THE LORD MY CLOSEST FRIEND:

It is our nature to call the closest human person to you when we are particularly in trouble or when we are pleasantly excited over something. Yet no matter how close they stick around you, there remains a gab between you and them. A heart gab that may be economical, emotional, social or spiritual. For a man may be around you physically, yet truly distant from you in concern and care. Nonetheless, there is one who is ever near to you heart and hip. And the Psalmist calls him Lord and here says of him—

“The Lord is near to all who call on him, all who call on him in truth” (Psalm 145:18). Note the virtue that you need to take with you when come to Jesus; come to him with truth and in truth, call on him.

And the apostle John says you only need to receive or welcome and believe in his name to acquire and secure the status of a child of God.  “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12)” The knit closeness of the Lord to his children is such that the very hairs of each of their heads is numbered. He takes count of them to ensure that none is lost.

And Luke caught and quotes Jesus injecting confidence into his listeners and disciples saying, for any and all reasons, they should keep off fear, for the worth of a child of God is more than many sparrows. “Indeed the very hairs of your head are numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12:7). 

You are too precious and worth too much in the eye of the Lord not to be given the best of attentions and cares. Therefore relax and let the Lord your caregiver attend you from the crown of your head down to the sole of your feet.

Saint Paul then gives us the simple and toil-less recipe to an eternal closeness with God declaring “for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). The only needful to do is to, from a simple heart of faith call Jesus. Just put through a faith propelled call to the Lord, and just that one genuine call alone, gets Jesus on your side as the one and only friend who did not only advocate but modeled laying down his life for his friends and this singular act alone earns you salvation.

Interacting with these scriptural passages, a few of the dozens of such lots, you will note that the road map to reaching and having Christ espoused to you and you to Him is well mapped and laid out.

Christ’s ever burning desire is to be close to you. He woos you both spiritually and through the lips of his servants. And once he takes interest in you, the depth of his closeness is much more than you can imagine, think or feel.

Therefore never take for granted his intimate nearness to you. Rather you should marvel at the wonder of his continual presence with you in spite of who you are, one who is unworthy of such degree of intimacy. Even the most ardent of lovers cannot rivaled Christ’s closeness to you. They never be always as close to you as Christ always is. Nor can anyone know the intimacies of your heart, mind and spirit as does Jesus. He knows everything about you. If he knows the number of hairs on your head, then what is it that he does not and cannot know about you? God does not need you to work at revealing yourself to him, for that he already knows and will always know day or night, dark or bright, rain or shine.

Do not then, like many who spend their life time or hard earned fortune on searching out someone who understands them; for you get yourself spent energy and resources. No human being will  ever understand you like your maker does. Go to him straight away for he is ever freely available to all who call upon his name, who without resistance open their hearts to receive him as the Lord and saviour of their lives. Just take this simple faith step and you set in motion a lifelong love story that will become your testimony and someone’s conversion sermon. The Lord, the lover of your soul  understands you perfectly and loves you with eternal love. His love is not like man’s that is conditional and which changes like a shifting shadow.

From experience, humanly, with the sudden stroke of the ugly and painful side of life, we are more with the tendency to rush for a human friend before thinking of God and his Jesus Christ the most dependable of friends.

A wife who is in love with her husband for example, will always have him as the first person to call when she is distressed, and so does a daughter who has confidence in her father, has him as the first person to reach out to whenever she runs into trouble. They and most of us will always skip God in our life’s lock-jumps.

What number do you first call when you are in trouble, needy and perplexed? Heaven’s or earth’s? Who does your trust intuition drive to you seek company from and of, when beaten by the harsh weather of life? Jesus’ or man’s? Whose friendship do you woo and court when peace takes flight and comfort runs dry? He who is ever close to you heart and hip or man that could be physically close yet far away from you at heart-in economic, emotional, social and spiritual gab. Choose Jesus who is a friend now and then, a friend here and there, a friend temporal and eternal and you have a friend indeed.

THERE IS A FRIEND THAT STICKS CLOSER THAN A BROTHER, JESUS IS HE.

+Jwan Bukuru