Dear Friends,
This past Sunday was the second Sunday since our congregation got swept up in the storm called Covid-19. For two weeks now we have not gathered and that’s how it will be for the foreseeable future. I hate it.
I think I’m supposed to be excited about seeing you all online and connecting with you from a distance. But I’m grieving the loss of seeing you, just running into you on campus, gathering with you, seeing you in the city– and now of not even saying proper goodbyes. This storm has swept us up and scattered us across the globe.
I’m realizing that I can’t do this Journey Through John as if I’m just expositing the Word of God in a timeless vacuum. So, I’m going to write to my Dear Friends. That’s what you are to me. Yes I know I have served as a pastor to you under the guidance of Jesus our Great Shepherd. But even there I have sought to treat you as friends.
My salvation testimony has its “event” prompted by the Holy Spirit when my my Sunday School teacher, Molly McCracken read from John 15:12-17. Even at 9, and even still, I am astonished that Jesus would call me a friend. It’s what I wanted at 9 and it’s what I enjoy now.
As friends transformed by Jesus, I wish I was better at friendship with you and with Him. But I hope that’s the yearning of the Spirit in me for the communion of God and with His saints.
I am eternally grateful to Jesus for choosing me. I pray often that He would choose you and that you would receive Him fully. There is tension in life for the friends of Jesus.
I believe John the Apostle was deeply aware of these tensions: the desire to treat all as friends of Jesus being stretched by the desire of God to transform all people through friendship with Him, and the reality that some people even though they have been granted the grace of God’s dignity towards them will not change their minds about HIm. Thus John writes that although Jesus came to those He created (the world) and those He had formed as His own (Israel) they did not recognize Him or receive Him. Yet…
12Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
John 1:11-13, NIV
I’m so grateful for this super work of God. To be born of God, by His will and not my own. To be born as a friend of God when I’m not all that great at friendship — amazing! This friends is our lot in Christ: we have been born of Him through the Holy Spirit-activated-act of seeing Jesus for who He is, and receiving Him for who He is. This is the will of our Heavenly Father — that we would be born of His will, not just our families’ will, but of His will!
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord Oh you friends of Jesus! Come all, come all and receive His friendship!
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father,
Even in your family you would have us act as friends of Jesus. Even in this world you would have us treat all as if they could be a friend of Jesus — even our enemies. Thank you for the grace of recognizing and receiving Jesus. We have been born of your will, not our own, not of our families’ will, not of our parents’ will, nor of our nation’s will, but of your will. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! May our spiritual birth into a life with you be full of awe and new mercies.
In Jesus Name,
Amen.
Our next reading will be: John 1:14-15
(Note to those receiving this as an email. Click through to my blog if you would like to view the reading as a video.)