But I Have Called You Friends

Psalm 98

After nearly forty years of working in technical fields and then more than 8 years disabled, well just over a year ago now I started working stocking products at a retail store. In those first forty years I encountered many electronics parts that were marked wrong, parts that were within design specification, but not working as far as applied in the designed circuit, and just out right bad circuit designs. Then in software being part of a very small team to design a biometric Application Programming Interface (API) for a new biometric finger scan reader, and then implement it in a working software application. And O the number of times in electronics or software my colleagues would say of me, How did you do that? Or, that's not how it's supposed to be used, but it works.

But now at this time I'm stocking products on shelves? Though I have learned about stocking in nearly every department I have been trained by the same person, the best person, the person who has worked in that particilar store longer than anyone else there. Yes, she's the best. As a team the department we have worked in the most is health and beauty products. It's probably the department with the greatest variety of small products. When I first started I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of products that look alike, but are quite different. There's the wide range of hues of facial makeup. There are more than ten varieties of toothpaste by one brand, outwardly looking the same except a very small almost unnoticeable marking on a box to set it apart. But then the next brand has as many varieties with their version of the same. And over the last year I have been trained well enough that my mentor trusts me before anyone else in the store to stock and arrange that department. One of my greatest fears is "doing it wrong". Mostly because I don't want to disappoint my mentor nor make her have to redo or correct my stocking twenty of a product in the completely wrong area (been there, done that) mostly because of just not wanting to make her look bad, be frustrated, or waste her time. And also because I have had to correct other worker’s mistakes sometimes having to move just dozens of bottles of water from one shelf to around to the opposite side of the shelves. She is not perfect in not making mistakes, but she makes very few. And also I don't make nearly the number of mistakes I did as when she first began to train me. And yes, I feel like I am still quite raw and very new, when I shouldn't. Being a retail store I have seen literally dozens of new hires from one that started the day I did through the present work, they are there for a very short time and they're gone, even least one in the same day he started.

Reading and rereading Psalm 98 like many of the praise psalms, songs I still feel unworthy, even uncertain of just singing out to everyone these great truths of who God really is. As I have shared before I spent 10-15 years rebuilding, or actually understanding why I even believe in God and determining why I believe the God of the Bible is the true God. In the Spiritual Disciplines class I'm in I learned one of the greatest reasons few share their faith is fear. We fear how others will respond,. We may even fear of not doing it the way we've been taught. Oh, there's nothing wrong with singing a song like Psalm 98 on a Sunday morning with a group of other believers, but Monday morning in the work place or with the neighbor, or at a sporting event? Yes, it is my outright hypocrisy, claiming these great truths on Sunday, but not being as bold the rest of the week to declare the same great King, the one who brings salvation to those who trust Him.

I started out on my own asking "could Jesus have prayed this Psalm" in this journal trying to learn the dependence Jesus had on His Father to be fully man and yet without sin. It was that dependence being something I knew I need that became my challenge. He is the true mentor who never made a mistake, though many times we ask, Why did He do that? (Think waiting two days after hearing His close friend was sick, waiting until after he died to go.)

We often quote that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 29:17) But we fail to appropriate and live in:

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your body, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26 GNV

Over my years as a professing believe I have made many gross errors, things that others look at and call me out for what those actions, attitudes, and words I have said and wonderif I truly believe in God, since surely I didn't show it.

Then I think of the disciples. We really tear into impestuous Peter, but fail to include in our condemnation James and Jonlhn, yes, beloved John arguing about who is the greatest, and in doing so get the rest of the disciples arguing. Oh yes, the mistakes and outright bad decisions made just alone in that week before the crucifixion as they went to Passover and their time of purification to take part in the Passover celebration. At that celebration that night Jesus washed the feet of all twelve. But when they say down and were eating Jesus told Judas it was time to go and do what was in his heart. We read that Satan had entered into his heart. Satan had no problem betraying Jesus from within the body of Judas.

But then after Judas left Jesus told the remaining eleven:

Henceforth call I you not servants: for the servant knoweth not what his master doeth: but I have called you friends: for all things that I have heard of my Father, have I made known to you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit remain, that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my Name, he may give it you.

John 15:15-16 GNV

"I have called you friends." He said that knowing in only a very few hours that all of them would fall asleep in the garden, knowing before the night was out Peter would blatantly deny knowing Him, knowing that in the next twenty-four hours all of them would forsake Him, yet later would be more distraught, confused, bewildered, and disoriented than they had ever been in all their lives, and that because of Him. "I have called you friends." See, Jesus knew what also was coming after the weekend. "I have called you friends."

When I read Psalm 98 and loudly proclaim with other believers the great truths of who God is, who Jesus is as King, He already knows the next day, even sooner maybe that I am going to embarassingly fail Him. "I have called you friend."

My fear of failure then is why?

Some of the most discouraging times in my life are when God is refining me the most.