Is Jesus Your Friend?

Today’s hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, is familiar to many people. I think I might have mentioned in a previous blog post that one of the most interesting and sometimes difficult to comprehend aspects of how Jesus is revealed to us in the Bible is the combination of Jesus being a friend and a Lord. In my life it has not been the case that someone I work for is also a close and dear friend. How do I balance the truth of Jesus as friend and also Jesus as Master and Lord? Do I even need to try to balance this or just accept it and live with the connection? Of course, the primary point of this hymn is not the friendship of Jesus by itself but how that friendship moves me to pray. Prayer is really the main emphasis of this hymn. The idea is that we have a friend in Jesus who loves us and who wants to bear, and is able to bear all of our sins and grief, all of our uncertainties. This hymn exhorts us to pray and to pray often. I wonder if seeing Jesus not only as a Lord but as a friend would encourage us to pray? I think this would be the case. A friend is genuinely interested in me in a way that a supervisor would not be. A friend is willing to sacrifice for me in a way that a supervisor or “Lord” might not be.

Please spend a few moments thinking about Jesus as “friend”. Jesus is with you wherever you go. Jesus is alive and active in your life; not only as a Master and Lord but also as a friend. Jesus is perhaps the epitome of the benefit of having “friends in high places”. That is a wonderful combination.