John 15:15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” Today's Episode describes the fact that Jesus called us to be His friend. He died on the cross for us and to redeem our sins. We owe Him a debt that we could never pay. Yet, instead of treating us as servants who need to repay that debt, He invites us to be His friend. God is so good!! Music:"Adding the Sun"fine us. It is not fun, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
I Am A Friend Of Jesus
John 15:15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
This month in mentoring, the theme is identity. I think it is so important that we know who God says we are because this world is so crazy, and it tries to tell us all sorts of lies about how we are. The devil also whispers in our ears who he thinks we are, or at least who he wants us to believe that we are. These are all lies. God is the one who created us, and He is the only one who can tell us who we truly are. This month, on the podcast, I will be going through different scriptures that show us who God says we are. The more we know, the easier it is to dismiss the enemy's lies.
In today’s scripture, Jesus calls us friends. Did you know God thinks you are His friend? I don’t know how many of us actually know that. Many people I have talked to think of God as more of a disciplinarian. They see Him as an old man looking down on us from heaven and judging us for all we are doing wrong. We picture Him just shaking His head at all that we are doing. We think He is up there waiting for us to screw up like we always do so that He can punish us. Is this how you think of God? If so, you are not alone, I have heard this from many people.
Maybe this isn’t the view you have of God. Maybe you know that He is kind and merciful. Yet, you still don’t think of yourself as His friend. I mean, He is God, and you are….well, you. You are just a human. What could you possibly have to offer to God or to this friendship? In this verse, God is telling us that he no longer calls us slaves, for slaves don’t know what the master is doing. In the time when the Bible was written and in the language it was written, the word that was used is similar to servant. This is a term we tend to be more comfortable with. It is easier to think of ourselves as God’s servants. We owe Him everything and we want to serve Him. We are happy to serve Him.
However, Jesus tells us in this verse that we are not servants; we are His friends. In Jesus’s day, a slave or servant was somebody who repaid a debt to their master by serving them. Slaves didn’t necessarily make major decisions on important matters. They were workers who just did what their employer told them to do. They were not considered equal, and they were not told why they were doing what they were doing. They were just told what they needed to do. In today’s verse, Jesus tells us that he has called us friends because He has shared with us all things that He heard from His Father. Jesus is not calling us to do whatever He tells us blindly. He is telling us all the Father is telling Him, and then He is inviting us to help Him in His mission of spreading the Gospel to the world.
I was a bit confused with the beginning of this verse because it says, “You are no longer slaves.” I was wondering what this meant. When were we slaves? What I found when I researched it a bit is that we were slaves/servants because Jesus sacrificed His life so that we might be set free. He took our sins to the cross for Him. That is a debt that we will never be able to pay back. As I said earlier, a servant was someone who repaid their debt by serving them. Jesus didn’t want us serving Him out of a sense of obligation. Jesus did not want to leave us in this Master/Servant relationship. Jesus invited us to be His friend. He invited us to follow Him and to be a part of all that He was doing. Not because we have to but because we want to.
What does it mean to be a friend to Jesus? When I looked this up online, I found the following: To be a friend of Jesus means to love and obey Jesus and to love and be good to others. There, it listed four attributes of a friend of Jesus.
Loyalty and obedience - Jesus said, "You are my friends if you do what I command you" (John 15:14).
Love others - Jesus said, "But I am giving you a new command. You must love each other, just as I have loved you" (John 13:34-35).
Live a holy life - This means living a life that glorifies God, worships Christ, and rejects Satan.
Serve your community - You can serve your neighborhood or community together with your church or a local ministry.
I also an article (CLICK HERE for article) about a woman who was saying that she had forgotten how important friends are to a Christian. For a while, she forgot this, and she forgot who she was in a basic way. She was fully immersed in survival—moving four times in 5 years, having twins, homeschooling older children—she had no bandwidth to be concerned with anyone outside her immediate family. Then one day her daughter signed up to be in a production of the Wizard of Oz and this came with a mandatory 12 hours of volunteering from the parents. She resented this mandatory commitment, but soon realized how much she needed friendship and connection with other people.
She states in the article that she learned that friendship expresses principles of Christ’s own affection for me. Friendship is a form of communion, where we meet Christ's own love for us. This is why friendship is not extra for the Christian. She then listed the things she has learned from making friends as a grown-up.
Friendship reminds us that we are not alone, but that love is at the core of our identity.
Friendship is a mirror. Friendship reminds us of who we are. Her friends refuse to see her as the sum of her weaknesses and failures. They literally tell her, “I see that you are more than that.”
Friendship reminds us that we are acceptable, that we are lovable. Acceptance liberates us to face the truth about ourselves, the full truth about who God has made us to be.
Friendship reminds us that love is gratuitous and surprising. God gives us to one another and He knows what will bless us. Some friends you wouldn’t have picked for yourself are given to you as gifts.
The author invites you to ask the Lord, over the next few days, to show you why friendship matters so much to Him. Then, step forward in faith. Perhaps you can simply start by adding a friend event to your calendar. Perhaps you could shift your energy from social media friendships to one or two actual, embodied friendships. Dare to believe that Jesus desires the joy of friendship for you, that His “joy may be in you and your joy may be perfect” (John 15:11).
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to help us accept that you want to be our friend. I ask you to help move that knowledge from our heads to our hearts. Lord, we love you, and we are happy to serve you. However, we struggle to believe you want to be our friend. We struggle to believe we are worthy to be your friend. Please help us, Lord. Please help us to see that you are inviting us into a partnership with you. Please help us to accept that partnership, that friendship. We ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I want to wish you a Happy New Year! If you did not listen to the last episode, I want you to invite to give it a listen. It talks about how to live this upcoming year more intentionally. It is good to have a plan as to how we will grow closer to the Lord this year instead of just hoping it will happen. One opportunity to grow that is available to you is my mentoring group. It is a way to spend an hour each week intentionally learning and growing closer to the Lord. Maybe give it a try and see what you think. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “This longing I have given you, it is my gift to you. It is a longing I have promised from of old, from ancient times, and it is a longing that I promise into the future. It is a promise that I keep. You have nothing to fear, for the God who keeps this promise is your Lord and Savior.”