I read the following in John 15:14-15 this morning:
“You show that you are my intimate friends when you obey all that I command you. I have never called you ‘servants,’ because a master doesn’t confide in his servants, and servants don’t always understand what the master is doing. But I call you my most intimate friends, for I reveal to you everything that I’ve heard from my Father. (The Passion Translation)
Let that sink in for a moment. I mean, really sink in. Jesus is telling us that He calls us His most intimate friends, because He reveals everything He’s heard from the Father.
We’ve all got friends, right? Some closer than others. Some might even be intimate friends. But how many of those intimate friends fit into the category Jesus includes us? I would venture to guess that if there are any, they are very few and far between.
We have the awesome privilege of walking so closely with Jesus that He is our intimate friend. We can link arms with Him and walk lock-step together, sensing every gentle nudge, hearing every whisper He speaks, following His wise counsel, and resting in the assurance that He has us in His grasp. If you stop to think, it would be pretty hard to disobey Him and go our own way when we’re linked up with Jesus, arm in arm.
Are you getting this?
Growing a relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ doesn’t happen when you take off and do your own thing. You can’t hear His voice when you’re out there pretending He doesn’t know what you’re up to. Come on, you know I’m right.
I don’t know about you, but I want to be as close to Jesus as I possibly can be. I want to feel Him sitting beside me when I am with family or friends, to sense Him looking over my shoulder when I am writing, to be in the car with me when I am driving somewhere. That doesn’t happen when I leave Him at the church after a Sunday service, and I don’t consider Him again until the next time I’m there.
JESUS. IS. REAL.
And He’s my Friend. He wants to be yours, too.
Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. – 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 (MSG)
Inside the Writer 