Is it right to pray for ourselves? Some teach the children to pray using the acronym JOY - Jesus, Others, You; or STOP - Sorry, Thanks, Others, Please. The order seems helpful ... to prevent the incessant demand of personal needs getting in the way of our focus on the Lord and other people.
But John 17 gives us a different perspective. Jesus starts by praying to Father God about their relationship (John 17:1-5). It is a critical prayer because 'God's hour' had come - the pivot point of history is Christ's death on the cross.
Pain is Jesus' immediate prospect, but glory is the ultimate goal. Jesus' concern is not the pain, but fulfilling the Father's purpose of giving eternal life to sinners. Until the cross was behind Him, the reason for leaving heaven's glory could not be fulfilled. Jesus wanted to finish well.
But why does Jesus ask to be glorified? It was not to get something that did not belong to Him, but to resume His normal relationship with His Father. What mattered to Him was to be indivisibly close with Father God.
To be 'glorified' might excite all sorts of fleshly ambitions in us. Pride loves to be exalted, and some people naturally warm to being in the spotlight. Others hate the idea of attention being drawn to them, preferring the isolation of anonymity.
But, for Jesus, glory was normal: a shared environment with His Father and the Spirit. It is 'family' at its best, and most intimate, with nothing to get in the way. It is the closest love and the highest honour welded together. Jesus wanted that unfettered relationship more than anything else, and knew that it lay beyond the cross - giving Him joy to anticipate, and courage to endure (Hebrews 12:2).
It was absolutely right for Jesus to intensely desire to share His Family's glory. Neither is it wrong for us to tell the Lord how much we long to be undistractedly with Him. Indeed, if we do not, there is something wrong - the fading glories of the world have eclipsed the eternal glory.
That is why Jesus prays that His trainee apostles, and we who believe their testimony, should revel in His glory now (John 17:22) and be fulfilled in it eternally (John 17:24).
What is that eternal glory which should be our motivating vision? To know Father God and Jesus Christ personally, deeply, intimately (John 17:3).
When worldly glories, or human pain, are our focus ... we have missed the point of belonging to Christ. But when we long to be with Him, working alongside Him and eagerly anticipating that His glory will be our home ... we have His heart.
As you pray for BeaconLight, and the teams in the UK and partners in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe, ... along with the thousands who read Word@Work or who read our books in prisons ... please pray that our highest desire (and yours) will be that our relationship with the Lord will grow more and more. The words of Philippians 1:9-11 may be helpful:
"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ - to the glory and praise of God." (NIVUK)