 7:13-14 – “I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”
Psalm 72:8 – “May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus is this Messiah, the king who rules the entire world, who has a universal and everlasting dominion throughout all generations, and who shares the throne of God himself! Theologian D. A. Carson explains that “the petition asks the Father to reverse the self-emptying entailed in his incarnation and to restore him to the splendour that he shared with the Father before the world began.” Jesus prays for God to glorify him, which the disciples did not yet realize would be answered through Jesus overcoming death itself, as Ephesians 1:20-21 tells us: “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.”
In the first three verses of John 17, Jesus’s prayer ties together his glorification and eternal life: “glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Carson emphasizes that “eternal life turns on nothing more and nothing less than knowledge of the true God … Eternal life is not so much everlasting life as personal knowledge of the Everlasting One … To know God is to be transformed, and thus to be introduced to a life that could not otherwise be experienced.”
What does God want from us, anyway? God wants us to know that Jesus is glorified. God also wants us to understand that eternal life is not just referring to something people can have after death. New Testament professor Miguel Echevarría notes, “For the majority of the Gospel, John has asserted that Jesus has come to give his followers life in a new world. Now Jesus assures his followers that they can begin to enjoy this existence in the here and now.” As theologian N. T. Wright puts it, once Jesus “has completed the final victory over death itself, all his followers, all who trust him and believe that he has truly come from the father, and has truly unveiled the father’s character and purpose – all of them can and will possess [eternal life,] ‘the life of God’s coming age’ right here and now.”
John 17:9-19 – “I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
The second assurance Jesus’ prayer gives us is that Jesus prepares and prays for his followers.
On a hot summer day in 1976, my family had a seven-hour drive home after a farm holiday, singing along to Danny Kaye cassette tapes along the way. We had not heard any radio news since the morning before. As we reached the edge of our town, Toowoomba, we grew increasingly confused and anxious at the sight of bright blue tarpaulins adorning roofs and windows on almost every building and home. The violent hailstorm that hit Toowoomba on the previous afternoon, Saturday, January 10th, is remembered as the worst and most destructive weather event in the town’s history. There was no warning of any kind – no green sky or building winds – no indication of the looming weather event. Residents described the sky turning black and then a deafening roar. Hail the size of rockmelons (canteloupes) destroyed roofs, shattered windows, and caused widespread flooding. St. Vincent’s Hospital was badly damaged, most windows destroyed, the children’s ward devastated. Half of the 62,000 residents were affected, with thousands of homes destroyed or badly damaged. Understandably, this event left a lasting, traumatic impression on many. A month after the hailstorm, a disaster unit formed to oversee repair works, financial assistance, and the emotional well-being of residents. That lead to the development of a more comprehensive response to future disasters in the entire state of Queensland.
I am thankful that we are now living in an era with quite widespread and well-developed disaster preparedness in many places, some of which is even accessible on our phones. Disaster preparedness helps individuals, families, and businesses survive and recover from natural disasters and human-caused incidents, providing strategies to mitigate risks, ensure safety, and protect property. All over the world, we collectively hope these strategies greatly reduce human suffering when disaster strikes.
All throughout his earthly ministry, and especially in his final weeks and days, Jesus has been preparing his disciples that he is going away. He has also prepared them to continue his ministry through the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send, the other Paraclete – Advocate, Helper, Comforter – who would enable and empower all of Jesus’ followers now and in the future to participate in his ongoing work of restoration to reveal the glory of God. And now, because “the hour has come,” Jesus prays for them because he is very aware that they are very much at risk. Theologian Francis J. Moloney calls this section, “Jesus’ prayer for the future of fragile disciples.”
Physically, Jesus is still sitting at the table in the Upper Room with his disciples. He knows he has one final task to do to complete the work of love before returning to the father. His betrayal and arrest were not even hours away by now. Moloney notes that “Jesus’ mission in and to ‘the world’ has come to an end, but that of the disciples is about to begin … The disciples are to become the sent ones of the Sent One. They are to make God known in the world.”
John 17:20-26 – “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’”
What does God want from us anyway? God wants us to be one!
I think that one of the most exciting and surprising discoveries we can make in Scripture is that this part of Jesus’ prayer includes … you and me! Jesus is praying for us! Jesus told his followers the good news, and those followers announced that good news around the world, and those who heard that passed the good news along, and on, and on, and on. The reason we know this good news that Jesus proclaimed and demonstrated is because we either heard it or read it from someone else who either spoke it or wrote it down. And, remarkably, Jesus has given us, all of Jesus’ followers in all times and places together, the body of Christ, the same glory that the father gave Jesus.
That part is hard to understand. Why did Jesus do that? The answer lies in what Jesus prays for you and me and all of his followers in all generations. That we would be one. New Testament scholar, Mary L. Coloe, notes that “Jesus can be the true revealer of his Father only because of his union with God, and it is from this dynamic unity in love that he can make known the essence of God. Similarly, if disciples are to continue Jesus’ mission and reveal God, then they too can do this only from within the union of Jesus and his Father … Being one in God is the only way to reveal God.” Jesus calls us to be agents of revelation in the world! Theologian John Painter notes, “The success of [Jesus’] mission remains totally dependent on the oneness of those who are sent with the source of divine love, which may yet transform the world from a place of darkness and terror.” Coloe adds, “Only the visible unity and love among believers can witness to and make present the divine love in the world.”
What does God want from us, anyway? That we would be one, in order to make God known. Precious brothers and sisters, let us imagine and implement fresh ways in which to live and worship in unity. Let us consider what hindrances and hangups we need to lay down. Let us decide how to better offer welcome and warmth to all. Let us find ways to show and to speak love.
Jesus is glorified, Jesus prays for his people, God wants us to be one. Let these prompt us to recommit ourselves, as Jesus did, to a life of loving service, so that all may believe that Jesus Christ is God and experience eternal life, the life of God’s coming age right here, right now, to know God’s love and to live in love.
