Former UCLA football coach, Pepper Rodgers, said that once when he was going through a terrible season, he told his wife that at times he felt like his dog was his only friend and that he really needed two friends..... he said his wife proceeded to go out and buy him another dog! Friendship is indeed a precious thing to have. Consider Jesus as a friend.

Jesus is a friend who was willing to give up heaven itself to walk where we walk. Paul said, "although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men" (Philippians 2:6-7). Friends often give up something of value to themselves that they may share time or some occasion with a friend. Jesus did that for us.

Jesus is a friend who was willing to die for our sins. "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). The transgressions He died for on the cross were not His own, but ours (Isaiah 53). Indeed "greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friend" (John 15:13).

A story out of WW I tells of a soldier entering the battlefield to retrieve a fallen friend. When he returned with his friend, his friend had died. Some said he was foolish to go, that he had risked his life for nothing. The solider said, "it was worth it to me because the last words he said were, 'I knew you would come'. He was my friend and I his".

Jesus says, "come unto Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28).

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