Who is really your true friend?

Mark 3:31-35

Now his mother and brothers arrived at the crowded house where he was teaching, and they sent word for him to come out and talk with them. “Your mother and brothers are outside and want to see you,” he was told. He replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” Looking at those around him he said, “These are my mother and brothers! Anyone who does God’s will is my brother, and my sister, and my mother.”

Food for thought!

I want you to get this scene in your head. Jesus is teaching in some house. He is surrounded by a vast multitude of people. As he teaches his family shows up. Their arrival creates a moment 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, which we had just last week?

When he returned to the house where he was staying, the crowds began to gather again, and soon it was so full of visitors that he couldn’t even find time to eat. When his friends heard what was happening, they came to try to take him home with them. “He’s out of his mind,” they said.

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 God given opportunities. Jesus is teaching us the lesson 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 not to have among your closest people any of your blood relatives. The deepest relationship of life is not always the blood relationship; it is the relationship of mind to mind and heart to heart. It is when people have common aims, common principles, common interests, a common goal that they become really and truly friends.