Greater love has no one than this: to lay one’s life down for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
John 15:13-15
What is a friend?
The word is defined as: a person one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection. That’s not bad, as far as it goes. But it isn’t really a satisfying picture of friendship at all. Because being a friend is not a surface interaction, as in: I kind of like you and you kind of like me, so we get along. That is boring at best.
The answer can be qualified. To a five-year-old, a friend is someone who shares his or her toys. To a ninety-year-old, a friend may be the memory of good times shared in better days. But always, friendship denotes love, closeness, support, guidance, understanding, forgiveness, mercy, and grace, among other attributes. And of all the things that define a friend, love is at the core.
Jesus said that this love is elevated to the status of a willingness to die for a friend. Seriously? Die? Yes, seriously. That’s what Jesus did for us. And although he meant that statement literally, there are other sacrificial ways to look at the concept. Things like giving of one’s time, talents, and treasures—giving fully of one’s heart in every sense—are all ways to give up self for others.
South East Asia Prayer Center is in the business of building friendships around the world. Through relationship there can be a harvest of workers for God’s Kingdom. Friends don’t bully or insist; they stand alongside to support and cheer. For our friends in the nations, it goes well beyond knowing someone and sharing mutual affection, although that’s certainly part of it. There are gaps in life. We stand in them for one another.
SEAPC is, “A global Christian community of friends that believe lives and nations are changed through prayer.” Our culture is one in which we pray, we honor, we serve, we network, we multiply, we manage from the floor, we strive for excellence, and we prioritize. And through it all, Jesus reigns.
How are friends made? You know. There’s a guy at the gym, you exchange a few words, find that you enjoy the conversation, go out for coffee, and it grows from there. Or the friend on Facebook with whom you share interests, who “likes” your stuff, offers prayer when your child is sick. In both cases—in person or remotely—making a friend involves sharing. Not just weight lifting stories or recipes. It means doing life, hope, and love together.
In our modern society we think of love as much more flat than the ancient Greeks, who had different words to denote nuances of the feeling. Philia, deep friendship. Ludus, playful love. Pragma, longstanding love. The list goes on, seven in all. In Scripture, the ultimate expression of love is agape. This denotes a pure, willful, sacrificial love that intentionally desires another’s highest good.
When we channel our love into agape, we are there when the gym friend is about to make a bad decision, offering him godly counsel so he doesn’t fall. We don’t just hit the praying hands emoji on Facebook and forget about it, but instead lift the circumstance to the Lord. Love is dynamic. Exciting. And yes, sacrificial.
SEAPC makes friends in the nations in many ways. Working with one person leads to meeting several more. Whether building a house shoulder to shoulder, praying hand to hand, or weeping cheek to cheek, the bridge that has been built becomes a filament of steel. We are one in the body of Christ. And as such, when we plow, sow, plant, and water together, our friendships become the stuff of legend. When God permits us to experience a harvest of souls for him together with our friends, it is the culmination of agape.
Friends, in the SEAPC sense, stand together and try to model the first century church. We pray together. We share resources. We laugh, cry, plan, eat, heal, disagree and agree, set goals—in short, do what friends do. The only difference between the world and us is that everything is done to bring glory to God. This is a huge difference. Because when you add in the word sacrifice, love rises to a whole new level.
This month of September our prayer focus is on Friends Around the Table, a regular gathering of our friends in the nations. The event is not a business meeting, although goals, needs, and plans are presented and discussed. It is primarily a prayer meeting, a place to come together with friends to worship, praise, thank, repent, and beseech the Lord as a unified body. Because as different as one country may be from another in certain aspects, in Jesus we are united. As we work together, we are Jesus’s hands and feet in bringing nation-changing revival to a world that desperately needs it.
Just to be clear on the whole love thing, Jesus expects us to express the fullness of agape—including the part about desiring the highest good in another—to everyone. He did not designate this to only include friends. In Luke 6:32, he tells us, “Do you think you deserve credit for merely loving those who love you? Even the godless do that!” Through pure love, aka agape, those to whom we show love, even when they hate us, may be divinely inspired to become a friend. And move onward to accept Jesus.
If you are reading this, you are our friend. SEAPC is inclusive, not exclusive. What we all share is acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Everything else flows from there. And the thing that permeates that core is agape.
Practice agape with lavish generosity. Set the table for a crowd of friends. If “a cord of three strands is not easily broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:9), imagine the strength of a world unified in friendship through Jesus!
Be a friend. Indeed.
