What Sort of Friend Am I // A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed, Part 4

<p>Friendships are fantastic aren’t they? But how often do we come at this whole friendship thing with a rank consumer mindset – asking what’s in it for me? May be the question we need to be asking is … what sort of a friend am I?</p> <p> </p> <h3><span style="color: #ff9900;"><strong>The Friend Who Failed</strong></span></h3> <p>We have been chatting these last few weeks about the whole subject of friendship. It isn’t something we talk about that often; it’s something we kind of … I don’t know, take for granted. And yet friendship, relationship, love, sacrifice are at the very centre of God’s plan for this world.</p> <p>As we have seen over these last few weeks, God looked at Adam when He created him and He said, "Hey, it’s not good that this man should be alone. I’ll make him a helper as his partner." Why? Because you and I are made in the image of God – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – three persons in one God; a God of relationship and community and of love for all eternity.</p> <p>I have heard some people postulate that the reason God created us – you and me – was that He got lonely. God was never lonely because God is three persons in one and that’s a mystery that I think we will spend the rest of eternity wrapping our minds around. No, God created us so that He could show us His great love; so that we could behold His glory. That’s why God created us. And He created us in His image. Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27:</p> <p style="padding-left: 40px;"><em style="font-size: inherit;">God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” So God created man in his image; in the image of God he created us, male and female he created us.</em></p> <p>See, we have been created in the image of a relational God, “… male and female he created us.” But although we are created in His image, there is one big difference between us and God … one difference that God allowed to happen in order that we should have a free will – either to love Him or not to love Him – for without freewill, love ca