Friends of God

UV 4262/10000 Friends of God You whom I ( the Lord ) have taken from the ends of the earth, and called from its remotest parts and said to you, “ You are my servant, I have chosen you and have not rejected you ( even though you are exiled. Isaiah 41 v 9 It is remarkable that Isaiah prophesying several hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, states that we who belong to all nations even to the very ends of the earth, whether North, South, East or West are taken, called, chosen by the Lord. Only God can see so far ahead. The plan of making us Friends of God like Abraham on account of our faith in Jesus, our buckle, our link with Abraham and Israel was revealed in this uni-verse. By virtue of our faith in Jesus, righteousness is credited by grace not works to our spiritual accounts maintained by God’s auditing angels. By virtue of our faith, as it happened with the flaw-prone human, Abraham, it is deemed that we have conformed to the will of God. This is the good root of our salvation. The geographical remoteness is a metaphor for how distant we were from God before we accepted Christ into our hearts, our lives. Now, we are brought close to the very heart of God that He calls us His friends as also His servants. We are called to be His chosen ones. He has not rejected us and holds our hands to deliver us. Though our spiritual status once read “fallen”, we have now been exalted or lifted to be at the right hand of the Father and the Son. Now that we are His friends, we need to spend time fellowshipping with Him, chatting with Him, sharing our lives with Him. Now that we are His servants, too, we should serve Him, obey Him, adore Him, respect and revere Him. As friends, we love Him, we can be honest with Him. As servants, we fear and respect Him, we submit to His will in our lives. God has accepted us as we are. He did not say change a few things and then come to me. We are now His trusted confidantes as well as trusted servants. We must do nothing to betray His trust and live in such a way to honour our personal relationship with God. This is where good deeds, good words, good thoughts count not as root but as good fruit that is proof of concept, as it is said, or proof of us truly being His friends and servants. As Friends of God, we have many privileges like prayer, worship, guidance by the Holy Spirit, counsel. As servants of God, we have many duties and we need to be diligent about study of the word, witnessing with our lives, verbally and non verbally, serving other people who are the ‘spitting’ image or reflection of God whether they acknowledge it or not.