Since I define prayer as communication with God, I think we should regard prayer as something we will do forever. And since believers will always be together, communicating with God together, I think we will always be involved in united prayer.

Here are three basic things about united prayer that will never change:

1. Jesus Christ, the one who makes united prayer possible, will always be our Savior and our High Priest. He is now and forever our High Priest, and He forever opens the door of friendship to God (Heb. 7:24-25). He will constantly, forever testify to the Father that He died for our sins and saved us.  Therefore, His blood works continually to keep us saved and to keep us reconciled to God.

Since all believers are forever saved, we are forever united to Christ and to each other. We are His body and He is the head.  We will never be separated from Him.

One of the duties of a priest is to intercede for his people. Christ is our High Priest and He continues to intercede for us.  And we are also priests.  From the moment God saved us and brought us into His family He made us priests like His Son (1 Pt. 2:9; Rev. 5:10).  We who are in His family and who are part of Christ’s body are a kingdom of priests. He is the High Priest over us and we are His little priests; we all take on the ministry of intersession and we all pray together as prayer partners in God’s kingdom.

As believers in Christ and as His partners in prayer we share all things with Him. We are now sharing His sufferings, and to some extent we are also sharing His new resurrected life.  Soon, in heaven, we will leave all our suffering behind.  We will then experience the new life with Him in a much fuller way, which will also include the exalted life where we will reign with Him forever (Rev. 5:10).

2. The Holy Spirit will always be with us as our comforter and intercessor. He now and forever exists as our intercessor, guiding us in our life and in our prayers. He will always be with us to show us how to live and how to pray. He is the one who will forever keep us united to the Father and the Son and to each other.  Likewise, He keeps our prayers united so that we are all praying the will of God (Rom. 8:27) and according to what Jesus Himself is praying.

3. Believers that are united in prayer abide in Christ. United prayer exists because believers are united. And believers are united because they abide in Christ as a branch abides in a vine (Jn. 15). This is true now and it will always be true.  There will never be an occurrence when we decide not to abide in Him and yet still be able to pray in unity.  United prayer will always require our full obedience and dependence on God—an obedience that is of a right heart, out of love.  Be assured that this in fact is how it will be.  Never will there be a moment in heaven when we do not obey God from a loving heart, and therefore that we will not be united with Him.  The absence of sin and the promises of God guarantee it.

God has promised us through His servant Paul (in 1 Corinthians 15:51-54) that when Jesus comes to get us “we shall all be changed” and “death is swallowed up in victory.” Likewise, in Revelation 21:4, God promised us through His servant John, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”  Likewise, since there will be no more pain, there will be no more sin; for pain and death comes as the result of sin (Rom. 6:23).

We also read in 1 John 3:2 that when Christ is revealed to us (when we see Him) we shall be like Him. If this doesn’t indicate our unity with God I don’t know what does.  The prayer of Jesus for us, in John 17:21, will finely be fully and completely answered—“that they may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us…”

What a great testimony this will be to the angels and also to those on the earth during the millennium: to see us in such grand unity; to see all of us, thousands of us looking like Christ. Yes, we will be like Him.  What a marvelous thing that will be!