"You did not choose me, but I chose you to go and bear fruit — fruit that will last."
Have you ever really thought about the fact that you were CHOSEN of God? In His infinite mercy, you were one of the people He chose to serve Him! I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel very humble. Especially when I look closely at myself and who I am without Jesus. Sort of makes me wonder what He was thinking!
But then, take a look at the other people chosen of God. Take a close look… David , His beloved, was a real pain in the neck. Besides all of the other things David did that were evil, he even resorted to having Bathsheba’s husband killed to cover up the fact that David had gotten her pregnant! Then there’s Samson, who not only had a serious lust problem, but who made Rambo look like a calm, quiet, submissive individual! And look at Peter, old open-his-mouth-only-to-change-feet-prior-to-engaging-brain himself. Amazing that God would choose him to be one of the leaders of the early church! And what about Paul? He spent most of his time persecuting Christians, even killing them – that is, before Jesus demanded his attention. Not what you would call a desirable person, was he?
But God knew that each of these men could serve Him and serve Him well. God sees into our hearts. He knows us better than we will ever know ourselves. Today, praise God that He chose you to be one of His servants, and commit to bearing the fruit in your life that He wants you to bear.
"You did not choose me, but I chose you to go and bear fruit — fruit that will last."
One of the reasons true friendships take time to develop is that you and I have been hurt. We hold other people at arm’s length, fearful that if we let them get too close, we’ll be hurt again. "If I tell you who and what I really am, you might go away." To begin breaking down that barrier requires risks. To help someone else break down that barrier, we must cultivate faithfulness.
Jesus takes a risk each time He calls someone to be His friend. He chooses us. We don’t choose Him. He lays Himself open and vulnerable. He risks His reputation each time He allows someone to call himself a Christian. He places His name and who He will appear to be to the world in our hands. That is an incredible risk! But He loves us enough to take that risk.
You and I take an incredible risk each time we open ourselves to a developing friendship. We risk our feelings. We risk our reputations. We risk the intimate details of our lives. It’s a scary thing to open yourself up to someone new, to take a chance on that person hurting you, to take a chance on that person betraying you. But if we are to emulate Jesus, we must be willing to take the same kind of risk that He does – to risk everything in favor of gaining a friend.
Once Jesus has taken that risk, He begins to show us His faithfulness. Time after time, He shows us that He stands by His Word and will always fulfill every promise He makes… that He will always be there when we need Him… that He loves us more than we can possibly conceive… and through His faithfulness, we learn to trust Him.
Do you show this same kind of faithfulness to your friends? Do you always stand by what you say to them? Do you keep every promise? Are you there when your friends need you? Or do you let your answering machine take your calls because you’d rather watch TV than listen to someone else’s problems? Do you love your friends no matter what they do? Can you be trusted to keep a secret? How faithful are you?
If you and I are to have the kind of friendships with others that Jesus intends, we must follow His example in all ways. We must allow ourselves to be vulnerable… we must take risks… and we must commit ourselves to be faithful to our friends, just as He is always faithful to us.
"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."
One of the primary things Jesus taught us about friendship is that it takes time. Jesus made this statement near the end of His ministry, after spending three long years with his disciples. He was with them night and day, traveling with them, eating every meal with them, sleeping near them - twenty-four hours a day. And yet, it took three years of this close companionship for Him to call these men His friends.
In the alternative, you and I call most anyone our friend. If we’ve had more than one conversation with someone and know his first and last name, we refer to him as our friend. It’s a common thing to hear a person refer to most anyone as his or her friend. Rather than saying, "I know a man who…", we say, "I have a friend who…" Because none of us really knows the definition of friend… or we ignore the true meaning of the word.
It takes time to develop that close, intimate relationship we all crave so much… the one that Jesus called friendship. It takes nurturing and cultivating for a friendship to grow. It takes testing and retesting for a friendship to prove itself to be real. It takes caring and understanding, sharing and loving, faithfulness and dependability, and many, many other things for a true friendship to grow.
It is only through Jesus’ example that you and I can learn what it really means to be a friend. It is only through allowing Jesus to get close to us and show us how much of a friend He really is that we can learn how a friendship develops. It is only through practicing Jesus’ kind of friendship that you and I can truly be friends.
"You are my friends if you do what I command."
Most of us are very good at being helpful. We enjoy doing things for other people. We enjoy meeting their needs. But when it comes to asking for help…. well, that’s where we draw the line. We don’t ask for help because we want the world to think we’ve got it all together. We don’t have any problems. We don’t have any needs. We can handle it.
This very attitude is one of the primary qualities that cause our friendships to be shallow and one-sided. We give and give and give, but we don’t allow others to give back. We’ll be the first to offer to loan our lawnmower when our neighbor’s breaks, but when ours breaks, we’d rather go rent one than to ask to borrow our neighbor’s. We think nothing of it if our neighbor is in the middle of baking and runs out of eggs. Of course we’ll give her a couple of eggs! But if we’re in the middle of baking and run out of eggs, we’ll let the batter spoil while we go all the way to the grocery store rather than run next door and ask to borrow a couple of eggs.
Friendships - true, deep, intimate friendships - have to involve give… and take. We enjoy the blessings of giving. We have to learn to enjoy the blessings of taking. (Which, by the way, allows our friends to enjoy the blessings of giving!) Jesus is deeply involved with you and me - and it’s a two-sided relationship. He gives, and He takes. We give, and we take. Learn to pattern all of your relationships by His example.
"You are my friends…"
One of the greatest needs we have is friendship. One of the greatest difficulties we have is that we don’t know how to be friends. Most of us spend our lives in a continually lonely state, wishing for friends…. wishing for that close, intimate relationship we all crave so desperately. But friendship is something for which we have no training… we’re convinced that we don’t have a good role model. So our friendships are on a very superficial level, never reaching that intimacy that is essential to true friendship.
Most of us fail to realize that we DO have a role model – the best role model in the world. We do have a pattern to follow, if we’ll only look in the right direction. Friendship is a dynamic that Jesus brought when He created the world…. a need He put into each of us to have deep, personal relationships with others. Through each and every thing He does, Jesus illustrates to us how we can have that kind of deep, intimate relationship. So the only way we can truly know how to be a friend is to use Jesus as our role model.
Let’s look at some of the qualities Jesus shows us that are qualities of a friend…
First of all, He laid down His life for us. Part of being a friend is being willing to "lay down your life" for that friend… and this doesn’t necessarily mean to physically die for your friends. It also means to put aside your personal needs and wants in favor of the needs and wants of your friend.
Another quality is faithfulness. Jesus is always there, always beside us, never turning away when things get bad. We can always depend on Jesus. Our friends should always be able to depend on us.
Jesus shares His deepest thoughts with us, the intimate details of His heart. This, too, is part of being a friend - sharing our lives with others in a deep and intimate way.
Then there is love. Unconditional love. Jesus’ love for you and me doesn’t go away when we sin. He doesn’t stop loving us when we fail Him. He doesn’t stop loving us when we embarrass Him. He doesn’t stop loving us when we don’t love Him back. Our love for our friends must be unconditional, too. What is true, unconditional love… the kind of unconditional love Jesus gives to us? It is not an emotion… it is a conscious commitment of your will to do whatever is in the best interest of the other person, no matter how you feel about it or how it will affect you. That’s the kind of love Jesus demonstrated for us on the cross, in that while we were yet sinners, He died for us. He voluntarily went to the cross for you and for me, even though He really didn’t want to (Luke 22:41-44), and even though He knew how unimaginable the pain of the cross would be.
These are just a few of the many ways that Jesus shows us how to be a friend. If we use Him as our role model, we can be the kind of friend to others that He is to us. Are you a Jesus kind of friend to others? Think about it.
"My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
Part of loving someone is helping him get through the hard times. So after you have prayed for someone, you can go and encourage him. Telling someone you have prayed for him gives him courage. But standing beside him through his trial gives him even more. Knowing someone cares gives a person courage… it gives him strength to carry on.
You can’t stop someone’s divorce, or cure his cancer, or keep him from being laid off from work, or find him another job, or pay all his bills, or stop his pain. But you can let him know that you are there. You can let him know you are praying for him and that you care. You can turn off that television set and go visit someone who is having a hard time. You can forget about your own chores and show up at that divorced woman’s house and mow her lawn and handle those little repairs she needs so desperately around the house… or just take her children out for the afternoon and give her a few hours of quiet. You can go with a friend to the doctor’s office to get his test results. Having a friend in the waiting room makes it so much easier. There are so many things you can do for your friends if you’ll just "lay down your life" - put aside your personal desires and activities in favor of doing something for your friend.
Another way to encourage someone is to ask for his help. Some years ago, I was in the hospital for surgery for suspected cancer. In fact, I learned after the fact that prior to surgery, my doctor thought I was a dead woman with only weeks to live. Understandably, I was deeply disturbed by my situation. The night before the surgery, a friend came to visit me in the hospital… but instead of talking about my situation, she asked me for advice about something that was happening in her life. We spent nearly an hour discussing her problem and sorting it out. Suddenly, she apologized for troubling me with her problem at a time like that. But I told her, "No. Don’t apologize. You have helped me greatly by allowing me to turn my focus off of myself and toward you and your needs. Thank you for encouraging me so much by asking for my advice."
How much does it encourage you when someone comes to you and asks for your advice? How much does it encourage you to know someone trusts you that much? How much does it encourage you when someone confides in you? God set the example for us with Abraham. When He was about to destroy Sodom , He confided in Abraham, telling him what He was about to do. (Genesis 18) And He allowed Abraham to give his opinion on the matter. Notice, He did not confide in Lot . God confided in Abraham. Because just as He says in Psalm 25:14 (NIV), "The LORD confides in those who fear Him."
Follow the Lord’s example. Encourage your friends by letting them know you’re there, that you are praying for them. Encourage your friends by "laying down your life" for them… and encourage them by turning to them for help.
“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked this question: “Why are we here?” The answer is very simple. We are here for only one reason – to bring glory to God.
Awesome, isn’t it? We are not here to achieve great things for humanity. We are not here to tithe. We are not here to be great teachers, or doctors, or lawyers, or clerks, or mechanics. We are not here to build huge church buildings, or write great books, or drill profitable oil wells. If we are selfish in our aims, all our efforts will bring us is compliments from man… and we will have received our entire reward.
But our reward is so much greater than that. We are here for one very simple, basic reason – to bring glory to God. Our reward is to spend eternity with Him.
If we do all of the things we do with that in mind, then the efforts listed above and all others like them will do simply that - they will bring glory to God. And we will receive the blessings of the promise Jesus made in John 15:7 - all that we ask will be done for us. That’s a promise He will keep, because IF we are abiding in Him… IF we are totally and intimately involved with Him… everything we ask will be within His will. And, obviously, if it’s within His will, it will be done.
Awesome, isn’t it?