True Friendship

Recently, I have been understanding what true intimacy with the Father looks like and acts like.  In my own experience, I have grown up in the Church having a single-dimensional view of what it means to have a relationship with God.  It has overemphasized obedience and underemphasized friendship.  This has resulted in my interactions with the Almighty becoming robotic and soldier-like.  God wants friends, not slaves!  In John 5:14, Jesus says, "You are my friends if you do whatever I command you."  The reality is that unless we understand God's heart of love for us and His desire for true, intimate friendship, we won't truly understand what Jesus is talking about.  We will hear that all he cares about is obedience, and that He is telling us to prove our love for Him by doing what He wants.  If we take on this mindset, we will begin performing and striving to do all the things necessary to prove something to God or do them looking for something in return. This becomes religious and you will be burnt out!  But if we understand what Jesus' relationship with His Father was like, the kind of relationship we've been invited into, we will be able to hear Him saying, "True obedience is simply the natural response from the heart of a friend, and it's simply doing what I'm doing."  The Lord wants to bless us!! We don't have to do anything to convince Him to do that.. just ask!

Therefore, if true obedience is doing and saying what God is doing and saying, then obedience necessarily flows from being with God.  It's just like every other relationship we have.  If we don't spend time with our family or friends, it will be hard to know what they are up to.  Check out John 14:10, "Do you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works."  Jesus' obedience is not something He did apart from the Father.  True obedience in friendship with God is a partnership, but a partnership unlike any other on earth.  We must come to understand that obedience itself is not something we do alone, but is something we are doing with the Father, as well as something that the Father is doing through us.  When our actions flow from our intimacy with God, and when we understand that we are doing them together with Him, serving God will be anything but "robotic and soldier-like."

If you are noticing that your Christian walk is boring, tiring, non-existent, etc., just ask the Lord to show you what true intimacy looks like.  He wants a relationship with you more than you a relationship with Him. God is in a good mood and He longs for you!  He is just asking us to realize our union!