As we sing: Count your blessings, let us think of our friends and thank God for them.
=========================================
Scripture Reading: John 15:10-15
If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.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.
==========================================
As we go into a time of prayer let us sing with a thankful heart: What A Friend
Please pray this prayer with me, putting in the name/names of those who you love and care for.
Lord, I give you (name) and thank you for them. I thank you for everything that they are And for all their gifts and talents. I thank you for the many things that they have given to others And for all the kindness that they have shown me. Lord, at the beginning of time You breathed Your life into creation May you breathe Your life into them now So that each step they take is filled with Your faith Each thought they think is filled with Your hope and each moment they live is filled with Your love. May they fully know Your life And fully live in Your love This day and every day. Amen
Dear Heavenly Father, You give good gifts to Your children, and friendship is one of the very best. Thank You for my friends. Friends who encourages me, sharpens me, and understands me in a way that many do not. May our friendships bring You glory as we strengthen each other for the Kingdom work to which You’ve called each of us.
It’s in the Name of my Saviour Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
Let us share together in the Lords Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
============================================
Every time we face problems, every time we are hurt or full of anxiety our friend Jesus
brings so many blessing into our lives and we thank him for them. Let us place everything and everyone in his care and sing with devotion: Be Still
====================================
A friend in need is a friend indeed
Jesus did some amazing things. One of the things He did was to call together a rag-tag little band of 12 disciples to be His closest friends. In fact, His relationship with them, when you think about it, is quite surprising in many ways. But if He had not drawn together those friends, there’s every chance that you and I wouldn’t be sitting here together with Jesus today.
I want us to think about friendships today. Awesome thing friendship! Just stop and think about it for a moment. Friends make our world richer. They come in with their different perspectives and gifts and abilities and passions to connect with us. And somehow having friends alongside us and being a friend alongside them, Its just an awesome thing.
I know that sometimes we rub each other the wrong way, but that’s all part of life with all its complexities. And If you didn’t rub me up the wrong way at times, I wouldn’t learn how to forgive. If I didn’t rub you up the wrong way, you wouldn’t learn to forgive either.
I believe that friendships are part of God’s plan. Right in the beginning God looked at Adam and pronounced:
It’s not good that this man should be alone, I’ll make him a helper as his partner.
I believe that friendships, are truly important in living our lives as God planned. So what is friendship? For one, its having a preparedness for us to humble ourselves, to love one another in exactly the same way that we love ourselves. King Saul’s son, Jonathan, humbled himself to the point of death to be David’s friend. And that reminds me of another Son, who humbled himself unto death, the Son of God. So let’s take a look at how friendship played itself out in His life.
Jesus was born a baby in Bethlehem. He grows up in Nazareth in humble surroundings as a carpenter’s son. I’m sure he would have had friends as a boy. And then one day it’s time for Him to step out of His role as a carpenter’s son to begin His public ministry. Not long after that He starts to call some Disciples to His side. Now, He had lots of disciples, a disciple was someone who followed a Rabbi and Jesus the Rabbi had lots and lots of them. He was doing all these amazing miracles; He was speaking in ways that people didn’t expect. Listen to Matthew Chapter 4:
Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their Synagogues and proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So His fame spread throughout all Syria and they brought all the sick: those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains and demoniacs and epileptics and paralytics and He cured them. And great crowds followed Him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and from beyond the Jordon.
He had hundreds of disciples, but out of those hundreds, he chose just twelve to be his closets disciples. Matthew Chapter 10:
These are the names of the twelve Apostles: first Simon also known as Peter, then his brother Andrew; James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Phillip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus; Simon the Cananaean; and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Him.
He did that because He knew that if His ministry was going to live on beyond His time here on earth, if the coming of the Son of God was going to have an impact hundreds of years on … thousands of years on and more, He was going to have to pass on His passion and His teaching to a handful of others – people who would pass it on to more and more across the world and down through the ages.
You see, Jesus knew that ultimately it was friendship that was going to change the world. Just stop and think about it. Doesn’t that just blow your mind? The Church exists today, God’s Word is being preached today, lives are being transformed today, people are meeting Jesus today, you and I are sitting here today because friendship was and remains the cornerstone of God’s plan to reconcile people back to Him. Just let that sink in.
Friendship isn’t something kind of a side story. It’s the main story. We don’t often think of that, do we? These Disciples lived with Jesus, travelled with Jesus, were admonished by Jesus, watched how the Son of God handled Himself, saw His miracles – all this happened because He drew them close to Himself. Yes, he was their Rabbi, but more importantly, he was their friend. They were His learners which is, literally what the word “disciple” means – to be a learner. And they lived with Him on the road for the best part of 3 years. Just stop and have a listen to what Jesus says to His Disciples – His learners, about His friendship with them. John Chapter 15 beginning at verse 12:
He said, “This is My commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are My friends if you do as I command you. I don’t call you servants anymore because the servant doesn’t know what the Master is doing, but I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from My Father. You didn’t choose Me, but I chose you and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for in My name.”
Wow! No longer were they students. In love they had become Jesus’ friends. And because they were His friends, He was going to show them the greatest act of friendship, the greatest act of love, by literally laying down His life for them. He was opening a relationship with His Father to them by telling, revealing to them what God was all about in sending Jesus to live, to walk, to speak, to heal, to suffer, to die, to rise again here on earth.
God sent Jesus to be their friend. God sent Jesus to be our friend. It was in what the Holy Spirit revealed to them about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that God’s family, the Church, was born on this earth and now lives on in the lives of billions of people to this very day. And by making these Disciples His friends, by making us His friends, you and me, through this amazing sacrifice of His, He is now calling us as a direct result and consequence of His friendship demonstrated in the greatest love that any man or woman can show. He’s calling us to go and bear fruit; to go and change the world; to go and be Jesus to a lost and hurting world in desperate need of knowing about and experiencing the amazing love, the amazing friendship of God through Jesus Christ.
Do you get it? Have you put your trust in Jesus yet? If the answer’s “Yes”, then you are His friend, no longer an enemy of God, not only His servant, but His friend, blessed through the greatest act of friendship in all of History – the death and resurrection of Jesus the Son of God, for you. Set free, forgiven by the price He paid for you and your sin upon that cross. Set free to live a new life through His victory over death with the door to the eternal love and friendship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, flung open. The welcome mat put out, the table set, so that forever you can fellowship with your God.
Now if that isn’t a model of friendship for you and me to live out here on earth, then I don’t know what is. And it all started when God called you and He called me to be His friends. It all started because first He loved us. That’s what friendship is.
Friendship takes the first step and if you have never responded to that friendship, then let me encourage you to make a simple prayer right now to God and accept Jesus as your Saviour, to accept Jesus as your Lord, to accept Jesus as your Friend. And God will be your friend from this moment forward, for eternity.
===================================
God has brought so many blessing into our lives and we thank him for them. Let us place everything and everyone in his care and sing with devotion: Majesty, worship his Majesty.
The Lord bless thee and keep thee
The Lord make His face to shine upon thee
And be gracious unto thee
The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee
Comments