Friendship (7-19-2020)

Friendship Devotional: 7-19-20 Scripture: Proverbs 18:1 “An unfriendly person pursues selfish ends and against all sound judgment starts quarrels.” I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately. Wednesday I had a wonderful conversation with James, a Christian friend of mine who I got to know at the church I went to before I came here. We were talking about friendship and how we had both heard that friendship was the greatest form of love. We talked about disappointments and hurts we had had in friendships, and how forgiveness had mended some of those hurts. We spoke of church and how it helps friendships because it not only nurtures those relationships, but it points us to God in whom those friendships should exist. I told James of a series of talks I have been listening to on the subject of friendship by a famous Christian writer – we’ll call him Gus - who spoke of friendship as a union of two souls. Gus tells the story of a close friend of his whom he loved as if would never die, as if the love of that friendship would never die. But the friend did die and that left Gus feeling empty and in deep grief over his loss. He described the grief as if he had half a soul and that is why grief feels so awful. The problem was that Gus loved the friend as if that love was ultimate. Gus concluded that the only way to have a forever friend was to love the friend IN God. For God IS love. When you love a friend inside God, in the Holy Spirit, that kind of love cannot be lost. Gus said that he believed that the goal of friendship is happiness. That means happiness for you and happiness for the friend. And that if you had a friend only for what you could get out of it, that is not true friendship. You have to have the friend for the benefit of the friend. He said the friendship must be gratuitous. That is, your friendship must be given freely and without cost. But Gus had lost his friend whom he loved like a brother, so he concluded that, in life, happiness is fleeting. And Gus wanted an eternal love that brought eternal happiness. Finally Gus realized that God IS love and therefore the only real everlasting happiness is IN that love, that is, in God. It was great to have a guy friend like James with whom I could speak of such deep and meaningful things. And we both commented on how much our six year friendship meant to both of us. I told James that I felt very secure and happy with our friendship. He smiled and nodded. And part of the reason we agreed was because both of us had Jesus as our personal Savior. When we finished our conversation, we both said, “I love you” to each other – knowing exactly what that meant. This kind of friendship and love is a friendship IN God. I wanted to see what the Bible says about friendship and discovered that the Bible is full of all kinds of passages about friendship. Here are just a few: 1. One of my favorite passages is from Proverbs 22:24-25 “Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person, do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn their ways and get yourself ensnared.” 2. The 15th chapter of John shows that friendship is the goal of the gospel. Jesus gives all who trust him the privilege of being his friends. Jesus rescued us to forge an intimate relationship with God. And in the new creation we will enjoy true friendship with all other believers. Our future is a world of friendship, and God forgives us so that we might share a loving friendship or fellowship with him forever. John 15:14-15 and 17 in which Jesus says “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. [But then Jesus says:] 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. This is my command: Love each other. Think about the people who are ministering to those with COVID 19. Every day they’ve got a decision to make about whether they will put their own lives at risk to save others. Isn’t that the love of a friend? 3. According to first John 1:3-4 John says: “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.” Think of the cross: The vertical is fellowship with God + the horizontal is fellowship together with each other and both of those combined equal completed joy. Also Jesus wants us to view the cross in terms of friendship it is very personal, a relational act of friendship. 4. One source I read said that Jesus is our truest friend. Many Christians hesitate to call Jesus a friend. But Jesus doesn’t share our hesitations. And it matters to him that we embrace this. He invites us to understand our relationship in terms of friendship (John 15:12-17). Some think that because Jesus is our king, he cannot be our friend. But the Bible says Jesus is both: our glorious king --and --our greatest -- friend. https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/what-does-the-bible-say-about-friendship.html Drew Hunter (MA, Wheaton College) is the teaching pastor at Zionsville Fellowship in Zionsville, Indiana. He previously served as a minister for young adults at Grace Church of DuPage and taught religious studies at College of DuPage. Drew and his wife, Christina, live in Zionsville, Indiana, and have four children. Questions and Challenges • Who do you call your friends? Are they also friends in God? • What do you think about God being your friend? How do you feel about that? • In what ways have you laid down your life for your friends? Prayer Jesus, you are our king and friend. You taught us the meaning of true and eternal friendship. Help us to believe this with all of our hearts, reach into our hearts and transform them so that we will act like true friends to others, especially our fellow believers. We ask this in your name, Amen. 7-19-20 Devotional -final-draft