Last week I had one of those moments where I found myself travelling down memory lane. I have no idea what triggered these thoughts but what came foremost to my mind was an old Sunday School chorus called “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
I have no idea who wrote this chorus or when but, as I sat with this memory, I started to recall that most weeks we’d sing this chorus, and it is one that I just remember fondly!
Slowly but surely the precious words of this chorus rose out of the recesses of my mind to my lips, and I was able to once again sing this cherished song. This old and trusted chorus states:
“What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer.
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear.
All because we do not carry,
Everything to God in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful?
Who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness
Take it to the Lord in prayer.”
Why I loved this this old chorus is because it reminds me that praying to God can be like a conversation with Him. A conversation just like one in which we talk as friends.
The French Archbishop and theologian Francois Fenelon, who lived in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries wrote:
“Tell God all that is in your heart as one who unloads one’s heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles so that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys so that He may sober them; tell Him your dislikes so that He may help you to overcome them; to talk to Him about your temptations that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your heart that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference for good, your depraved tastes for evil; tell Him how vanity tempts you to be insincere; how pride disguises you to yourself and others. Tell Him – He’s your friend!”
The point, I believe Francois Fenelon was trying to make is that, if you are open and honest before God, then you will not lack things to say to Him. Friends who have no secrets from each other never run out of conversation.
Such friends do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back. They talk out of the abundance of the heart; without needing to measure out their words they say or what they think. People such as this follow the example of Hannah from the Old Testament where it described her as one “who pours out her heart to God.” (1 Samuel 1:15)
The Old Testament Book of Lamentations also reminds us that, “Blessed is the man or woman who attains such intimacy with God and talks with Him as a friend to friend." (Lamentations 2:19)
The desire of the Staff and i is that each member of this community, in particular the students, are able to come into this deep intimate relationship with God, through Jesus Christ. As they learn to pray in this sincere, heartfelt way, they can come to know God as their friend as well as their Lord, Saviour and redeemer.
As this old chorus reminds us, indeed what a friend we have in Jesus!