Jesus is a Faithful Friend

Two college roommates were playing in the evening. One wanted to go to a fraternity party to listen to a band. The other wanted to go to church to listen to a visiting preacher at a revival meeting.

One was a Christian and the other was not. The Christian somehow convinced his friend to join him at church with the promise he would go to the fraternity party with him after the service. The two friends agreed and they got to the revival meeting and the evangelist up on the podium was telling a story about a farmer and his dog that the farmer's dog had been very useful to him but it was getting old.

His master decided to get rid of him by drowning him. He put the dog in his pickup truck and they drove to a large river near his farm. He put the dog into a boat and rode out to the deepest part around the dog's neck.

He tied a cord attached to a heavy stone but then he threw it into the water. The poor dog sank but the cord broke and rising to the surface with a whine he tried to get into the boat again. Unmoved his master pushed him off a number of times with an oar.

Finally the farmer stood up in the boat intending to strike the dog a blow with the oar that would send it to the bottom. In the attempt he lost his balance and fell into the water. He could not swim and would have drowned but when the faithful friend saw his master struggling in the water in spite of the cruel treatment it had just received from him it swam up to him caught hold of his clothes and brought him safe to land.

As the two roommates listened to the evangelist finish the story about the dog and the farmer the one roommate who wasn't a Christian wiped a tear from his eye. He related to the story about the dog being a faithful friend because he had grown up on a farm himself and had a dog when he was a boy. He thought about that dog now how it used to wait on the front porch for him and would run by his side through field and forest.

Then the dog ran off one day and never came back. It had broke the young boy's heart. As the two friends listened to the evangelist he related how like that farmer's dog Jesus was a faithful friend faithful to the end to all who followed him that Jesus would never let you down or let you go for he was the friend of sinners.

The evangelist finished his message with a challenge to all who had heard him that night. He said to go home and right before you go to bed take out a pen and a piece of paper and write one word on that paper write the word either saved or lost. The two friends skipped the fraternity party and instead just returned to their dorm room where they chatted for a while about the minister's sermon.

The boy who wasn't a Christian watched his friend write on a piece of paper the word saved and place it in his bible on nightstand before he turned out the lamp and jumped into bed. His friend took out a piece of paper as well and in the moonlight he could not write the word saved and he would not write the word lost. He sat on the edge of his bed while his roommate fell asleep with his conscience troubling he leaned over and picked up his friend's bible and opened it randomly to one john chapter four and his eyes fell on verses nine and ten.

In this was manifested the love of God toward us because that God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love not that we love God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. As the roommate sat on the edge of his bed he kept reading and rereading those words until they sunk down into his soul and around 3 a.m after praying to God on his knees he surrendered his life to Jesus the friend of sinners.

He finally was able to write on his piece of paper the word saved.