The Friend

Jesus is your friend. He is not your enemy, for He wishes only for you to live and thrive and that for eternity.

Jesus' time is different than ours. Often we want Him to solve our problems immediately, or to make them never happen, but Jesus knows, even though we do not, that the road to joy often comes through suffering and anguish. He doesn't want us to wallow in this suffering, but to pass through it to joy. Joy is the goal, suffering is the means.

Jesus, like most of the spirit world, doesn't move in our time. Every moment in anguish is like an eternity to us and Jesus moves on a seeming geologic scale. But Jesus has a timetable. The end of suffering will come. We just need to wait for it.

Jesus often lets us know when He is working in us, for He wants the Father to get all the glory. However, when He acts, it is when we least expect it, when we think everything is at its end. Then, suddenly, Jesus is there, giving us what we need, although often at the last possible moment.

Jesus' plan isn't as laid out or organized as we might think. He has to work with us, and we often change our minds every few minutes. So Jesus works with us in order to cause our souls to live and thrive so that we might be our own and we might help others to be thriving on their own as well.

Jesus offers a lot and his promises are huge: eternal life, a just kingdom, a community of love, all our needs met, a relationship with the Father, our sin wiped away, healing and hope and joy and peace in our hearts. We look at these promises and sometimes we think that Jesus won't... can't keep them all. What we need to realize is that Jesus is no liar, nor is He a monster-- rather he sees our life now and our live after our death as a continuum. To live for eternal life is true faith, and it is this faith He strives to encourage in us.

Jesus isn't a flatterer. Rather, he shows us who we really are. Sometimes we cringe at the pain we ignorantly caused others. Sometimes he attempts to convince us that we aren't as wicked as we thought we were-- that there is actually some good in us. One by one, He takes the blocks away that separate us from the life we should live, the life of love for others. The reason it seems to hopeless is because there are so many blocks. But He faithfully takes them away, slowly and steadily.

Even though we might proclaim Jesus as Lord, we often struggle like a puppy twisting as her master gently attempts to get her out of the twine she is entangled in. We often don't know He is working to free us. And we don't know how complicated it is. In struggling to get out of his grip, we often make the mess worse. But he just sighs and keeps working, for we are in His grip.

His work isn't external, but in our hearts, working with His Spirit to free our hearts from within our hearts. This is why we often don't know He's working.

This is true for me, and true for everyone who submits to Jesus as Lord. Not necessarily every Christian, but everyone who bows to Jesus in their heart-- whether they bow in church or not.

I pray that you would fully realize and rest in Jesus' blessing. For the one whom the Son sets free is free indeed.