Today’s Big Idea: Acquaintances and friends are important yet Jesus calls men into a Brotherhood.
And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, Jesus said, “Behold My mother and My brothers!” Matthew 12:49 NASB
Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. 1 Peter 2:17 NASB
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. Proverbs 17:17 NASB
Then the LORD said to Cain: “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know, Am I my brother’s keeper?” Genesis 4:9 NASB
For most of my life, I’ve longed for friendship yet never been very good at it. Moving from town to town or job to job I would get new friends every few years. Most were acquaintances, and a few were friends, but what I’ve longed for is Brotherhood.
Acquaintances
The Acquaintance. These are men with whom we share a common experience from work, church, sport, or adventure. For the most part, they can be relatively short-term and shallow.
Friends
Friends can be long-lasting and fulfilling. They grow over time and reach a ceiling of self-disclosure that stops when the cost of being authentic gets too high. Many friendships are one-dimensional in that it, like the acquaintance, is based on a common or shared experience.
Brotherhood
Fidelity to Jesus’ Way of Love is the shared experience of a God-shaped Brotherhood.
It is forged in a man by a furnace of many names and is born out of conflict, effort, and intention. It demands deep trust found in the comradeship of deep trenches, a locking of arms around the ways of Jesus, and an enduring commitment to The Brotherhood.
Love the Brotherhood
It is the bone-crushing, life-giving devotion to Jesus’ love that sustains the Brotherhood, not the shared affinity of a sports team.
When I run into a spiritual fork in the road where one way is The Way and the other leads down into a dark hole I need a battle-scarred fall down seven get up eight, safe place to be-real brother who knows all about dark holes and how to get out of them. Chasing the Sage, p 77
A Runner of Puropse
In his book 80/20 Running, endurance running author, Matt Fitzgerald writes about Jack Dolan who was a central figure in the running community of New Zealand. Jack was a man on a mission to inspire young runners of promise to take the sport more seriously.
I stopped reading, dog-eared the page, and thought of me and I thought of you.
You are a spiritual runner of promise and I would like to see you take Jesus’ Way of Love more seriously. Not that you’re not taking following Jesus seriously.
Brothers, keep on following hard after Jesus yet excel still more. 1 Thessalonians 4:1 paraphrase
…kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you…2 Timothy 1:6 NASB
And so, here’s what I would like to propose to you and me…
Pursue love as did Jesus.
For the next month restrict your daily reading and reflection to 1 Corinthians 13 and Matthew 5-7.
Pursue the Brotherhood.