Friendship with God

Affliction is God’s flail to thresh off our husks; not to consume, but to refine.

Augustine

During the past year or so, though it was filled with turmoil, I have tried to take each new experience as an opportunity to freshly entrust myself to God. We have had fears from the unknown cause of the virus and its rapid transmission, the possibility of a painful and lonely death for us or for our loved ones, the changes that have come as a result of these events, and the potential that we may never experience “normal” again.

Perhaps you, like me, have made this a time to check your own heart. How much do I rely on things of this world and interactions with others to give me joy in everyday living? These are lovely gifts, and I appreciate them more now that they have been threatened or non-existent for a brief time. While I have been away from the blog, I have been conquering my fears by feeding my soul with God’s words in the Bible and its exposition and explanation in supplemental reading. Drawing from this well of wisdom, I would like to share some of my thoughts on friendship and the promises of God.

In isolation, our perception of reality can be skewed. The thoughts in our head can be manipulated by loneliness. We can evaluate our friendships based on mistaken ideas and be disappointed by a lack of contact with each other. Consequently, we can easily lose the gift of giving each other the benefit of the doubt and the benefit of believing the best of each other. While there can be disappointments in our human friendships, we can be sure that we will never be disappointed by God, since He is never-changing and always faithful to love His children. I hope you know Him personally. God the Son took on flesh and laid His life down for us, that we might be forgiven and made righteous in the sight of God. He is the eternal friend of those who repent and receive the salvation He offers by faith. As Jesus told His disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). He offers us the greatest love. In response, Jesus calls us to love each other sacrificially, putting others’ needs ahead of our own as we serve, encourage, and give them our best. It is lovely to have dear friends on this earth who love and care for us in God’s love and power, but I am especially grateful for salvation and the unconditional friendship with Jesus, who does not discriminate or hold my inabilities against me. He knows my heart and the joy I have when I contemplate who He is. I desire to be eternally grateful to Him for His enduring love for me.

At the beginning of this year, I read Dane Ortlund’s book Gentle and Lowly, which encourages us to look at the love Christ has for sinners and sufferers who come to Him. Chapter 12 focuses on the wonderful truth that Jesus is the friend of sinners. Ortlund describes a good friend as someone with whom “you don’t need to constantly fill in all gaps of silence with words. You can just be warmly present together, quietly relishing each other’s company” (116). It is a precious gift from the Lord that He understands me when I don’t fill in those “silent gaps” with spoken words. He hears my contemplations, and the desires of my heart are clear to Him. This allows me to live without resentment for my special needs. Although I can easily be misunderstood or devalued for my lack of verbal input, this weakness does not detract from my relationship with Christ. In fact, in my solitude, I am able to allow my mind and heart to praise and thank Him more regularly. And Christ in turn fills my heart with His blessed joy and peace. Ortlund confirms my thoughts and experience when he writes that Christ “offers the enticing intrigue of fresh hope” (115). Not only are we given fresh hopes, but they are lasting ones since, “In Jesus Christ, we are given a friend who will always enjoy rather than refuse our presence. The friendliness of his heart for us subjectively is as fixed and stable as the declaration of his justification of us objectively” (115). Because He took on flesh, He relates to us according to our humanity, which is a wonderful gift of grace: “Jesus is not the idea of friendship, abstractly; he is an actual friend” (120). I am amazed by the condescension of the glorious God who is “our never-failing friend…who gets underneath the pain of our loneliness…and when pain does not go away, its sting is made fully bearable by the far deeper friendship of Jesus” (120). Judas betrayed Jesus; God will never betray us. We will disappoint each other; God will never disappoint us when we trust Him to work all things for our good as He has promised.

How can we cope with fear? The remedy is having a personal, intimate friendship with the only Sovereign, Almighty God of the universe. While He holds all things together, He desires to redeem and befriend the creature He made from the dirt. We do not come to Christ with everything perfect and all figured out, for Christ comes to repentant and trusting sinners as the Companion whose “embrace of us does not strengthen or weaken depending on how clean or unclean, how attractive or revolting, how faithful or fickle, we presently are” (115). We come before Him in prayer and submit to Him just as we are, and He cleanses us from all of our sin that we might have a beautiful relationship with Him eternally without any fear.

• An Authentic, Steadfast Life
• Summer Travel Reflections (Part 1)
• A Time for Everything
• The Righteous Shall Be in Everlasting Remembrance
• A Christmas Card to My Readers