Friend to Neighbour

Transcript:

Good morning and greetings in Jesus’ name! Welcome to this amazing new week. Every day, every opportunity, every privilege that the Lord gives us – we have to learn how to steward it well, we have to learn how to give it back to the Lord and how to use that day, that opportunity, that privilege to bring glory, honour and worship to Him. The more that we live lives exclusively to satisfy our pleasure, to just make sure our ends are met and our needs are taken care of, the more we become selfish and self-centred and self-oriented. But when we ask this question on a daily basis how can I bring glory to God? How can I bring honour to the Lord? The more we will become consistent in helping people around us, loving people around us, serving people that we see day in and day out.

In the book of Proverbs 27:10, the writer says, “Never abandon a friend – either yours or your father’s. When disaster strikes, you won’t have to ask your brother for assistance. It’s better to go to a neighbour than to a brother who lives far away.” This comparison may be very unusual but I will explain to you what it means to be a brother and what it means to be a neighbour. See, a brother is someone who has no option but to help you. A brother is someone related to you with the blood, physical connection, and everything that society and culture and law bind them together. A family member is obligated to help you. On the other hand, a friend is not obligated to help you. A friend will help you based on whether he/she values this particular relationship, whether he/she enjoys this relationship that you have with him. The Bible says that it is necessary that you don’t abandon your friend, you invest time into that relationship. You invest honour into that relationship. You invest your heart and your mind into that relationship. Because when you do this, there will come a time, there will come a day when you need them. There will come a day when disaster happens or a challenge occurs or a problem comes. And in that time, you don’t have to go to someone who has to help you out of an obligation, has to help you out of the fact they are only related to you. If they were not your relative, they would have never helped you. You don’t have to be at the mercy of such people. Because what you have done in the process, in the journey is that you have invested into people, you have sowed into others, you have helped so many people that when it is time that you are in the receiving end of the blessing, in the receiving end of help. You will have so many friends who can surround you, who can pray with you, who can help you. I have noticed how believers often undervalue the importance of investing in good relationships, good friendships.

The last line of this scripture finishes by saying, “It’s better to go to a neighbour than to a brother who lives far away”. There are brothers who are connected by blood but they may be far away in your heart, in your spirit, in your life – they may not be journeying with you. But there are neighbours that God will bless you with. There are neighbours you can invest in so that they can become your neighbour. And I am sure that all of us are looking around at the person sitting next to us in the car or in the bus or the ones that live around us in the house but that’s not our neighbour. Jesus was once asked, “Who is my neighbour?”. And then Jesus gave a story to explain Who is a good neighbour or a right neighbour. And it was the story of a Samaritan man who helped a man that was hurting. You know how that story goes. It finishes by Jesus saying, that this Samaritan man who helped this man on the way to Jericho – was the good neighbour. So when you and I, when we invest in relationships where we can be good neighbours to others, where we can bring relationships that are far away, that doesn’t mean anything and we can transform them into neighbours of ourselves. Because the Bible says, you need to love your neighbour as yourself. And when we do that, when there is an issue, when there is a problem, when there is a challenge in your life – your neighbours will come to help you, your neighbours will come to serve you, your neighbours will come to lift you up. I know that another point of view is “Why should I live in such a way that something bad may happen?”. We don’t understand that whether you are good or bad, we will all face storms in life, we will all face ups and downs in life. Nobody on the planet earth had his life perfect, completely alright, completely you know set in motion, set in place. As long as you are on the earth, you will face spiritual warfare, spiritual attacks, physical attacks, physical battles and when we are going through that, God is our first help, God is our first place to run to. But God has also assigned for us to have neighbours, those that are close by when the brother lives far away when the ones who are obligated to help you are not connected to you in your heart or your spirit. God has assigned you to have certain neighbours and how you are going to be benefited from these neighbours will depend on how you honour them now. So never abandon a friend. Honour them, celebrate them, invest in them, help them when they are in their time of need. And don’t do it because you want their help back, you do it because the Bible says you love your neighbour as yourself. You love your neighbour because Christ commanded you to love them. And that is how you live a life that says, “I want to glorify God with my actions. I don’t want to live a self-centred life, no. I want to live such a life that I bring honour to the name of Christ.” And the name of Christ, the person of Christ is love. And the more we love Jesus, the more we will end up loving the people around us.

God bless you, let’s pray together – “ Dear Jesus, we just thank you for this beautiful morning time. We thank you for Grace being given so that we can love our neighbours so that we can convert our friends into neighbours, we can convert our acquaintances into neighbours, we can even convert some of our family members into our neighbours. We give you all the praise, In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen”