Friendship

"Divine Friendship always sets us free to become the people God wants us to be..." (Trevor Hudson, Beyond Loneliness, pg. 39).

"And the scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,' and he was called God’s friend" (James 2:23).

I had a small epiphany yesterday—the realization of something I should have known and probably did know way back in my heart of hearts but hadn't brought out to the light, to conscious thought, yet. For nearly twenty-four years as a pastor, I've noticed that every church has folks who are passionately in love with Jesus, who show up for everything, sign up for every Bible study and do their best to give their ten percent or more. As Christian comedian Mark Lowry once said of his family, they're the ones who show up even if the windows are going to be washed. They're the last ones out of the church after every event because they simply can't give enough of themselves to Jesus. (They might even spend time reading the pastor's blog several times a week.)

And then there are others. They are nice enough people. They believe in God, and have asked Jesus to be their savior. They do good things and will show up for worship, if nothing else is going on that day. They will usually donate to special causes. They're nice people, as long as things are going their way. But if it doesn't, they will likely fade into the background, disappear, perhaps go somewhere else or perhaps not. (And they probably don't care what the pastor has to say in his blog!)

Now, of course, these are over-exaggerations, caricatures. No person is "simply this or that." We're all a mixture, but I can tell you from my years of leading and pastoring churches that we have tendencies one way or the other. The old dictum that I heard growing up, how 80% of the work in the church is done by 20% of the people, turns out to be largely true! My epiphany yesterday was this: the reason that happens is because some folks accept Jesus as their savior but never allow him to become their friend.

That may be true today because we've devalued the word "friend." You know how it is. On social networks, we all have lots of "friends," much more (generally) than we ever interact with. So Facebook in particular allows you to designate what "kind" of friend a person is: close friend, acquaintance, or just a "friend." (You can also add other categories, if you so desire.) We've lost the real sense of friendship because when everyone is a "friend," then no one really is. And I believe that has affected our friendship with Jesus. We see him as savior, and we're grateful. But we don't see him as a friend, someone to spend time with, to cultivate a relationship with, to get to know better as the days and years go by. We keep him at a distance, so that he doesn't disrupt our lives (because real friends certainly disrupt our lives!). And we miss out, because those who see him and welcome him as a friend experience a whole new depth of life. As Hudson says in his book, "Knowing Jesus is more important than knowing about him" (pg. 46).

We need Jesus as our savior. He is our Lord. But he longs to be our friend, someone closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24). When we pursue that friendship, he changes everything.