Jesus Christ, What a friend!

If you have a Sunday school or church school background you may be familiar with a Hymn I was taught at Sunday School. It’s a hymn that has stuck with me as one of my favourite songs even to this day. It's the hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus”

When I was a kid at Sunday School we used to have to memorise hymns and the words (though written for a song) took on a new impetus as we spoke them out loud

"What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear,
what a privilege it is to carry everything to God in prayer."

Today, I may be driving along on a busy day and I find myself reciting this old hymn to myself and it would become an inspiration to me; “O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer." The words would lift me right there and remind me that my friend (Jesus) is always with me.

The story behind the Hymn itself can give it fresh meaning. The writer was an Irishman Joseph Scriven born in 1820. Shortly before he died a neighbour asked him how he came to write the hymn. It may surprise you to learn it came out of great personal tragedy.

At the age of 25 and on the night before he was due to be married his girlfriend accidentally drowned. From this indescribable grief came

"What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and grief's to bear,
what a privilege it is to carry everything to God in prayer."

How easily he could have gone the other direction to bitterness and hardness of heart but he had the courage to look to God and as a result, he experienced the indescribable comfort God can be, ‘what a friend’ God can be.

“What a privilege it is to carry everything to God in prayer.”

The central message of Christianity is that Jesus Christ is a personal friend, not imaginary, not a philosophy, not a moral code nor a creed of beliefs. Jesus gives you himself, He wants to live in you, He wants to be with you, around you. He wants to have an everyday walking, talking relationship with you.

When you became (or become) a Christian you didn’t just become one of his followers you invited him to be in you. And as you identified with the Christ who died on the cross, you, therefore, were given new life in Him (Romans 6:4). This is Big News, please don’t think of it as religious jargon, your life has been made new (2 Corinthians 5:17). It is not just a fresh start, it is not just a clean sheet...it is a new person.. a new creation…the new you…the you, you were always meant to be!

What God does within us is give us the Holy Spirit. That is the new life… and Peter, quoting Jesus, likened it to being ‘born again.’ - 1 Peter 1:23

It doesn’t mean we lose something of our human nature or become a ‘holy Joe,’ it doesn’t mean we give up our natural human abilities. God transforms our nature and our abilities to their full-created potential. With Christ in us, we are able to have that friendship with God through Jesus (John 1:12) - “What a friend we have in Jesus.”

This is not meant to be a theory or a formula, it is an explanation of some of what goes on when we come to believe in Jesus Christ as the son of God and your own personal Saviour.
On with Session Two… same format…. I ask the questions ….you ‘Click and collect’ the answers from the bible. You can use the form below or download the questions to search. All the best.