When Good Friends Come To Visit – Pt. 1 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. Each weekday morning at this time, we meet together, opening God’s word, the Bible, to spend some time with God. I like the way we express that – time with God. It doesn’t sound all ‘religiousy’, does it?

It’s not about some kind of special weird religious activity. It’s just time with someone who is the most meaningful person in your life. That’s exactly what God wants to be to you, the most meaningful person in your life. He wants to impact and influence every aspect of your life. And you know, when you bring God into every aspect of your life, life is just so much better.

When God is relegated to a few religious activities, it’s about guilt, it’s about performance, it’s about meeting up to expectations. But when you have someone who is the most important person to you, well, then you want to make them happy. You don’t want to offend them. You want to do what is meaningful to them. That’s exactly what the Christian life is really all about. It’s about loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

So let’s bring God into an everyday reality of our lives. Here’s my theme for this week, spending time with good friends who come to visit.

Good friends who also love God and put Him first in their lives. How do you do that?

Well, I want to say the first thing is just celebrate. I mean, it’s so obvious, right? When good friends come to visit, you celebrate. You remember the story of the prodigal son in the Bible that Jesus told reflecting Jewish society. Here’s this man who has his two sons that matter a lot to him, and one says, Look, I don’t want to wait till you die. Just give me my money now. Not a great relationship, hey.

And his son goes off and just wastes all that money, dishonors his father by the way he lives, but the dad loves his son so much and is just waiting, staring down the road for his son to come back. When his son finally comes back, the father turns to his servants and says, Kill the fattened calf. We’re going to have a feast. Well, they kept a fattened calf for just the time when it would be needed, right? Ready for celebration.

Ah, this is what you do when good friends you haven’t seen come to visit. You celebrate. You think of Jesus’ dear friends who lived in the little town of Bethany just outside of Jerusalem. John chapter 11 says a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany. The village of Mary and her sister Martha. This was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. It says in verse 5, now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

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So Jesus turns up to visit them.

And it says in the next chapter 6 – days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

What do they do? it says in the next verse, so they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at the table.

Well, what a beautiful picture. They love Jesus. He loves them. They’re dear friends. He comes to visit, and so they gave a dinner for him. Well, when you give a dinner for someone that’s different than just eating together, it means it’s a celebration. You’re doing something special, and when your friend comes to visit you, this is what you want to do. We have friends visiting us now. We last night took them out for a special dinner.

And we had a great time with them. We just sat for several hours at the table talking, celebrating, being together. And maybe you can’t afford to go out for a big special dinner together, so just have a special dinner at home. If you can’t afford a special dinner at home, just buy something special to drink, have a toast with them.

Celebrate being back together. This is such a natural part of life, but it’s a part that God wants you to do with people you haven’t seen for a long time.

I’m John North.

To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.