How Do You Choose Friends?
Good Morning Friends,
Again today I address you as friends. I know it is a bit presumptuous but I do it in the hopes we have a common friend in Jesus and I do it because everyone needs to learn more about scripture to learn more about God in the hopes that this knowledge will lead to something more. So these devotionals are a bit of sacrificial love…my expression of it just happens to be written down. And it is what God wants from me and then you need to discover what it is that God wants from you in the way of love. But as for yesterday’s devotional, it was way too long with too many words I cannot even pronounce. It may have been a greater sacrifice for you in the reading of it than in my putting the words on the page. So if you made it through that, thank you. So the point of all this is to say we need friends to encourage us in our spiritual growth. We need friends to help us build our character and sharpen us. We need friends to give us strength. Indeed, two people can protect each other, they can complete more work together than alone. On a cold night they can share warmth. Yes two is better than one. But a cord of three is better yet for it is not easily broken especially when Jesus is the third strand. Yes the best of relationships are formed in threes: you, me and Jesus…in the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. And because it is easier to pull someone down than to pull them up, we are to make sure God is in our relationships. How Do You Choose Friends?
Scripture: Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’
1 Corinthians 15:33 (NRSV)
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13 (NRSV)
‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.
John 15:12-14 (NRSV)
A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity.
Proverbs 17:17
Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
Proverbs 27:6
Message: Many things in this world could cause us to wonder. But one of the most striking is that God should want to call us His friends. That Jesus would call us friends somehow defies imagination. And what makes it even more complicated is that the crucifixion of Christ on the cross is the highest symbol of this friendship, and at the same time a symbol of life, and the symbol of what Jesus desires of us. It all boggles the mind. Then finally we grasp that sacrifice is a commitment of greater impression on others that any other act we can do. And no other kind of act will bring others to the Cross of Christ – who sacrificed for us. Then we begin to understand that God not only desires to be part of our relationships but has made a way for us to connect with Him and others. God created all of humanity to have an intimate, personal relationship with Him and the Cross was the means of offering up this opportunity. For we all want to find favor, loving-kindness, and mercy from God. Unfortunately one of the biggest problems in the church today is that people want all the benefits from an intimate relationship with God, but don’t want to seek it out or take the time to develop it. Friends, it is impossible for you to have the divine favor of God in your life if you don’t know God enough to have a relationship with God. Certainly God can still have one with you…I too can have a relationship with you. But there is so much more potential out there waiting to be experienced. So take some time in some way or another to learn more about the possibilities. Then sometime you might help someone else this week by giving away what you have to help someone else become a friend of God. And then you might just realize that it is only when the sacrifice is transformed into love does it become sustainable. So love one another and discover it is really not a sacrifice at all.
Pray we take time to allow God to teach us the Way of God and to connect us to not just knowing about God but in experiencing the personality of God in a relationship with others. Pray we are glad we know God and that God knows us. Pray we come to Jesus and lay our burdens down at the foot of the cross. Pray we cry out to Him for help. Pray that whatever comes we are still going to trust God. Pray that whatever our problems we believe that if we sit still and listen, God will have an answer for our situation. Pray we wait for God to still the storm in our soul. Pray we experience the calm that Jesus brings to the troubled sea of life. Pray we realize that God loves us unconditionally. Pray we realize that God could not love us any more or less than He does. Pray we have faith. Pray that when sorrows like sea billows roll that it will be well…it will be well with our souls. Pray we bask in the blessed assurance of the love of God. Pray we are called to His purpose. Pray that the storms of life not separate us from the love of God. Pray we truly are friends in God’s eyes. Pray we learn to love.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 