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It take desire, time, and energy to develop your friendship with God.if you want a deeper and more intimate connection with God you must learn to honestly share your feelings with him, trust him when he asks you to do something,

learn to care about what he cares about, and desire his friendship more than anything else.like any friendship, you must determine to develop your friendship with God. Remember it won’t happen by accident.

“Draw close God,and God will draw close you”(James 4:8)

* Choose to obey God in faith.

Every time you trust God’s wisdom and do whatever he says ,even when you don’t understand it ,you deepen your friendship with God .

we don’t normally think of a obidence as a characteristics of friendship; but that’s reserved for relationship with a parent or the boss or a suprior officer, not a friend.

However ,Jesus made it clear that the obidence is a condition of intimacy with God. He said ,”you are my friend if you do what I command .”(7)

The word Jesus used when he called us friends could refer to the “friends of the king” in a royal courts . while this close companions had special privileges ,they were still subject to The King and had to obey his command .

We are friends with God, but we are not his equals. He is Our Loving leader and we follow him. we obey God, not out of duty or fear or compulsion but because we love you and trust that he knows what is best for us.

you want to follow Christ out of gratitude for all he has done for us, and the closer we follow him, the deeper our friendship becomes.

Unbelievers often think Christians obey out of obligation or guilt or fear of punishment ,but the opposite is true .

Because we have been forgiven and set free, we obey out of love- and our obidence brings great joy! Jesus said,” I have loved you even as the father has loved me,remain in my love. when you obey me,you remain in my love, just as I obey my father and remain in his love.

“I’ve told you this so that you will be filled with my joy .yes, your joy will overflow” (8).

Noticed that Jesus expect us to do only what he did with the father. His relationship with his father is the model for our relationship with him .Jesus did whatever the father asked him to do- out of love.

True friendship isn’t passive; it acts . when Jesus asked us to love others, help the needy ,share our resources, keep our lives clean ,offer forgiveness and bring others to him, love motivate us to obey immidately.

We are often challenged to do great “things” for God .Actually God is more pleased when we do small things for him out of loving obedience. They may be unnotice by others, but God notices them and considers them as acts of worship.

Great opportunities may come once in a lifetime, but small opportunities surround us everyday. Even through such simple acts as telling the truth, being kind and encouraging others,will bring a smile to God’s face .God treasures simple act of obedience more than our prayers, praise,or offerings. The Bible tells us “what pleases the Lord more :burnt offerings and sacrifices or obedience to his voice? it is better to obey than to sacrifice.”

Jesus began his public ministry at age 30 by being baptized by John. As that event God spoke from heaven:” this is my beloved son, and I am fully please with him.”(10). what has Jesus been doing for 30 years that gave God so much pleasure ?
The Bible says nothing about those hidden years except for the single phrase in Luke 2 verse 51:” He went back to Nazareth with them, and lived obidently with them”
“Thirty years of pleasing God were summed up in two words:” live obediently”!

*Choose to be honest with God

The first building block of a deeper friendship with God is complete honesty -about your faults and your feelings. God doesn’t expect you to be perfect, but he does insist on complete honesty .None of God’s friends in the Bible were perfect .

If perfection was a requirement for friendship with God, we would never be able to be his friends. fortunately, because of God’s grace, Jesus is still the “friends of sinners “.

In the Bible, the friends of God were honest about their feelings, often complaining, second-guessing, accusing and arguing with their creator. God ,however, dindn’t seem to be bothered by this frankness ;in fact, he encouraged it .

God allowed Abraham to question and challenge him over the destruction of the city of Sodom. Abraham pestered God over what it would take to spare the city ,negotiating God down from fifty righteous people to only ten.

God also listen patiently to David’s many accusation of unfairness, betrayal and abandonment. God did slay Jeremiah when he claimed that God had tricked him. job was allowed to vent his bitterness during his ordeal and in the end, God defended job for being honest ,and he rebuked jobs friends for being inauthentic.

God told them” you haven’t been honest either with me or about me- not the way my friend job has…… my friend job will now pray for you and I will accept his prayer”.

In ones startling example of Frank friendship, God honestly expresses total disguest with iseral disobedience .He told Moses he would keep his promises to give the Israelite the promised land, but he wasn’t going one step further with them in the desert!

God was fed u,p and he let Moses know exactly how he felt. Moses, speaking as a “friend “of God, responded with equal candar :” look, you tell me to leave this peole but you didn’t let me know you are going to send with me ….if I’m so special to you, let me in on your plans…. don’t forget ,this is your people, your responsibility …..if your presence doesn’t take the lead here, call this trip off right now !

How else will I know that you are with me in this ,with me and your people? Are you travelling with us or not?… God said to Moses, alright .just as you say ;this also I will do, for I know you well and you are special to me .”

Can God handle that kind of Frank ,intense honesty from you? Absolutely !genuine friendship is built on disclosure .what may appear as audacity God views at authentity.as

God listens to the passionate world of his friends ;he is bored with predictable ,pious clithes.To be God’s friends, you must be honest to God, sharing your true feelings, not what you think you ought to feel or say.

it is likely that you need to confess some hidding anger and resentment at God for certain areas of your life where you have felt cheated or disappointed. Untill we mature enough to understand that God uses everything for good in our lives, we habour resentement towards God over our appaerance, background, unanswered prayers,past hurts and other things we would change if we were God.

People often blame God for hurts caused by others . This creat what William backus calls “you’re hidding rift with God “.

Bitterness is the greatest barrier to the friendship with God :why would I want to be God’s friends if He allowed this? The amtidote that of course ,is to realise that God always act in your best interest ,even when it is painful and you don’t understand it.

But releasing your own resentement and revealing your feeling is the first step to healing .As so many people in the Bible did, tell God exactly how you feel .

To instruct us in candide honesty, God gave us the book of Psalms- A worship mannaual ,full of renting, raving, doubts ,fears , resentment, and dips passions combined with Thanksgiving, praise and statement of faith .

Every possible emotion is catalogued in the Psalms. when you read the emotional confessions of David and others, realised this is how God want you to worship him- holding back nothing of what you feel.

you can pray like David ;”I pour out my complaint before him and tell him all my troubles. for I am overwhelmed .”

It is encouraging to know that all of God’s closest friends-moses, David, Abraham, job and others- had bouts with doubt but instead of masking their misgivings with pious cliches,they candidly voice them openly and publicly .

Expressing doubt is sometimes the first step towards the next level of intimacy with God.

* Choose to value what God values

This is what friends do- they care about what is important to the other person. the more you become God’s friends, the more you will care about the things he cares about ,grieved over things he grievers over, and rejoice over things that bring pleasure to him.

Paul is the best example of these. God’s agender was his agenda ,and God’s passion was his:” the things that has me so upset is that I care about you so much -this is the passion of God Burning inside me!”(11)

David felt the same way:” passion for your house burns within me, so those who insult you are also insulting me.” what does God care about most ? The redemption of his people. He went all his lost children found,! that is the whole reason Jesus came to earth. The dearest things to the heart of God is the death of his son. the second dearest things his when his children share that news with others.

To be a friend of God, you must care about all the people around you whom God cares about. friends of God tell there friends abouGod .

* Desire friendship with God more than anything else.

The sounds are filled with examples of this desire. David passionately desire to know God above all else; he use words like longing and yearning, testing, hungry. He craved God. He said ,”the thing i sick most of all is the privilege of meditating in his temple ,living in his presence everyday of my life , deighting in his incomparable perfections and glory.”(13)

In another palms, he said,” your love means more than life to me”.(14)

Jacob’s passion for God’s blessing on his life was so intense that he wrestle in the dirt all night with God, saying,” I will not let you go unless you bless me.”(15)

The amazing part of that story is that God, who is all-powerful, let Jacob win! God isn’t offended when we wrestle with him because wrestling request personal contact and bringing us close to him! it is also passionate activity and God loves it when we are passionate with him.

Paul was another man passionate for friendship with God. Nothing mattered more; it was the first prority ,total focus and ultimate goal of his life. This is the reason God used paul in such a great way.

The amplified translation expresses the full Force of pàuls passion ;”my determined purpose isthat I may know him- that I’m a progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of his person more strongly and more clearly.”(16)

The truth is- you are as close to God as you choose to be. intimate friendship with God is a choice , not an accident. you must intentionally seek it.

Do you know really want it -more than anything ?what is it worth to you? Is it worth giving up other things? Is it worth developing the habit and skills required?

You may have been passionate about God in the past but you haven’t lost that desire.That was the problem of the christians in Ephesus- they had left their first love. They did all the right things, but out of duty, not love. if you have just been going through the motions spiritually, don’t be surprise when God allows pain in your life.

Pain is the fuel of passion- it energizes us  with an  intensity to change that we don’t normally possess .C.s. Lewis said ,”pain is God’s megaphone.” it is God’s way of arousing us from spiritual lethargy . your problems are not punishment ;they are wake-up calls from a loving  God .

God is not mad at you ;His  mad about you, and he will do whatever it takes to bring you back into fellowship with him. But that is an easier way to reignite  your passion for God: start  asking God to give it to you ,and keep on asking until you have it .

Pray these  throughout your day:” there Jesus more than anything else, I want to get to know you my intimately “.

God told the captives in Babylon,” when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I will make sure you won’t be disappointed .”(17)

*Your must your most important relationship.

There is nothing- absolutely nothing -more important than developing a friendship with God .it is a relationship that will last forever. Paul told Timothy,” some of these people have  missed the most important thing in life- they don’t know God.”(18).

Have you been missing out on the most important thing in life? you can do something about it starting now .

Remember ,it’s your choice. you are as close to God as it choose to be.

Shalom…