All Together

Introduction – Living for Something Worth Dying For

A man once heard the words none of us ever want to hear: “You have six months to live.”

He was healthy one week and terminally ill the next. Completely shattered, he began missing work and numbing the pain with late-night drinking. One evening he slumped over a glass and muttered, “I can’t die—I don’t even know what I’ve been living for.”

That line stops me cold every time. It isn’t just a tragic comment about dying; it’s a piercing question about living. What are you living for that is so clear, so God-given, that it would still be worth doing if you had only six months left?

Jesus gives His answer in the prayer we call His high-priestly prayer, recorded in John 17.

On the eve of the cross He looked ahead and prayed for His disciples—and for us:

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me.” (John 17:20–21)

Here is the heartbeat of Jesus on the night before Calvary:

that His people would be one, so that the world would believe.

That is something worth living—and dying—for.

This morning we will explore three great movements of that prayer:

the mission we share, the unity we need, and the power we depend on.

Each movement calls us out of isolation into a Spirit-filled togetherness that the world cannot explain.

1. The Mission We Share

Before we speak of unity, we must speak of mission.

Unity without mission is like a beautifully built ship that never leaves port.

Jesus lived with relentless purpose.

He said in Luke 4:43, >“I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.”

That word must is strong.

It tells us Jesus was under holy necessity.

He wasn’t meandering through Galilee looking for something religious to do.

He had a divine assignment: to proclaim and embody the kingdom of God.

He gives that same urgency to His followers.

There are people we love who are dying without Christ.

There are neighbors and nations living in the frustration of unconquered sin.

They cannot know the peace and joy of Jesus unless someone brings them the message of life.

The Bible is blunt about the stakes.

It says we are in a war, not of flesh and blood, but of spiritual powers and principalities.

Casualties line our streets. Yet many of us fail to see the war—or worse, we see it and are unconcerned.

Too often churches get tangled in secondary battles.

We major on administrative headaches.

We drain energy on who holds what position or whose idea gets adopted.

Some even treat the church like a stage for personal ambition.

And while we debate, the enemy advances.

Friends, we do not have the luxury of petty quarrels.

The mission is urgent and eternal.

If Satan can keep us distracted or divided, he has already won half the battle.

But here is good news:

Jesus did not merely give us a task; He prayed for the resources to fulfill it.

He prayed that we would be one—because a united church is the most powerful missionary force on earth. The world believes not when we out-argue it, but when we out-love and out-serve it together.

That leads naturally to the second movement of His prayer.

2. The Unity We Need

Listen again to verse 22: >“The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one.”

Jesus is not calling for a superficial truce or a lowest-common-denominator agreement.

He is offering something supernatural: the very glory He shared with the Father.

Unity is not a program to sign up for; it is a miracle to receive.

The Greek word Jesus uses for one is the same word used of the Father and Son.

It speaks of deep inner harmony, of a shared life.

This is far beyond friendliness in the church lobby.

It is the Spirit of God reproducing the character of Christ in each believer until we find ourselves knit together at the deepest level.

Think of it this way:

When God is changing me and God is changing you, we begin to recognize His fingerprints in each other. Our differences do not disappear, but they cease to divide.

We begin to care instinctively for one another’s needs.

We draw insight and strength from one another’s experiences.

The early church grasped this. In Acts 4:32 we read,

>“The full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.”