Relationships define life - relationship with God and relationships with people.
• You take that away and you’ll be left with an existence, not life.
• You take relationships away, and your home will be just a house, this church will be just a building.
Jesus summed up the Commandments with two simple lines – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matt 22:37-39).
• That’s loving God, and loving people. It sounded simplistic, but that’s the foundation to everything in life. Think about that for a moment.
• It’s all about loving God and doing things His way, and loving people, living life just like Christ.
• The way Jesus puts it, relationship is the core to the Christian life.
You cannot live in isolation. Independence is not the goal of the Christian life.
• We need a community. We need to be in a community. We can only grow well and healthy in a community.
• Yet little is taught about relationship growing up. We learn more about academic subjects than about relationships. We learn many technical skills but little people skills. We have high IQs but low EQs.
• We only learn about relationships through trial and error, through mistakes and hurts.
Relationships are complicated and complex. It takes efforts and lots of wisdom to nurture relationships.
A woman heard about a relationship-building exercise and decided to try it out.
She said to her husband, "I know how we can strengthen our marriage. Each of us will write a list of the things we find a bit annoying about the other person. Then we can talk about it and see how we can fix them together."
Her husband agreed, so each of them went into a separate room and thought of all the things that annoyed them about each other.
At dinner table that night, they decided that they would go over their lists.
"I’ll start," the wife said and took out her list. She had 3 pages of it.
As she started reading the list of little annoyances, she noticed that her husband was teary.
"What’s wrong?" she asked.
"Nothing," her husband replied, "Keep reading your list."
The wife continued to read until she had finished all 3 pages. She neatly placed her list on the table and folded her hands over it.
"So, now is your turn. Read your list and then we can talk," she said happily.
Softly, her husband started, "I don’t have anything on my list. I love you the way you are. And I wouldn’t want to try and change anything about you."
The wife treated it naively as a simple, rational exercise, but it unravels everything. The exercise broke the husband’s heart.
• Raising all the negative aspects of a relationship in this way actually erodes its strength more than builds it up. Relationships need to be handled with more care.
In AUTHENTIC RELATIONSHIPS, we want to look at the relationships we find in the Scriptures and glean important principles that can help us cultivate good relationships.
• At the same time, at our Sunday School group time, we will use a Bible Study material with the same theme, on building community.
• We pray that over these few weeks, by God’s grace, we can build closer friendships with one another, and learn important principles for ourselves.
Today we want to talk about FRIENDSHIP, starting with the words of Jesus:
John 15:9-17 “I HAVE CALLED YOU FRIENDS”
9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 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. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
Jesus tells His disciples (and us today) that He no longer call us servants but friends.
• That’s nothing wrong with the word ‘servant’. If Jesus is the Son of God, then to serve Him is a privilege and the right thing to do. He is indeed our Master and Lord, and we are His servants.
• So why the new address? Jesus must have something in mind that calls for a need to change the term. There must be something new that He wants to emphasize, or maybe, to correct, because of the disciples’ lack of understanding.
The context gives us an indication. There’s something ‘incomplete’ in the word ‘servant’.
• What’s that? What is lacking in the relationship of a master and servant? Love is.
• Love is not the defining characteristic of a master and servant relationship.
• A servant serves because he has to. He is obligated to. He is paid to. A servant will not do more than is required. A servant will not make sacrifices.
Jesus stresses LOVE IN RELATIONSHIPS in this short conversation – the love between the Father and himself, love He has for the disciples, and the love the disciples ought to have for one another.
• The emphasis is clear. Our relationship with Him has to do with love. We are more than just servants; we are His friends.
• The relationship of servant-master is a relationship of power. The relationship between friends is a relationship of love.
(1) OUR MOTIVATION IS LOVE – Jesus Gave His
Our motivation to serve God is love. Our motivation to serve one another is love.
• True friends love. “A friend loves at all times…” (Prov 17:17) Jesus: “Greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends.” (v.13).
• Unlike servants, friends make sacrifices because they love each other. A friend will do MORE than is required because he is motivated by love.
• Jesus gave everything to His friends – His knowledge of God and His own life.
Most people enter into a relationship with an eye toward what they can get out of it, rather than what they can put into it. That’s a wrong start.
• Enter into a relationship with an eye toward blessing the other, completing what is lacking in the other, even to the point of sacrificing yourself.
• When we enter a relationship with this perspective in mind, the relationship is strengthen and enriched.
The second reason for a word change is in verse 15:
“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
(2) SHARE YOUR LIFE – Jesus Shared His
JESUS: “I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”
• He did not hide from them. He spoke openly to them and told them all that He knows. Jesus shared with them the Father’s business.
• In Gen 18 when God wanted to judge the city of Sodom, God said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen 18:17) He share with Abraham what He was about to do.
• Abraham was called God’s friend (James 2:23; cf. 2 Chron 20:7). God shared with His friend what He was about to do.
True friends know each other’s business. A servant can be ignorant, but not a friend.
• The distinction that Jesus made between a servant and a friend is between not understanding and understanding.
• The friend is let in on what is going on. This understanding did not step from his intelligence or wisdom, but from revelation.
• Jesus made known to His friends everything that He has learnt from His Father.
Are you a friend of Jesus? Yes, you are. It’s not your choice.
• Jesus says in verse 16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last.”
• As ‘chosen’ friends, we know the Father’s business. Jesus has already revealed everything to us.
• It is excusable for a servant not to know the Master’s business, but not a friend. Let us be mindful of this.
• We’re privileged to receive from Jesus the knowledge of the Father’s plan of redemption for the world. We are in it with Him.
Friends share their thoughts openly with each another, as Jesus has done. His has no hidden agenda. No ulterior motive. No secret plan.
• Jesus models for us openness in his relationships that we can emulate – true friends share concerns, thoughts and feelings.
• The ability to open up to one another is important to the growth of a relationship.
• Good, open and honest communication is like oil to a car; it keeps the relationship going.
We need to learn how to communicate with one another. No one is a mind reader.
• For a relationship to grow and deepens, likes, dislikes, desires, hopes and problems need to be said.
• This is the reason why we need small groups – to provide a safe and comfortable environment for us to share our lives, be open to one another and therefore provide the needed support and encouragement.
• We all need that. The bible calls it, the church. Treasure this community. You need it more than you know.
CONCLUSION
It’s getting harder and harder to people to truly connect nowadays, face-to-face I mean.
• We make friends on Facebook, not face-to-face. We connect more in the virtual world, than the real world.
• Do you know what the record is for the highest number of ‘friends’ on Facebook? An American rapper named Eminem crosses the 30 million ‘friends’ mark on March 10 and now has over 37 million Facebook friends. Lady Gaga is a close second with 35 million.
• Are they really ‘friends’? Friends you’ve never met? Or fans? What are fans? Just statistics, that’s all.
For many of these famous celebrities, life can be very lonely, unhappy and fake. Few of them have real, close friends.
• Sadly what many have today are virtual ‘friends’, ‘friends’ to ‘like’ you. Cyber friends, online friends, or stranger-‘friends’ (whom they have never met).
• None of these ‘relationships’ can truly satisfy the deep hunger for connection and companionship that we need.
True friendship happens in real life, when we are able to see each other. We have to do life God’s way – in the community of the church.
• In the Miracle of Life Change, Chip Ingram: “Life change takes place in the cocoon of authentic relationships in the Body of Christ.”
• Online social networking cannot replace real human contact, real relationships in real community. The virtual world will always remain a virtual world, not the real world.
• Make time for small groups of friends. I pray that we’ll grow stronger this quarter through this series on building authentic relationships.
