A Friend of Jesus

Your friends are your chosen family. Your real family has to put up with your quirks and shortcomings. You don’t get to choose your brothers, sisters, mother, father, relatives, and children. You’re just born into the same family and that’s that. Whether you like each other or not, you’re family. Friends are different. They chose you. They accept you despite all your faults. They don’t have to, but they do it anyway because they love you. One way that I can always tell whether or not I really trust someone is if I’m able to be honest with them. I’m not afraid of fully being myself in front of the people who call me their best friend, because I know that they’ll stick by my side through thick and thin. They’re those people that I’m brave enough to tell my deepest, darkest feelings to. However, there’s only one who truly loves us through it all; one who will never let us down and his name is Jesus.

Most people have heard Christians call Jesus their God, their king, their savior, and their father, but what about their friend? Is it possible that that same God who spoke the world into being and placed the moon and stars in the night sky wants to be our friend? If you’re like me, this might seem like heresy to you at first. Calling Jesus your friend makes you think that I’m trying to belittle him and bring him down to our level or maybe it just sounds weird. You’re trying to picture Jesus sitting with you and your friends at your lunch table eating greasy criteria food and laughing about that awkward time in English class when your teacher tried to read out loud a rap song. But for some reason, you just can’t picture Jesus as a high school student with acne and bad social skills. And no, Jesus is not your peer. He’s not just another teenage boy trying to barge his way into your group of girlfriends. He’s so much more than that and he deserves our reverence and respect. However, just because he is our Lord and king, doesn’t mean he can’t also be our friend.

In the book of Exodus, it says, “...the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend…,” (Exodus 33: 11). God spoke to Moses like a friend and he wants to do the same with us. Jesus didn’t lay down his life so that we could just read our Bible and go to church on Sunday and try to obey his commands. True, these are all good things, and he wants us to do them, but that’s just the beginning of what it means to be a Christian. He died so that we could be with him; so that we could freely enter into his presence. In the book of Exodus, God has the Isrealites make a tent as their temple where they kept the ark of the covenant, the symbol of their covenant with God. The ark was a golden box with two angels on it. The tent was divided into two separate rooms by a thick curtain. The second room farthest from the main entrance to the temple was called the “Holy of Holies” where the ark or the covenant stood. The spirit of The Lord rested on the ark so that when you entered the room, you would be face to face with God like Moses. Only Aaron, Moses’ older brother, and his descendants were allowed to enter this room and even they had to enter with the right clothing and follow a set of other complicated rituals to be able to enter the room safely. Two of Aaron’s own sons were killed because they entered the Holy of Holies without permission and burned the wrong kind of offerings in the presence of God (Leviticus 16: 1 - 2). Whenever a priest would enter the Holy of Holies, they would tie a rope to their ankle so that if they messed up and died, the other people could drag their body out without having to enter the room themselves. Because of our sin we couldn't enter into the presence of God. The curtain separating the main part of the temple from the Holy of Holies symbolizes the barrier between us and God.

The Apostle Paul puts it this way, “for everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sin,” (Romans 3: 23 - 24). We couldn’t come to God, so he came to us. It says in the book of Matthew, “Then Jesus shouted out again, and he released his spirit. At that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two…,” (Matthew 27: 50 - 51). The curtain was torn in two. The barrier between us and God has been completely destroyed and we can enter his presence no matter who we are, where we came from, and what we have done.

This isn’t just an invitation to our church’s weekly Bible study. It’s an invitation to talk to the living God face to face; to become a friend of Jesus. He doesn’t want a list of do’s and don'ts. He wants your heart. King David wrote, “The Lord is a friend to those who fear him. He teaches them his covenant,” Psalm 25: 14). David was ahead of his time. Even though he died about a thousand years before the birth and death of Jesus, he knew that God wanted his heart. God himself called David “a man after (his) own heart,” (1 Samuel 13: 14). He wasn’t perfect; in fact he was far from it. At the lowest point in his life, he stole another man’s wife and then murdered him, but he was a friend of Jesus. He knew God on a deeply personal, intimate level and he was in love with him. He wrote, “because you are my helper, I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings,” (Psalm 63: 7).

Jesus wants to be your best friend. He wants to cry with you and he wants to laugh with you. He wants to share your joy and feel your pain. All you have to do is listen and he will speak. Cry out to him, and he will answer. Run to him and he will embrace you with open arms. There’s no reason to wait or hold back. He wants you just as you are.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about The C.A.N Sisters’ Ministry, leave a comment below, check out our website, or email us at cansistersministry@gmail.com.