Thought for Wednesday, 6 September 2023

 James 4:4

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?

Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

Do you ever wonder how many true friends you have? It is a strange thing to be asking, I know, but last week I got a call from a nursing friend whom I had not heard from since she emigrated to Australia after she got married. Well, that is not true, we wrote back and forth for a while but that tailed off when babies started arriving. 

We all have friends we lose touch with when we, or they move away because of work or family reasons. Anyway, I picked up my phone and heard this voice with an accent I did not recognise, which intrigued me because it was familiar but strange, so I accepted it and was stunned to know it was Alison with an Aussie accent. Good old chin wag ensued.

This got me thinking, do we really appreciate our friends? More to the point, do we really appreciate the friendship we have in Jesus, or do we just take it for granted? 

Our heavenly Father, His Son and His Spirit is (are) the best friend(s) we will ever have. I have bracketed the autocorrect because this does not consider our great God as the three in one living God. What did we do to deserve the friendship of the one who is greater than the universe? Nothing, that’s what!!! We are sinners and we were still invited into the friendship circle of the only living God of creation.

God even solidified that friendship by sending Jesus to carry our sin to the cross so that we would be suitable friends for Him. How sad does He get when so many people shun God’s friendship and turn to worldly things instead.

How does God feel when He sees all this ‘woke, cancel’ culture? 

In Genesis 1: 27 we read that God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 

God did not create any more than two genders, so those who argue about there being more, obviously do not know the God I know,

Prayer

Lord God, You are the creator of all that is, and we thank You for our place in this world. Help us at this time to stand for truth and for the friendship You show toward us. We are sorry for the times we do not reciprocate this gift, thinking more of worldly things than our eternal soul being bound up in loyalty to You. Every good thing in our lives comes from You but we tend to take all that for granted, instead of feeling blessed to receive those gifts, despite not deserving them. We do thank You for Your friendship and constant presence in our lives. Amen