Who is your first friend?

Mar 3:31-35

31 Just then his mother and brothers showed up. Standing outside, they relayed a message that they wanted a word with him. 32 He was surrounded by the crowd when he was given the message, "Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside looking for you." 33 Jesus responded, "Who do you think are my mother and brothers?" 34 Looking around, taking in everyone seated around him, he said, "Right here, right in front of you-- my mother and my brothers. 35 Obedience is thicker than blood. The person who obeys God's will is my brother and sister and mother."

Food for thought!

I want you to get this scene in your head. Jesus is teaching in the city of Capernaum. He is surrounded by a vast multitude of people. As Jesus is teaching His family shows up. Their arrival creates a moments of tension for everyone there. Jesus is teaching and His family is on the outside of the crowd. They can’t get to Him because of the multitude, so they send word through the crowd to tell Jesus to come to where they are. His family wants Him to stop His teaching, leave the multitude, and go to meet his family. They want Jesus to stop what he is doing and attend to them.  And will not be the last time. You remember this other incident in Mark 3:20-21?

"Then Jesus went to a house [probably Peter’s], but a throng came together again, so that He and His disciples could not even take food. And when those who belonged to Him ( His family) heard it, they went out to take Him by force, for they kept saying, He is out of His mind!"

The lessons. Sometimes it is our dear ones like mother, father, husband, wife and friends that stand in between us and God, that stand in between us and our opportunities. Of course they don't do it out of evil intentions; Mary and the others weren't acting out evil intentions; they were trying to help Jesus, so they thought. This was a misguided help of good intentioned people. Jesus, however used the occasion to teach us all that OBEDIENCE TO GOD, DOING GOD'S WILL, FOLLOWING GOD IS ABOVE EVERYTHING AND EVERYBODY. 

Yes, many times, our greatest distraction in doing God's will, and in embracing new opportunities are our relations, our friends. The tendency not to offset our dearest people or our dear past experiences many times make us forsake God-sent opportunities. This is why the burden of what we know already limits us in embracing new opportunities. The old is the enemy of the new. THE TIES THAT BIND US ARE THE TIES THAT BLIND US. (Andrew Hargadon).

Another lesson. There is in this passage a great and practical truth. It is very common to have your closest people to be not your blood family but others not related to you by blood. The deepest relationship of life is not always the blood relationship; it is the relationship of mind to mind and heart to heart (like husband and wife). It is when people have common aims, common principles, common interests, a common goal that they become really and truly friends.