Friendship First

Jesus “died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him” (1 Thess. 5:10).

With him. This is why Jesus died: to restore you to the step-by-step friendship of Eden

Through his Spirit, Jesus has made way for an unbroken stroll; an uninterrupted conversation; an unsullied bond between Father and child—always looking, always talking, always responding (1 Thess. 5:16-18).

Friendship comes first—or else we lose the romance, resort to transactions, and settle into mechanical imitations of what once flowed from love.

In the rush to produce, we cast off the vine.

I can’t talk now, Lord. I have to focus on living for you.

“Being with Jesus” must come above “doing for Jesus”—or else your service becomes a solitary, heroic gesture for a King whose chief desire all along was to journey with you.

Jesus may oblige for a season. He lets us taste the ache of autonomy. But he is too good a friend to settle in as our religious figurehead.

At the right time, he knocks. 

He wants in. 

He will not fit into our day. He wants his presence to frame and fill the day—every moment becoming an opportunity to expand our shared experience with the Son of God.

Will you let him come in?

What the law could not sustain, the Holy Spirit maintains. Though the pulse of communion died under the old written code, Jesus has a better design. The Spirit falls, fills, and enters in. He becomes the eternal, living pacemaker for our new-creation heart.

Jesus always initiates. We never take that role. What starts with periodic calls from above moves into perpetual proddings from his Spirit within.

From beginning to end, Jesus is the initiator of the friendship.