A Friend of God

 

Are you and God friends? Today I want us to go through what it means to be a friend of God. There are several people in the Bible who God considered friends; Abraham, David and Moses are the most popular, let’s not forget Enoch, even though the Bible does not say much about him.

To be friends with someone, you have to be able to walk together. You need to have things in common. We have a lot of friends, people we chat with and spend time with. The difference between these friendships and friendship with God is that a proper friendship with God is never casual. It is intense, mostly because of what God requires and expects of you if you are to be His friend.

God will not play second fiddle to anyone. If He is to be your friend, He has to be number 1 in your life. He is a jealous God, so much that He will not allow you to trust anyone more than you trust Him. There are times we fall out with close friends, and we blame the enemy for coming between us and that friend; we must also consider that God can in fact provoke someone’s anger against you, to destroy that friendship If He sees that you have started valuing that friendship more than you value the one you have with Him.

A.W Tozer said ‘I have spent more time in conversation with God, than I have with men’

God wants to be the first person we run to when we want to talk. Often times, when something happens to us, when we have a strange situation, we run to friends, parents, pastors, prophets. We run to everyone except the one person who actually has the power to fix our situation. We need to get to a place where we know God so well, that we can speak to Him and lose track of time because you were conversing with a friend. Bear in mind, that God will never repeat what you tell Him to other people. He won’t gossip about you, what you say to Him stays between you and Him. If that doesn’t make you want to talk to God first, I’m not sure what it will take.

God requires us to resist entertaining all doubts of Him, if we are to be His friends. We must believe His word and hold on to it. We must trust His heart, even when we can’t see His hand in our situation. We must constantly be aware that we are loved and that God wants to hear from us. The Bible tells us to ‘pray without ceasing’. Some people have taken this to mean that they must quit their jobs and spend their days in prayer. This entire instruction means, is that we must be aware of God’s presence all the time. If we keep His presence in mind, we can actually talk to Him silently, in our mind and heart, even as we go about running our daily errands. You can sit in traffic and talk to God instead of listening to music. You can talk to God as you cook, as you take a shower. Being aware of and acknowledging His presence will not only lead to deeper intimacy with Him, but will also help you resist sin. Your mind will be concentrated on things above. Your spirit will become strong enough to resist any temptations the enemy tries to seduce you with.

 I cannot stress enough the importance of obedience if we are to be Gods friend. If you look through the Bible and read the stories of people who did great things with and for God, you will find that the one thing they had in common, was obedience. Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah to name a few. All these people were able to do great things because they were receptive to Gods word. They obeyed every instruction that came from Him. To them, Gods word was the law and there was no compromising about it. They obeyed promptly and with every ounce of joy they could master. They obeyed their heavenly father because they knew and trusted Him.

I read a story the other day about a blind 4 year old girl. The building she lived in with her parents was on fire and she was standing by the window. He dad had gone out to the store and there were firemen at the bottom telling her to jump. They told her they had placed a soft place for her to land when she jumped; but the little girl stood by the window and would not move. Then her dad arrived at the scene, saw his daughter standing by the window. He told her to jump and without hesitating, the little girl jumped. She was blind; she could not see how far she was from the bottom or what kind of soft landing had been prepared for her. She jumped only when she heard her fathers’ voice. She recognized his voice, she trusted his instruction, she knew this was the man who loved her and would not tell her to jump to her death. Oh how much easier our lives would be if we knew God so well, that we recognized His voice, His actions and His hand in our lives. If we had a friendship with God so intimate that we could trust His instructions regardless of what is happening around us, we would find Christianity a whole lot easier.

Finally, the one other thing God requires of us is that we fear Him. We cannot be friends with God while living like someone who has never heard of God and has no respect or fear of Him. We are told to be in the world but not of the world. We cannot do what everyone else does, not if we want to be friends with God. We need to maintain a clean heart and clear conscience because we know how much these things mean to God. Note that every effort you make towards moving to God, He notices and appreciates. Every time you take the time to speak to Him, He notices. 

If we can get to that point where we cannot go a day without talking to God, our spiritual journey will become a lot more beneficial for us and others around us will notice the difference in our character and attitude. The more time you spend with God, talking to Him, reading His word, thinking of Him, the more you begin to reflect His character. What you feed will grow. If we feed our spiritual lives, we will grow and mature as Christians. In the Bible God promised that if we go near to Him, He will draw near to us. If we start today, making that effort to draw closer to God; even if we start with a 2 minute prayer, every day for 30 days, I can guarantee you that there will be a change in you. Every step you take towards Him, He takes one towards you.

I should warn you though, if you have decided to pursue this course, you will lose your taste for certain things you have enjoyed in the past. You will no longer enjoy certain music, certain venues; even certain friends will no longer fit in with your new lifestyle. You will notice that you are on your way to becoming a whole new person. That person you are becoming will be the person God created you to be and he/she will be a much better version of your old self.

Try it and see.