Honest Offering: A 6-Day Devotional With CAINBeispiel

He Is Everything to Me

(Friend in Jesus)

No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father.

John 15:13-15

Cutest baby. Biggest burrito. Funniest movie. Best friend. Superlatives are a regular part of the language in our culture because they help us express our opinions and persuade other people about those opinions. But the common use of these hyperbolic expressions might cause us to devalue an important fact: Jesus’s love is the greatest.

This is no exaggeration. Jesus’s love for us is supreme, absolute, unending, inexhaustible, and immeasurable. He is our very best Friend. He doesn’t set boundaries to protect His time, space, and emotions—He comes close and stays close in every circumstance. He remains faithful, even when we are faithless. He is not stingy—He offers us everything, even His life. He never lets us down but saves us and shows us the way forward. He walks alongside us and invites us to walk alongside Him. He doesn’t keep secrets but reveals His will to us. Jesus’s love is the greatest.

So how do we step into that friendship? What does it look like for friendship with Jesus to truly be “everything to me” and not simply an exaggerated expression?

Jesus offers us the greatest love and friendship. To receive and enjoy that friendship, we must do what He commands (v. 14). The foremost of those commands is to believe in Him (John 3:16-17). He does not command us to earn His friendship but to experience it by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9).

When we come to Him in faith, Jesus wants us to continue in that friendship by getting to know Him better—and not simply on an intellectual level. Even though we can’t see Him, His friendship is real. He invites us to walk in that friendship with Him every single moment. As we engage with Him in everyday activities and experiences, He lets us know He is always with us. As we pray to Him, He reminds us that He is always for us. As we trust Him in obedience to His commands, He shows us He is always working through us.

Jesus is, in fact, the greatest. Have you received His friendship? Is He everything to you?

• Listen to CAIN’s “Friend in Jesus.” What lyrics stand out to you as particularly encouraging? Which stand out to you as most challenging?

• What evidence is there in your life that Jesus truly is your greatest friend? In what ways do you need to grow in friendship with Him?
• Thank Jesus for the greatest love and friendship He has offered you. Ask Him to help you grow in friendship with Him.