Developing Your Friendship with God
Purpose Driven Life #12
Cornwall
November 2, 2003
God is to be your closest friend. Last week, we looked at this and how, through prayer and meditation, you can be closer to Him than you are now. You, frankly, can be as close to God as you want to be and it depends on you. If you don’t feel close to God, you have to ask, “Who moved?” knowing that it wasn’t Him. As you and I learn to be God’s friend a spin-off benefit will be improved friendships with those who are your human friends? If we learn how to be ‘tight’ with God, we can take the same principles and be closer with our friends.
By now, you may have realized that we’re in a long series of messages focusing on the purposes of the church and of our lives. We are focusing, now, on the subject of worship and how to worship God. We are taking several weeks to focus on our biblical purpose of being worshippers. These messages are not meant to be simply informative or informational. You don’t want that. You don’t come to church for information. You come here to meet God. My goal is that these messages be transformational and that they lead you to analyze your life and live differently. Christ in you transforms you and changes you. This is what the Christian life is all about- transformation. Christian life is all about becoming constantly different- it’s about constant change, but the change is not to be just in external matters, but on deep matters of the heart, which becomes evident through outside matters of action.
Rom.12.1, 2- tells us to be transformed. This is a key passage with regard to the subject of worship. This means that we are to be seriously changed, from the inside out. So, please, don’t come here for information. We come here to worship God, and we live to worship God. We used to come to Church ‘to be taught’ primarily. We don’t, anymore. That idea, alone, is a revolutionary and transformational idea.
Our first purpose in life is to give pleasure to God and we do that through living a fully God-centred life. As we live this way, we constantly are in worship toward God. You begin that in friendship with God, so I’m urging you to work at this friendship. Don’t accept anything less than close friendship. Don’t believe that it doesn’t matter- it does matter, very much!
How can you deepen your friendship with God, each day?
One very important key, and I will take today’s entire message to consider this, is, “You need to choose to be honest with God.” A lot of us are scared to be honest with God. Many of us may never have been honest with God, ever. You need to be honest with God. Friendship is built on honesty.
A lot of times, you might be ‘mad’ at God but you feel like you can never say that because he might zap you with lightning. Don’t you think he knows your feelings? Of course, he does. (Psa.139.23- God knows your thoughts- indicates, by-the-way, that Satan does not.) God doesn’t want some sort of superficial relationship. He wants you and me to wrestle with him and to be brutally honest with him. From such honesty comes growth. I know that we fear this because in the human realm when we’re honest with people, they sometimes turn away and show that they weren’t friends with us, and we hurt because of that. However, God is bigger than that and won’t turn away. God knows you have feelings and that those feelings aren’t always ‘holy, righteous, spiritual’ feelings. He wants to help you through those. He wants to work with you on those feelings. His whole goal is to lead you to the good places.
Psa.23- notice his desire to lead you to the still waters and the green pastures. This isn’t what’s always before us, though, is it? Sometimes, we’re incredibly conflicted. Maybe a relationship ended and you’re upset at God because of that. Maybe you lost a job and you’re upset at God about that. Maybe you are ill and you’re upset at God about that. He can handle that. Tell him how you feel. Cry before him. Even be angry at him- he can handle that.
See some times when friends were honest with God and he patiently worked with them.
Exod.33.12-17- notice the honesty between Moses and God. You are to have this same honesty with God.
See what happened when Moses was being commissioned- Exod.4.1-16- God was honest in his emotions toward Moses, too.
On another occasion, we see Jeremiah- Jer.1.4-10. God can handle this.
An author named Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has written, in “On Death and Dying”, about the process of grieving. She identified 5 stages we all pass through in all times of grief. These hold true whether you’re grieving a spouse’s death, grieving the loss of a job, grieving the moving of long-time friends to another place, grieving changes in your church’s doctrinal and belief structure, or grieving the loss of health. We don’t go through these in a straight line, necessarily- we sometimes go back and forth, but we need to understand these so we can help others and ourselves. These stages are:
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance (DABDA)- let me explain a bit, and please understand these. These are God-given. We are told, for instance, that we are not to grieve as the non-Christians grieve- 1 Thess.4.13. We still grieve. When we lose a job, or a friend, or a spouse, or our health, or are cheated by someone, or lose a house in a fire- to ‘just accept it’ is not normal and puts one in denial. To ‘just accept’ does not make you stronger or even appear stronger, to someone who understands these things. It creates a potential for bitterness and actually walking away from God eventually because of blaming him for something he allowed in order to help in the building of relationships. What God wants most is relationship with his people. (Far too many Christians are far too concerned, for instance, about healing. I believe I’m coming to see that healing now is not so much God’s concern or interest. Sometimes, He does it, and there is no question it is His will- there was no illness in Eden and won’t be in the Kingdom. But healing, in the Bible, often surrounded some special revelation of Jesus- some new truth or understanding. You do not find the disciples involved in ‘healing ministries’. God allows illness and sickness and uses it for our growth.)
Knowing or understanding this, God does not want pretence. He does not want denial. He wants a loving a caring relationship. God does not want denial. God wants us to work through these tragedies so we can help others and so we can be closer to him. He permits these situations in us so we are driven to him. God sometimes drives us to relationship with Him.
God wants you to be honest with him. He is being honest with you so you need to be with him. Why do I say that?
1 Cor.10.13- tells us that God doesn’t allow anything into your life that you can’t bear. He is in charge. He knows what you can handle and won’t give you too much. But he wants you to handle it and to become stronger- not more into denial- but stronger in relationship with Him. A lot of Christians live in denial and are walking time bombs don’t be that.
When our church went through its belief system change, I admit my denial, my anger, my bargaining, my depression, and, now, my acceptance. It has taken 15 years, though. Actually, it has taken longer, because some changes I was anticipating ahead of 1986. I first went to Korea because of the depression factor, and that was a God-given opportunity.
What has happened over the past 15 years in our church? Let’s look at that for a bit, not to ‘look back’ but to understand the process. Some of you didn’t go through this process and I’d like you to understand a bit of history so you understand some of us who have been here a longer time, too. We had a very defined and clear belief structure rooted in a lot of misunderstanding. We thought we were God’s only true church. We thought we were required to observe OT practices and that we were ‘between the covenants’. That was the defining understanding, which led us to all sorts of our beliefs. Because of this, we felt OT holy days, Sabbath, and food laws were demanded of us, until Christ came at his return.
Then things began to change back in the late 80s and into the 90s. With each change, we know that we all drew some ‘lines in the sand’ and said that we’d stay around as long as something else didn’t change. We had matters of understanding that were important to us- it might have been something of prophecy, which was rather clearly defined and something we focused on very much, or it might have been observance of certain festivals. It might have been something else. Each time we grew in fuller biblical understanding, some left. Even back in the 1970s, people left when we changed. In 1974, we learned that we were keeping Pentecost on the incorrect day of the week, and people left over that. People left because we came to understand that people who were divorced could actually remarry- a burden was lifted for many, and many, most of whom had never personally known the subject of divorce, left. People have always left and, in many cases, some have begun new ‘splinter’ churches to hold to ‘the faith once delivered’ (Jude 3) which was supposed to be the body of belief prior to the particular change in question. (That phrase, by the way, refers to the truth about Jesus Christ- not to matters of doctrinal belief.)
As people left, often it was in anger and in denial. Sometimes, they denied that we were anymore the true church, but they were, because they held true to whatever was the issue at the time. Some were simply angry and got stuck at that point of anger. Many of the ‘splinter’ churches are rooted in anger and denial and are stuck there. That is not healthy. That is not a healthy place to be. They are grieving but not moving through grief. We’ve all known someone who lost a spouse and ‘never got over it’- their life ended when their spouse died. It’s not a healthy place to be. Life is meant to go forward. As long as there is life, it means that God isn’t finished with you, yet.
So, back to us. All of us have gone through this process, especially since the death of Herbert Armstrong, the founder of the WCG. We have wrestled with each change that has come and we are here because we understand that these changes are right and good. I know how I struggled over ‘born again’ in 1992, and the nature of God- that was a big one, of course. It took me a long time to understand how conversion can come to the young. I know that I’ve wrestled with God on each issue, but I came back to the fact of conversion that God did in my life and the church he led me to, and worked it out with him. I do not want to be angry, in denial, or in depression. These are not good places to be, long term.
So, for you who haven’t been here long, those of us who have been are a bit battle-scarred. However, too, we’re absolutely excited about the fact that you are here, without the baggage that we carry and you are able to teach us about freely responding to Christ. I am learning from you!
Psa.142.1-3- God wants your honesty. This is only one example of the honesty between friends, but Psalms is full of this as David poured out his heart to God. A friendship demands honesty. Without it, there is no real friendship. The bottom line is that God cares and wants you to be honest with Him.
Honesty is a difficult value to bring into human relationships, sadly. Most people have been so bruised throughout their lives that they can’t handle honesty and feel that it means that someone doesn’t love them anymore. In solid, sound relationships, we’re supposed to be able to be honest, with the understood foundation being ‘love’ that is unconditional. Our relationship with God is that. He doesn’t love us because we’ve done something in particular. He loves us because He chose to love us and is committed to that love. This is the kind of love that should exist in our marriages, and all relationships, but is not what we see around us. People change partners because they find someone younger, better looking, richer, or something. People change partners because they’re, often, too lazy to work at the relationship and it’s easier, in the hard times, to just leave. This is not said in accusation or judgment. Sometimes a relationship is intolerable and scripture allows for those- there are even times when God told people to divorce their spouses- I believe there are 4 such times in scripture. But this is not what is normally seen. People come from environments of ‘conditional’ love- where love will continue as long as someone does what is pleasing to another. Children grow up with this and the idea ‘mommy won’t love you if…’. I’ve heard people say this and cringe every time I’ve heard it. So, it’s not surprising that people come into friendships and marriage relationships and don’t know how to handle honesty.
However, we can practice honesty with God and He’ll just love us more and more because of it. He will be honest back, but he won’t zap us because of our honesty. That is not the way he works or will work. He loves and loves. He listens. He weeps with us. He carries us when we need it. He is God! He is our tremendous God!
You won’t have a close friendship with God if you feel you can’t be honest with Him. If you feel you have to always come to him in a good attitude and with words of praise, you’ll go long times without worshipping him. If you feel you have to be in a great attitude to come here each week, you’ll miss weeks. Worship is all about honesty with God, and it’s about his serving you, even as you serve him. He will take your down times and lift you up, but sometimes it doesn’t happen instantly- sometimes it takes time. Grief takes time to heal before someone can ‘move on’ in life, as move on he or she must. This is God’s desire for them.
Conclusion
In your friendship with God, I want to encourage you to cultivate honesty. If you want your friendship to go to the next level, cultivate honesty. Let God know how you ‘really’ are. Let us know the same, here. We are your friends, and want to be an assembly of friends. I’m appreciating the honesty of some of you when you share that it wasn’t a particularly good week. I take that and pray about it, and so will others. May we never let each other down, but even there, that gives fodder for growing. Sometimes you’ll feel like God has let you down- he can handle that and the feelings you have about it.
Through an honest friendship with God, you worship God. This kind of ongoing worship is beautiful to God and is something He enjoys very much. In this kind of relationship, your growth, in Christ, will be absolutely unlimited!
