No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. (John 15: 15, NKJV).
Dear God, How wonderful it is to know that we have Friends in heavenly places! May we prove faithful to You as we live our lives before a “cloud of witnesses.” This we ask in the precious name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Our title for today’s devotional is the title of a much loved and well known hymn. It is an exclamation, as we stand in awe at the fact that Jesus, the Son of the Most High God, should call us friends! This is such a honor and a privilege. The greater our concept of what a friend is, the greater will be our appreciation of Christ’s friendship.
Jesus placed quite a high value on friendship when He said the following: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 13: 15). Then He modeled it by laying down His life, not only for His friends, but even for those who had made themselves His enemies.
For a few days I would like us to meditate on some of the thoughts expressed in this hymn. The first stanza encloses a thought that always calls my attention; perhaps because it speaks to the reality of the human experience. “O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer” (Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, pg. 499).
Isn’t that what we do? We bear pains that we had no need to bear, at least not alone, or so long. But because we are so bent on fixing things ourselves, we carry these burdens until oftentimes they result in physical maladies, and when we, or no one else can fix them, we take them to God in prayer.
I think of the lady with the flow of blood for twelve years. This is what Luke had to say about her: “Now a woman, having a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any, came from behind and touched the border of His (Jesus’) garment. And immediately her flow of blood stopped” (Luke 8: 43, 44. Emphasis provided).
Twelve years suffering. Twelve years, most likely, separated from family and friends. Twelve years of being considered unclean, “all because we do not carry [our infirmities, our relationships, our depressions,] to the Lord in prayer.” When she finally decided to go to Jesus, when nothing else worked, the happy ending of her story goes like this: “she was healed immediately” (47, last part).
You will notice that I said the happy ending of her story; that is because there are other kinds of happy endings whenever we take everything to God in prayer.
We will continue the conversation.
“What A Friend We Have in Jesus”!