Friendship with God

I got a chance to preach in a small village church on Sunday about some things God has been teaching me in my own life.  This is a spark notes version of what I taught.  I hope you find it encouraging and not too heretical… I’m still new at this.  But as Don Stubbs once told me as Christians we are supposed to “Teach what you know, and grow as you go.”

John 15:15 reads “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

When we read the word of God it’s essential to understand the context in which things are written.  I know when I first learned that everything in the bible was for me it got me really excited.  But it wasn’t until later that I realized that not everything is for us today, BUT, everything is available for us as we grow closer to God. 

This quote from John 15 is Jesus speaking to the disciples who he had been with for three and a half years.

The whole chapter is helpful to understand the qualifiers for this great statement in verse 15 but the most important parts come from verses 12-14:

¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command.

Verse 12 explains his command, to love as He loved us.  Verse 13 explains what that love looks like, laying down your life.  Then verse 14 tells us what the requirement for friendship, obedience to his commands, one of which is stated in verse 12.  And because of Jesus’ audience, the disciples, he goes on to say that they have obeyed his commands and now he had promoted them to the status of friends.

Everyone starts as servants, and we move to friendship by being faithful as servants.  But the important thing to remember is that we never graduate from being servants.  One day when Christ returns we will be his bride and enter into marriage with Him. In marriage your spouse should be your best friend and you should be his or her biggest servant.  Even though you have been promoted to a marriage relationship you have not graduated from friendship or from being a servant.  This is the same with our relationship with Christ.  We never graduate from serving Him.  Moving to friendship means that we actually move into co-laboring and dreaming with God.  God begins to share His heart and His dreams with us and we work with Him to see them come to pass.

But we must be ok with doing what we are told and being faithful with what we know we are supposed to be doing from reading the written word before we expect to know all His plans and dreams for us.  This faithfulness gives us access to God’s heart.

In Matthew 25, the parable of the talents, the Master first gives the servants a little and he waits to see what they do with it.  When he returns and finds that some of them gained more talents he says “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master’s happiness!”

So we see that there are two clear consequences of faithfulness; more responsibility (I will put you in charge of many things) and friendship (come and share in your master's happiness).  We are always crying out for God to reveal His will for our lives.  But before we do that we need to ask ourselves if we are being faithful in the small things we already know we are supposed to do according to the word of God.  Are we being joyful always? Are we doing everything as if we are working for the Lord?  Are we loving our neighbor as we love ourselves? Are we honoring our parents and the authority that God has placed in our lives?...

God wants to reveal his dreams over our lives.  But a premature release of these dreams could destroy us.  If we are not mature enough to pursue the great plans He has for us, He can’t reveal them to us.  He wants friendship with us and it’s available for each and every one of us.  He wants to dream with us! He wants to co-labor with us!  But it takes faithfulness to get there…