What do you think of when you hear the word “glory”?

A high school football state championship? A standing ovation after a speech or a performance? The look of pride in your parents’ eyes after a great accomplishment?

We all take glory in different things.

What do you think it takes to receive glory from God? Well, this week we are going to find out as we continue our sermon series called I Am with You. We will look at John 17:1–5, the beginning of Jesus’ “high priestly” prayer.

Jesus begins his prayer by asking the Father to glorify him. But in the Gospel of John, this glory doesn’t look like what we might normally think of as glory. Jesus’ moment of glory wasn’t the cleansing of the temple. It wasn’t any of his debate victories against the scribes and Pharisees. It wasn’t even the raising of Lazarus. To John, the cross was Jesus’ moment of glory.

I don’t know about you, but that’s kind of hard for me to wrap my head around.

At first, the cross doesn’t seem very glorious. But the deeper we dig into the glory that comes from God, the more it makes sense.