He Is A Friend Of Mine Series

But her problem wasn’t that her church had failed her

And it wasn’t that those supposed Christians had failed her

Her problem was that she didn’t know my Jesus.

She didn’t understand how faithful He could be

She didn’t realize how much He wanted to care for her

She didn’t realize what He wanted to do in her life

SHE DIDN”T KNOW MY JESUS

(pause…) Do YOU know Him? – Is He YOUR friend?

There are people sitting in this audience this morning that don’t know Jesus as their friend. Maybe they’ve been in church most of their lives, but they’ve gotten caught up in the ritual and presumed that was all there was to this. They come each Sunday morning and sing the songs, pray the prayers, here the preacher preach his message and shake a hand or two… and they’ve done their “religious” thing for that week. But once they leave the building, they haven’t experienced any closeness with Jesus at all. They haven’t known the satisfaction of spending time with a Jesus they could actually call their friend.

And that’s a great tragedy… because Jesus really does want to be your friend

… He wants to carry your burden

… He wants to have you spend regular time with Him.

The problem isn’t that Jesus doesn’t want to be your friend.

The problem is that some haven’t realized how important He can be their lives.

In John 15 Jesus says

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete…. You are my friends if you do what I command.

The first step to becoming His friend, is to accept Him into your life.

· To believe that He is capable of being your closest friend because He is the Son of God.

· To acknowledge that you’ve sinned, and you need His help and His friendship in your life.

· To acknowledge that you want Him to be in charge of your life and to change into what He knows you’re capable of becoming

· And lastly to die to your past,

o To be buried in the waters of Christian baptism

o And risen up to a new life

CLOSE: At the start of this sermon, I told you that sad story of a little girl who despised and rejected. She wanted someone to love her so much she went outside the walls of her orphanage and left a note on a tree that said: "To whoever finds this: I love you."

The Bible tells us that Jesus “had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men.”

The people of His day sought to get rid of Him, so they took Him outside the walls of the city… and they nailed Him to a tree.

But, to this day, when people come to that tree, they still find a note that reads, "To whoever finds this: I love you."