Good Morning Friends,
Jesus tells us that we are his friends, and I call you a friend, but I doubt that everyone grasps what this means in extending the faith. Jesus does not call us acquaintances. There is not a desire for a transactional relationship and sales job when it comes to the Bible and our relationship with God. We are to have a relationship in good times and bad to appreciate the extent of God’s grace, especially when darkness seems to be our only friend. There is more going on here than meets the eye. A cohort of friends are to keep us coming back and giving back. Friends and family are the building blocks of our salvation. Perhaps it comes alive in a club or college or a group that studies the Word of God to which you feel a sense of belonging or a group that helps with worship. But during the pandemic relationships became strained…the routines of friends were altered. So, How Do We Develop True Friendships Now?
Scripture: Then the apostles and the elders, with the consent of the whole church, decided to choose men from among their members and to send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leaders among the brothers, with the following letter: “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the believers of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that certain persons who have gone out from us, though with no instructions from us, have said things to disturb you and have unsettled your minds, we have decided unanimously to choose representatives and send them to you, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.” So they were sent off and went down to Antioch. When they gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. When its members read it, they rejoiced at the exhortation.
Acts 15:22-31 (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. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
John 15:12-17 (NRSV)
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.
Acts 8:26-31 (NRSV)
Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.
Revelation 3:20 (NRSV)
Message: Now I may not know everything about you, like Jesus does, and I cannot imagine Jesus approved of everything the disciples did and certainly not all that we do either, but the thing is that Jesus upheld a basic element of friendship in his relationships that accepted people with their flaws and differences. So too today Jesus is prepared to accept you and me personally just the way we are. Jesus knew that Judas would betray him, and that Peter would deny him and still called them friends. So, we do not have to be saints to be Jesus’ friends. The only thing that matters is that we are willing to accept Jesus for he has already gone on record that he is willing to accept us as we are, for he knows what we will become. Sadly, there are some who cannot accept God as a friend because they believe they are not good enough for His love. And there are people unwilling to include others as friends in Christ because they rank sins, failing to realize that even the smallest part of a watch, phone or human, if broken, can make the whole not function properly. Along these lines Jesus does have a standard for friendship that may surprise some. He desires honesty and trust so he may fulfill His purpose in us. And related to that is an element of friendship that is often overlooked…respect. It should be easy for us to respect Jesus, for He is faultless. But the astonishing thing is the respect Jesus has for us is the respect he desires for us to share with others. Jesus always looked for the good in people, and to help them use their strengths to overcome their weakness. The beauty is that Jesus never invades a person’s privacy or destroyed the dignity of their free will in the process. The last book of the Bible pictures Jesus standing at the door, knocking, waiting for someone to let Him in. This is a friend that goes the distance. So, for us today we need to connect this message with our work in community inviting and making room for people in our lives. Friends, we need to find our place, but we also need to be involved in a ministry of working to help people get connected to a way of giving themselves in the service of Christ. Friendship is finding a place to belong and that is why it is so essential to the future of what God is doing in the world. Yesterday morning I was rejoicing in the birth of our first grandchild, a boy. And you know facetime and all the Zoom calls in the world will not suffice. Perhaps we have been too busy and need to spend more time with family. call with a very busy person who a couple of years ago had been praying for more time with family. I have wrestled with this problem myself related to idea of what gets in the way of making friendships and good relationship and I think it relates to what keeps us from being hopeful Christians. Part of it is not wanting people to know who we really are, and pride but really that is pretty silly stuff for people already know. Still despite being in isolation with many and in a pressure cooker with others the idea of healthy friendships is relevant. For having the right friends is critical to growing in our walk with Christ to model Christlike behavior so others and especially our family can discover what a friend Jesus really is. The Bible has a lot to say about friends. I hope you see the patterns. Check out the scripture of the day and meditate on it. See how the model of Jesus instructs us. Be reminded that Jesus is a companion. Jesus is a collaborator. Jesus is a confidant. Jesus is a defender. Jesus is a lover. Friends, Jesus is our friend but also an example of how we can be a friend to others. Meditate on how Jesus communicates with others contrapuntally. Meditate on the reality that his relationship with the Father is always in place before he interacted with others. Meditate on what it means to be a friend. Maybe today we see that to effectively be a friend we must make sure that we have surrendered to Christ’s pattern and are connected to the part we are to play in the grand design. Friends, today it would be good to be a friend to another person that needs a friend.
And So, we can be strangers, servants, or friends in our relationship with God. We can even be angry with God, but it is a mistake to ignore our need for an honest bond with God. And so, this morning we have been exploring the challenge of having friendship and more specifically a friendship with Jesus as the standard. The problem is that true friendship can hardly be called reciprocal. The whole story of the Bible is about God longing to have a personal friendship with human beings and that can never be bartered or bought. It either is or is not. It is impossible to buy, but we can in a way pay it forward by extending grace into this dark world as an act of kindness. The ripple effect of restoring another’s faith in the potential of love is what keeps the human spirit alive. So, are you all in or still looking over your shoulder? Or are you ready to surprise someone today with love paid forward in a melody of life that glorifies God by bringing hope into the music of relationship?
Pray we realize that real friendships are not to be based on social status, race, beauty or financial conditions or even moral standards, but an acceptance of the person as they are. Pray we realize that friendship is the basis for love. Pray with thanks for all the benefits which we have been given. Pray with a sense of appreciation for all the pains and insults which Jesus has borne for us. Pray for the mercy our redeemer, brother, friend shares so we might know Him more clearly and love more dearly and follow him more nearly each day. Pray we get the connection between friendship, the Gospel, love and grace. Pray we realize that God sent the Holy Spirit to push and shove the church beyond ethnic, social, financial, and cultural borders. Pray we realize that the early church was preoccupied with the issue of who fits into their world and who makes them uncomfortable, forgetting what God is at work in the world doing. Pray we realize that we have the same issues today. Pray we realize our role in accepting Christ as a friend and in belonging in friendship to those called in his service. Pray we have a common friend in Jesus that opens doors to the work God is doing now.
Pray we dare to be ourselves for God has a plan to prosper us and fulfill a purpose within us working all things together for good to a completion that lights a path for a brighter day. Pray when our part comes around, we are as tuned instruments of God’s will. Pray we are part of God’s choir. Pray we have a friend in Jesus, and he has a friend in us.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 