In the busy world in which we live, we make all sorts of excuses for not connecting with friends. Too busy, too tired, too many hurts from the past … let’s be honest, too selfish. But being alone is hard work because, as it turns out, we were never made to be alone.   We’re Created for Community It’s always exciting to kick off a new series of messages and starting today we are going to be talking about friendship. That’s why I have called this series “A Friend In Need is a Friend Indeed.” It’s a saying that most of us have heard of many times before and it’s well … it’s so true. There are some people who, right now, who are living their lives without a friend in the world – or so it seems to them right now. Sometimes that happens because we isolate ourselves and sometimes it happens, well, for a whole bunch of reasons that are completely outside our control. And sometimes we are just not sure why it’s happening but we feel so desperately alone. Well, over the next few weeks we are going to explore this whole thing about friendship, because whether we realise it or not, we are made to have friends. We are made to be a part of a community; part of a family and we are made to connect with people who are our friends. And there is a reason for that. It’s not just a quirk of fate as the primeval slime evolved over eons to become thee and me. No, that’s just stretching the imagination a bit too far. The reason we are made to connect with other people is that that is exactly what God is like and you and I – the thing that makes us different from any other creature or species alive is this: you and I are made in the image of God. And that as it turns out, is the whole reason that we are meant to be in close relationship, at least with a few other people. It has always blown me away how the first few words of the first verse of the first Book of the Bible must have puzzled people way back when it was written. Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, starts out: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Hang on – let’s just stop; let’s just pare that back a little bit. In the beginning God … Before everything and everyone else, was and is God. Now most of the Old Testament is written in the Hebrew language – this verse certainly was – and the word that we translate as “God” is the strangest word. It’s the word “Elohim”, which literally, in the Hebrew language, is the word “gods” – plural. “In the beginning Gods”, is what it actually says and it’s what it said to them, thousands of years ago when it was written and what it still says to the Jewish Nation today. In the beginning Gods … And just a few verses down, when God tells us how He created us, this is what it says – Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27: Then God said, “Let us make man in our own image, in our own likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Did you pick it up? God said, “let US” make humankind in our image.” “US!” Now back in those days, just about every nation had its gods – they were polytheistic, which means they believed in many Gods, much as Hinduism does today. But Israel … Israel believed in one God; they were monotheistic and in that way they were really quite unique. Have a listen, Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And so this One God, who declares Himself from the beginning, to be more than one, turns out as we later discovered, He is three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit – in one perfect relationship that we call “God”. Three persons in One God which is the mystery of what today we call the Holy Trinity. So from the very beginning, God is a God of community. And we – you and I, and every other homosapian that has ever trodden this Earth – are made in the image of God. And how did God make us in His image? Well, male and female He created us. He made us to be companions; to have friends; to have close relationships for this reason, because this is one of the key aspects of being made in God’s image. Now, as you and I look at ourselves in the mirror, we realise that we are made to have friends, notwithstanding the fact that we are really all quite different. I mean, my daughter Melissa and I couldn’t be more different. We both go exercising most mornings. I do it on a brisk ten kilometre walk all on my own. I have done exercise with other people when I was in the Army – I hated it. I love exercising just on my own. Melissa, on the other hand, she joins a group of twenty or so people under a trainer and they exercise together. For her, she simply wouldn’t get out there in the morning if it weren’t for the companionship of the other people. See how different we are! And yet, even I at the end of the spectrum where I really enjoy my own company, at that extreme – if I can put it that way – I need close relationships; I need friends; my wonderful, long suffering wife and a few good friends. They say “no man is an island”. It’s true of women too. None of us is meant to travel through this life on our own. Yea, sure, there are times when people desert us. That even happened to Jesus, when He was arrested and tried and crucified – all His friends left Him. It happens, sadly, sometimes to each one of us. But that’s not the norm; that’s not how it’s meant to be for most of the time, because that, quite simply, is not the way we have been created – in God’s image, remember! And so in kicking off our chats about friendship and relationships, I guess I am hoping that you and I will examine our own lives. Come on, honestly, who are our close friends? Do we really share our souls with them, or have we built up protective walls to hide behind. Walls that protect us from getting hurt; walls that shield us from accountability; walls that save us from the pain and the expense of feeling someone else’s pain and sacrificing for them? Or quite simply, walls that have grown up all by themselves because we are so … so busy racing around earning money, paying the mortgage on a house that is way too big and for possessions that are really way more than what we need? Well, come on, let’s get real here! God made you and He made me in His image to be in this thing called “community” – to have friends and deep and meaningful and rich and rewarding and painful and sacrificial relationships. And one of the most profound turning points of my life – as someone who doesn’t need quite as many relationships in his life as perhaps others do – is that until we enter into such relationships; until we start serving our friends with the gifts and the abilities and the resources that we have and until we see the impact on their lives through our service, there can, quite simply, be no sense of satisfaction or fulfilment or contentment in our lives. Why? Because it was for this purpose that God made us – to love Him and to love our neighbours as ourselves. That’s it. That’s what life is all about! And to the extent that we turn away from relationships of true friendship, it is to that same extent that we miss out on real life; rich life; a rich and abundant life; the sort of life that Jesus came to purchase for you and purchase for me on that cross.   It’s Not Good to be Alone It strikes me that in one sense we are all incredibly different – different places, cultures, circumstances – and yet in another, though, we are all the same – we all need to feel God’s love around us. We all need to experience the warm ...

Released on 27 Dec 2020