Deeper Rock John 15:9-17
“I have loved you even as the father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my love. Yes, your joy will overflow! This is my commandment: love each other the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves, because I mastered doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now I call you friends, since I have told you everything the father told me. You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce a lasting fruit, so that the father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name this is my command love each other.”
Jesus loves us like the father loves him. God loves Jesus as his only begotten son. We are to obey Jesus just like Jesus obeyed the father. The reason he did this is so that we could need filled with joy. He says that our joy over well! We’re not just slaves. We are the friends of God.
As friends of God we are going to produce lasting fruit. And now we get another fantastic promise. God will give us anything we ask using Jesus’s name. And all this from loving each other like Jesus loved us.
I don’t know about you, but Jesus calling me a friend puts a smile on my face. When the world is against me, and everybody seems upset with me, I have a place of peace and safety in the loving friendship of my Lord. When I’m close to my Jesus, when I am abiding in him, I could hear his voice and feel his acceptance.
When it seems like the whole world is against you it is a maze in how powerful it is to know that you are a friend of God. There is a confidence it comes to take on great challenges knowing that God has your back. There is a tenacity that comes that the God of the universe, that way that the oceans in his hand, is on your side.
If God seems far away, if when you think of you have an image of someone who is mad at you, or disappointed, your view of God is wrong. The answer is to buy in Jesus. In that place you will find tenacity, strength, passion, and a reason to live.
Join us at the rock so you can be all that God created you to be. May the Lord richly bless you and I hope to see you in church on Sunday
Pastor Scott J Kruse
