I Love My Friends

I'm very grateful to God for my friends and the shared experiences I have gotten to have with different people.

I'm reading John chapter 6 this morning and watching Jesus weed out His acquaintances. He had no middle ground. You were either for Him or against Him.

"When many of his disciples heard it, they said, 'This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?'

But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, 'Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.' (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, 'This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.'

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him." - John 6:60-66 ESV

Ouch.

"So Jesus said to the Twelve, 'Do you want to go away as well?'

Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.'

Jesus answered them, 'Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.' He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him." - John 6:67-71 ESV

Wow. Before this Jesus was talking about the need to 'eat His flesh and drink His blood' and He phrased it the way He did to purposely make trouble.

He wasn't tiptoeing around.

I love what Peter says. Peter is friend who was given by God the Father. Peter was eating and drinking the substance of who Christ was with open eyes. I think He was as offended by the thought of cannibalism as any of the people who left but Peter valued Christ in a way that caused Him to hold on anyways.

We don't have to be friends with everyone.

We make a choice to be a friend to people and it is a good choice to make but not everyone is our friend and that is fine. God is our friend.

"A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." - Proverbs 18:24 ESV

He isn't going to leave us. He also isn't afraid to tell us how it is as needed in situations. This love lack sentimentality but has tenderness, care and ironclad commitment.

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