Embracing Friendship: Our Transformative Journey with God

"The nature of our relationship to God, how are we to live in that relationship, what is our part, what God does, and how that makes us able to become increasingly like our heart says we should be and like God wants us to be. So we're addressing this question in connection with the phrase hearing God, but hearing God is simply a short way of talking about a conversational relationship with God. And we want to try to say as clearly as we can what that is like so that we can live in it to the greatest advantage of our spiritual growth in Christlikeness." [00:00:12]

"One of the most heartwarming scriptures to me is the picture in Genesis 3 where it talks about Adam and Eve heard the sound of God walking in the garden. You have to pause a moment to think about what that tells you about God. God walking in the garden. What was he doing? What was he doing? Well, he was enjoying his creation and he was coming to visit. Now God as he shows up in the early chapters of Genesis, turns out to be a very chatty God." [00:01:11]

"You see, what emerges here is not only God's interest in our lives, but the space that he gives us. He does not stand over us. He gives us opportunity to work and be on our own. He gave Adam and Eve distance, but he came to visit. And I don't know how you handle that question. Adam, where are you? But you might try thinking, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That by his choice, God didn't know where Adam was." [00:02:43]

"We want to understand that it is one where God is both available but gives us the option of turning away. And practically speaking now for our studies together here, we need to come to grips with that option and think about how it is exercised. God comes. God walks in our midst. He's there. As Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is in your midst. The kingdom of God is in your midst. The kingdom of God is just God acting. He's everywhere. But you don't always see him, and yet he does show up." [00:03:56]

"And so there is an area here where we realize that our relationship to God is not a consumerist relationship. It's not a consumerist relationship. It's not a consumerist relationship. Religion, as Christianity understands it, isn't a consumer relation. We don't consume the merits of Christ. We don't consume the services of the church. We don't. We are participants. We are not spectators. We are in the game, and the game is producing the greatest creative goodness possible." [00:07:01]

"We were meant to live in a fellowship that is, at least for the beginning, to be described as a conversational relationship with God. There are some wonderful words from Brother Lawrence. There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. Those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it, yet I do not advise you to do it. from that motive, it is not pleasure that we ought to seek in this exercise, but let us do it from a principle of love and because God would have us do it." [00:07:54]

"That really means to see ourselves realistically before God as dependent upon His goodness and as an expression of His goodness. The verse there in 2 Chronicles says, if my people, not everyone, my people, who are those, the ones who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, seek my face, turn from their wicked ways, then I will come. I will remove the distance. I will come. I will hear them. I will forgive them. I will heal." [00:09:43]

"God's intent for each of us is that we should grow to the point to where he can empower us to do what we want. Now, there's a lot of work on our wanter before we get there. And that's what it goes on in the relationship as we walk with God, listening and hearing moment by moment, day by day as we grow. Now, if you will, I want to go back and lay a more scriptural foundation for all of this." [00:14:30]

"And you can turn there if you want. You don't need to. I think you recognize it. This is the point of creation. What are we created for? And we are created to have dominion under God. Dominion under God. And that passage is a little insight into the community that is God before creation and during creation. We call it the Trinity, of course. And the wording there is, let us make human beings. In our likeness. Now, he never, or God never said that about anything else." [00:15:17]

"Now that helps us understand the intimate relationship with God because when we start talking about hearing God and receiving guidance. We are very likely to lose the main point about friendship, and that is that communicating with God is not always or primarily a matter of being told what to do. And for many people, they cannot progress in their relationship with God because they're just thinking in terms of being told what to do. Now, being in the will of God requires that you go beyond that." [00:21:47]

"Now that fits in with Jesus' statement about you are my friends because you know what I'm doing. I call you my friends because you understand what's going on. That's the picture of a co -worker, not of a servant who stands around waiting to be told what to do. Your wants and your desires are important in God's plan for you. And in general, in human relations also, things are beginning to be what they ought to be if you have people who don't need to be told." [00:24:50]

"And as we do that, of course, we always have the larger framework, the community, the work of the fellowship that we're in, as a part of our lives, so we don't just go off in a corner and do something creative. We are people who live in community, and we delight in other people, and so the friendship spreads, and we find our fulfillment in our relationships to other people. And that moves us toward the Trinitarian nature of human community that we will have to speak more of later on today, because the Trinity actually turns out to be the model of life as it is intended to be in human existence." [00:31:35]