Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Friends with Jesus

In these magnificent post-Easter days I have been reading through some of the Farewell Discourses which have such resonance with Easter.  Like John 16:16 when he warns the disciples that 'for a little while they will not see him' but will know weeping and mourning while the world rejoices. 'You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy'.  Oh, yes1
And I have been especially struck again by the transformation they will undergo.  'I do not call you servants any longer....but I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father' (John 15:15).
This claim has been running through my head these past few days:  Michael, I have called you friend!


However, in the way these things happen, this Scripture hit me at the same time as I reached a meditation in Oswald Chambers.
If we are the friends of Jesus we have deliberately and carefully to lay down our life for Him.  It is difficult, and thank God it is!  When once the relationship of being the friends of Jesus is understood, we shall be called upon to exhibit to everyone we meet the love He has shown to us.  Watch the kind of people God brings across your path, you will find it is His way of picturing to you the kind of person you have been to him.  'Exhibit to that mean, selfish person exactly the love I showed you when you were mean and selfish'.The thing that keeps us going is to recognize the humour of our heavenly Father in it all, and we shall meet the disagreeable person with a spiritual chuckle because we know what God is doing.  He is giving us a mirror that we may see what we have been like towards Him; now we have the chance to prove ourselves His friends and the other person will be amazed and say - "Why the more I annoy her, the sweeter she gets!" and will tumble in where we tumbled in, into the grace of God.
Oh to be that kind of friend, walking in resurrection power!
 

1 comment:

DSS said...

Thanks for this. Much needed.