Jesus our friend in faith

JESUS OUR FRIEND IN FAITH 

In Psalm 22 as Jesus was suffering and dying for us on the cross he cried out to his Father and said;
Psalm 22:22 I will praise you to all my brothers and sisters; I will stand up before the assembly (the gathering of my friends) and testify of the wonderful things you have done… Let all Israel sing his praises, for he has not despised my cries of deep despair; he has not turned and walked away. When I cried to him, he heard and came."

in Paul’s letter to the Hebrews he quotes these words of Jesus to encourage them to not give up because they are going though times of affliction.  
Heb.2: 12 [Jesus is saying] ‘I'll tell my good friends, my brothers and sisters, all I know about you; I'll join them in worship and praise to you. Again, he puts himself in the same family circle when he says, Even I live by placing my trust in God’. And he goes on to say, I'm here with the children God gave me’. 
14. Since we, God's children, are human beings--made of flesh and blood--he became flesh and blood too by being born in human form; for only as a human being could he die for our sakes. (so that we could raised with him-Ephesians 2:6)
16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham

That means that Jesus stands in the place for all humanity towards the Father and he stands in the place of the Father towards all humanity. He has made us one with him as a brother and as a friend in faith. 
Jesus is not only the heavenly example to us but a partner with us in a walk of faith – in the way that he trusted totally in the love of his Father to guide him through his life on earth. Jesus is saying that he is one with his earthly friends, his brothers and sisters, and that when they go through their afflictions and trials of faith he will give them his faith to go through their sufferings. In other words we can receive now the very faith that he has always had in the Father. Jesus call us his friends (John 15:15 – for all that I have heard from the Father I have made known to you)

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not bring to naught the grace of God…otherwise Christ died in vain.
Tineke and I lived in the Philippines for about eight months many years ago setting in the Filipino leadership in a church that we had been involved in helping to get established established at the time. At the end of one meeting where I’d been talking about faith, a lady asked me to pray for her concerning the shared ownership of their extended family of a small community store, called a sari sari store. There were many opinions as to who owned how much of the store. When I heard her prayer list, of how she felt God needed to give favour to some of the family, and to deal with some of the others to teach them a lesson, I thought it would need a Philadelphia lawyer to deal with the complexity of it all. She said she didn’t have enough faith to pray and that she had told her friends she would use Pastor Paul’s faith. This hadn’t been my plan when I had just taught about having faith but I was quite agreeable about praying and I found myself praying that she would be set free from anxiety and resentment about the situation and find the kind of wisdom spoken about in James re making peace and using entreaty and not starting a family feud etc.  
I felt that The Holy Spirit was with us and she was in agreement and surrendered it all into God’s hands and the Amen was real.
That was just a shadow of what I came to understand about having the faith OF our friend Jesus not just faith IN Jesus.

Our prayers depend on the faith OF Jesus – that is our ultimate act of faith IN him.
Romans 8:25 For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts (Jesus) knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because HE (Jesus) intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (verse 34…it is Jesus who is interceding for us).
Paul knew the Hebrew Christians were fading in faith so Paul is fervently keen for them, and for all of us, to realize how Jesus desires to impart his own faith to us and bring our needs before his Father on our behalf as we go through the trials and testing of our faith. 
Then Paul tells them that we are not to think of our life as one that is doomed to affliction but rather as one that is destined for faith.

After Paul tells us about the heavenly example and heavenly participation of Jesus, he tells us about the earthly example and model of Abraham’s struggle of faith, in Abraham’s awkward attempts to develop that complete trust in a loving Father God.

Verse 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham 

Paul honours Abraham as the ‘father of faith’ (Galatians 3:7) 
Abraham was also called the friend of God because of his faith (James 2:23)
Jesus and Abraham as ‘friends in faith’ have much in common concerning their faith life, in that they both had to leave their world behind and enter a new one, they learned to trust God totally in times of uncertainty, and they understood ‘resurrection reality’. 
We also have these same challenges in our lives as friend of faith.  

Abraham is called by God to leave the place where he grew up and leave his family behind, taking only his wife Sarah into a new and unknown land, where he was promised he would have many descendants and be the father of a great nation.  He gets the order half-right - he takes his father and his cousin Lot with him too. This was to cause him trouble on his journey. 

We are reminded by this that we who have responded to God to follow Him, can find ourselves still clinging to things 'back there'. We have to leave the old world of thinking that we can control things in life to have them work the way we want them to.
We also cling to trusting in the things of the world that have given us some sense of certainty for our safety and security and satisfaction.
Abraham faced many uncertainties and made mistakes of judgment but he learned to trust in God through them all. He told half truths 
 

The hardest challenges are the uncertainties of life. 
Before Abraham left he was promised a son and many descendants, but he had to wait because despite God’s promise Sarah did not have a child, so Abraham acted impatiently by having a child through Hagar, his wife’s servant girl.  However this did not stop the promised of a son from arriving in due time. 
It meant Abraham had to bear the consequences of his impatience but he had God as a friend (James 2:23… Abraham was called a friend of God) and we have Jesus as a friend.

A miracle happens. God has not forgotten His promise to Abraham. Sarah, in old age gives birth to a son, Isaac. But this is not the end of Abraham's journey. God tells him to sacrifice his only real God given son on an altar on a mountain. This time his obedience is complete. He puts Isaac on the altar of sacrifice, trusting God that He would either provide another sacrifice, or raise Isaac from the dead. 
This is called 'resurrection faith'. 'Resurrection faith' is surrendered faith whereby we place our faith in the hands of the faith of Jesus, who brings forth the will of the Father in our lives... God intervened for Abraham and provided a ram for the sacrifice and tells Abraham He has spared his son. The Father has provided Jesus for us – our resurrection faith. 
This was Abraham’s pinnacle of faith, but what a journey! This is the place where God wants to get us, where He wants to get His Church. 
Jesus left his heavenly world and became one of us. Then he took us back with him into his heavenly world when he rose from the dead and we stay with him, on earth but living from heaven (resurrection faith).

This is where resurrection life flows out of our sacrifice of surrender to God. This where the Church lives in the arena of the miraculous. 
We may have had some false starts like Abraham, we may have an Ishmael or two, where we’ve tried to do God's thing in our own way. 

But God has us on His journey and He will provide supernaturally the completion of our faith. We can live in His resurrection life, partners and friends with Jesus.
Resurrection faith is at the meeting point, where we leave our old world behind and enter into the world that Jesus has prepared for us. That is when we experience the supernatural walk with Jesus that he wants us to have, sharing in his very own faith. This is where there is answered prayer and that is where there is love and hope and faith (1 John 3:19-21).