FRIENDSHIP WORTH ONLY A GALLON OF WATER

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor…(Romans 12:10).

Thomas Edison lived on an estate that had a huge fence surrounding his property. In the front of the fence was a massive iron gate that anyone who came to visit him would have to push open and then push closed. It required such a great deal of strength to maneuver the gate back and forth, that eventually one of Edison’s friends complained about it and told him he needed to fix it so it would open easier.

“With a twinkle in his eye, Thomas Edison took the man to the back of his house and showed him an elaborate mechanical device he had built with a combination of levers and pulleys and pumps. He then took the man to the roof of the house and said, ‘What you don’t know is that everybody who comes to see me and opens and closes that gate automatically pumps a gallon of water into the tank on top of my house’” (Swetmon. Friendship Potential).

When I read that I had to ask myself the question, “Am I the kind of friend who has to get a ‘gallon of water’ before I let you in?” Or am I the kind of friend Jesus was to His friends: “This is My commandment that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12-13). How many friends do we have that we would lay down our lives for? It should be ALL of them!

…By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked…The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him (1 John 2:5-6, 10).

That kind of friendship is truly worth more than a gallon of water!

The Friend of Sinners

The Son of Man has come eating and drinking; and you say, “Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax-gathers and sinners (Luke 7:34).

The rumor circulating around town was that Jesus was a drunkard and a glutton and that He kept company with the kind of riff-raft that no self-respecting rabbi would be caught dead with. And how did He get that reputation? It’s called guilt by association: “And it came about that He was reclining at the table in his [Levi’s] house, and many tax-gatherers and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him” (Mark 2:15).

The Greek writer Lucian said that tax collectors were to be ranked with “adulterers, panderers, and flatterers.” William Barclay reveals that the rabbinical writings asserted that there was no hope for people like Levi. He was considered a traitor to his people and an outcast in his religion because of his collusion with the Roman government.

It was those whom the religious establishment had given up on that Jesus had His greatest success: adulterers, prostitutes, lepers, demoniacs, Samaritan outcasts, etc. It makes me wonder if “sinners” would choose the company of our church and if they did, would it be for the same reason they chose to be with Jesus?

I still get the sense that most people are turned off by our brand of holiness; that what they feel in our presence isn’t the same thing they felt when they were around Jesus. I want to know how and why His holy perfection drew more imperfect people than it did religious people.

We need to work on that part of our spirituality that sees people as Jesus saw them – in need of a physician: “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick” (Mark 2:17). I think that’s one of the things that attracted people to Him. He really wanted to help the people who didn’t have it “all together.”

As a follower of Christ, I want to love like He loved – and those He loved. I guess we’ll know when that happens when we start getting accused of being a “friend of sinners.”

In His Steps

For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps…(1 Peter 2:21 NAS).

In 1896 Charles M. Sheldon wrote an inspirational, best-seller that would become a spiritual classic. It was entitled, In His Steps.

In the book, Sheldon tells the story of a local church whose members pledged, for an entire year, to ask the question, “What would Jesus do if He were in my place?” The book chronicles the great joy and resultant difficulty and conflict that such a commitment brought to the small-town church.

One hundred years later (1989), a youth group at Calvary Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan, studied Sheldon’s 1896 novel and decided to imitate the church in the book by asking the question, “What would Jesus do?” To help them remember to ask the question, they made colorful woven bracelets with the letters WWJD written on it. Soon people throughout their community were wearing the bracelets and the rest is history. The most widely known and recognized acronym in Christian history – WWJD – ignited a movement that found its way on to books, T-shirts, jewelry, bumper-stickers and millions of other items. As faddish as it may seem, it really is a great concept that is based on biblical truth. To follow in Jesus’ steps we must ask ourselves, “What would Jesus Do?”

There is no better way to start the New Year than to realize that we have been called to a specific purpose and path by the example of Jesus our Lord. And what is that path? It is the road to Calvary, where each of us carries his or her own cross to bring light and redemption to those around us. By taking up our cross, we chose to live a life that runs counter to the world – and the world won’t like it: “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world…the world will hate you” (John 15:19). When that happens, and it will because “all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12), we must entrust our souls to Him who judges righteously (2 Pet. 2:23). That means, no reviling, no threatening and no retaliating, because those are the steps that Jesus walked before us.

Are we walking “in His steps”?