Lord, what do you have in store for me today? I surrender my life, heart and time to you? As I engage in your Word Lord I surrender the ears of my heart to You. Thank You for loving me – help me listen well. Amen John 15: 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
To be called a friend is a special thing! Jesus says He calls us friends.
I recently observed friendship in action. Two men who I know well that are a little older than me have become best friends over the last several years. In fact I had a little to do with them getting together and building a relationship. One got sick, the other was a friend – the kind of friend that sees you at your best and at your worst and still loves you. As I saw these two men in action – one in need the other being there doing whatever was needed – I witnessed some of what Jesus is talking about. Friends love deeply, serve each other, don’t hide from one another but are transparent with each other. Jesus entrusted to these men who He now called friends the deepest things of His heart, “for everything that I learned from My Father I have made know to You!”
It is amazing to me that my God has chosen to be so transparent with me and to love me into friendship with Him. I do want to live deeply into that level of friendship with God today and let that spill over into the friendship relationships I have with other people.
Today, I think I need to be thankful and joyful as I relish in the friendship Jesus ha s offered me as undeserving as I am. I also sense a calling to “be a friend” deeply and significantly to some very important people in my life. I get to be befriended by my God today and I get to be a friend to the people around me today.
Enjoy friendship with Jesus today and notice the friends He has brought around you!
delton