Personal Friendships of Jesus

by J. R. Miller

He did not keep them secluded from the world in a quiet shelter so that they would not come in contact with the world's evil nor meet its assaults; his method with them was to teach them how to live so that they should have the divine protection in the midst of spiritual danger, and then to send them forth to face the perils and fight the battles. His prayer for his disciples was not that they should be taken out of the world, thus escaping its dangers and getting away from its struggles, but that they should be kept from the world's evil. He knew that if they would become good soldiers they must be trained in the midst of the conflict. Hence he did not fight their battles for them. He did not save Peter from being sifted; it was necessary that his apostle should pass through the terrible experience, even though he should fail in it and fall. His prayer for him was not that he should not be sifted, but that his faith should not altogether fail. His aim in all his dealings with his friends was to train them into heroic courage and invincible character, and not to lead them along flowery paths through gardens of ease.

We are in the habit of saying that the follower of Christ will always find goodness and mercy wherever he is led. This is true; but it must not be understood to mean that there will never be any hardness to endure, any cross to bear, any pain or loss to experience. We grow best under burdens. We learn most when lessons are hard. When we get through this earthly life, and stand on the other side, and can look back on the path over which we have been led, it will appear that we have found our best blessings where we thought the way was most dreary and desolate. We shall see then that what seemed sternness and severity in Christ was really truest and wisest friendship. One writes:—

"If you could go back to the forks of the road—
Back the long miles you have carried the load;
Back to the place where you had to decide
By this way or that through your life to abide;

Back of the sorrow and back of the care;
Back to the place where the future was fair—
If you were there now, a decision to make,
Oh, pilgrim of sorrow, which road would you take?

Then, after you'd trodden the other long track,
Suppose that again to the forks you went back,
After you found that its promises fair
Were but a delusion that led to a snare—

That the road you first travelled with sighs and unrest,
Though dreary and rough, was most graciously blest,
With a balm for each bruise and a charm for each ache,
Oh, pilgrim of sorrow, which road would you take?"

Sometimes good people are disappointed in the way their prayers are answered. Indeed, they seem not to be answered at all. They ask God to take away some trouble, to lift off some load, and their request is not granted. They continue to pray, for they read that we must be importunate, that men ought always to pray and not to faint; but still there seems no answer. Then they are perplexed. They cannot understand why God's promises have failed.

But they have only misread the promises. There is no assurance given that the burdens shall be lifted off and carried for us. God would not be the wise, good, and loving Father he is, if at every cry of any of his children he ran to take away the trouble, or free them from the hardness, or make all things easy and pleasant for them. Such a course would keep us always children, untrained, undisciplined. Only in burden-bearing and in enduring can we learn to be self-reliant and strong. Jesus himself was trained on the battlefield, and in life's actual experiences of trial. He learned obedience by the things that he suffered. It was by meeting temptation and by being victorious in it that he became Master of the world, able to deliver us in all our temptations.

Not otherwise can we grow into Christlike men. It would be unkindness in our Father to save us from the experiences by which alone we can be disciplined into robust and vigorous strength. The promises do not read that if we call upon God in our trouble he will take the trouble away. Rather the assurance is that if we call upon God he will answer us. The answer may not be relief; it may be only cheer. We are taught to cast our burden upon the Lord, but we are not told that the Lord will take it away. The promise is that he will sustain us under the burden. We are to continue to bear it; and we are assured that we shall not faint under the load, for God will strengthen us. The assurance is not that we shall not be tempted, but that no temptation but such as man can bear shall come to us, and that the faithful God will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able to endure.

This, then, is what divine friendship does. It does not make it easy for us to live, for then we should get no blessing of strength and goodness from living. How, then, are our prayers answered? God sustains us so that we faint not; and then, as we endure in faith and patience, his benediction is upon us, giving us wisdom, and imparting strength to us.