As many of you know, over the last few years I have been recording each song from the 1914 Nazarene hymnal Canaan Melodies. I am up to song 60 out of 162, but today I want to take you all the way back to song 3 in the hymnal, a very special song about friendship with Jesus.
Friendship With Jesus Is Pure Bliss
I always thought that "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" was the ultimate song on this theme, but this one is, I think, just as good. Have a listen to the first verse:
A friend of Jesus! O what bliss;
That one, so vile as I,
Should ever have a friend like this
To lead me to the sky!
I love that word 'bliss'! Friendship with Jesus is bliss! The Merriam-Webster dictionary says that "Bliss is a noun that means complete, supreme, or perfect happiness and joy." A friendship with Jesus is indeed blissful in this sense. Knowing that He cares for us as friends brings us supreme gladness, doesn't it?
Have You Lost the Joy of Your Friendship With Jesus?
Let me ask you: have you lost that sense of joy in your relationship with Jesus? To be honest, I had, not so long ago. I think it's because I forgot what it means to be friends with Jesus. I was serving Him more like a slave - with a kind of furious intensity, thinking that was what Christianity meant. Yes, discipline is important, and serving God through gritted teeth is sometimes necessary. But if you start seeing Jesus as a Master and not a friend, you can easily lose that sense of bliss and forget what the joy of the Lord is.
The lyrics say that it is bliss to know that someone like me could ever have a friend like Him. So it is a thing of grace above all. Being a friend of Jesus is not thinking that we have made it into Jesus' club through our holiness and fervour! Instead, it's recognising that even a vile and imperfect person like me can know Jesus as a friend - that is bliss, when you get it!
Friends Lead You Toward Heavenly Ways
Let's not forget that the lyrics also say that this friend of ours leads us to the sky. I think that might be talking about heaven, in a sense, and there are more lyrics on that theme later in the song which we'll explore. But perhaps in another way, the songwriter is saying that we learn to live in 'heavenly' ways when we walk with Jesus as our friend.
Have you noticed that your friends have an influence on you? You tend to start behaving and thinking like the ones you call friends, don't you? So, get into a friendship with Jesus. You'll start to become more like Him, and be led into 'heavenly ways', as you do.
A friend of Jesus, oh what bliss! May it be that today you remember that Jesus longs to be a friend to you, and to count you as His friend.
Friendship with Jesus is a gift of grace, and it brings real bliss. Stop striving today and simply enjoy being His friend.