Learning to be a friend

John 15:9-17 (NIV)
⁹ "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
¹⁰ 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.
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, that he lay down his life for his 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.
¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.
¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

Most of have aquaintances but few friends...pity the person who has no friends.  Friendships can be fickle at times.
The idea of being God's friend might seem a bit "out of our league".
It's like saying I'm Aaron Rodger's friend, or President Obama's friend (OK, relax all that don't like  the President as a President).  It would seem preposterous for anyone to tell us they were friends of these kind of people.  We think of friends as "best", or "close", when we want to make a point of what they mean to us.

SO, God's friend?

James 2:23 (NIV)
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.

Jesus says, "I want you to love one another, and lay down your lives for each other and in the process of all of that you'll discover that you are my friends."
Jesus' relationship with his disciples seems to take a turn.  He is no longer calling himself the "Master", "Rabbi", but rather Friend.  It was an important distinction, because it leveled any sense of hierarchy and brought the relationship to a peer level.
I don't think the disciples thought for a second that they were Jesus' peers - but the fact that he would put their relationship on that level changed everything.

Yet, how is it possible to have that kind of friendship with God, and with others?

Jesus says:
"I have loved...remain in my love."
"Obey my commands, remain in my love."
"My joy is meant to be within you..."
"Love one another as I have shown you love."


All of these are crucial aspects of that kind of real love that leads to friendships.  Friendships love, look out for, challenge, don't let things go, "knows what's going on" behind the scenes.  For most people that seems more than they can allow in their lives, so people stay only as acquaintances, and not friends.
People remain acquaintances because we never move beyond the surface life.  We keep others at bay closing them off from the more difficult parts of who we are.  We put on a face and protect the interior of our soul from being revealed.
No wonder we have a difficult time believing God wants to be our friend.
Dr. J Oswald Sanders said it this way:  "We are as close to God as each of us chooses to be."


Can we believe that God wants us to choose friendship with him?  That he welcomes our desire to grow, to learn about being his friend?  That he does not sit in judgment but rather seeks to share life in love with us?
Learning to be God's friend might seem impossible, but the reality is, that's what he delights in our lives to be - learning to be his friend.

Peace