Friends of God 5

Dear Friend,
How are you? Hope you are well.

Today, I’d like to write my favorite subject, Friends of God!  I was very glad to find out Eugene Peterson wrote in As Kingfishers Catch Fire, which is a collection of his sermons:
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“In the culture we have grown up in, all of us have been exposed to a good deal of concern that we develop a healthy self-esteem so we can live whole and satisfying lives. In the process the term identity crisis has entered our vocabulary as a key element in self-understanding. Who am I? What does it mean to be me?
I understand that and appreciate the concern. But I want to replace the jargon of educators and psychiatrists and psychologists with a simple but far more accurate and comprehensive designation. And I want you to consider well the answer ‘friend of God’ and take seriously the good news wrapped up in those three words.
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Abraham was not called the friend of God because he was signed out for special benevolent attention by God, a kind of teacher’s pet. He did not live a charmed life. He was called the friend of God because he experienced God accurately and truly. He lived as God’s friend. He responded as God’s friend. He believed that God was on his side, and he lived like it.
To be a friend of God does not mean everything is cozy between you and the Almighty. To be a friend to someone does not mean you pamper or indulge him or her. Friendship also involves struggle and loss, tension and turbulence. One of my favorite proverbs is “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6) A friend, if honest and true, will tell you things you don’t want to hear. A friend, if deeply serious about you, will do things that feel painful. Friends do that because they respect your dignity and honor our uniqueness.
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Here is another element contained in the word friend. Friend is totally about a relationship, not a function. There is an everyday, ordinary quality to it. We find ourselves friends with people not for what they can do for us but simply for who they are.
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Abraham’s friendship with God was not sentimentally tied to one spot. … It was daily, regular, and frequent, using whatever stones he found there on the ground to mark the spot.
That is how friendship works. Friends remember one another in both common and uncommon ways. They call one another on the spur of the moment. They remember special days. They visit simply for the pleasure of the other’s company. Things don’t have to get done in a friendship. Friendship is not a way of accomplishing something but a way of being with one another in which we become more authentically ourselves.
As we get a feel for the qualities of friendship, I think this also is important:
Abraham’s life seems curiously empty of accomplishment. With the exception of his intercession for Sodom, he doesn’t seem to have asked his friend God for anything.
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And get this: being God’s friend didn’t mean that Abraham was heroically good or above average in virtue or untainted by sin. Abraham is not conspicuous in the human qualities that we usually admire. He lied to protect his own skin in exchange for the sacrifice of his wife’s reputation. He laughed at God when the divine promises sounded absurd to him. He played the coward with Abimelech.
What friendship means is that two persons are in touch with each other and share important interests. And that is what the friendship of God and Abraham is all about. Abraham was in touch with the God who was in touch with him. He accepted God’s concern for him as the reality of his life, and he returned it by making God the center of his life. He obeyed, he journeyed, he prayed, he believed, and he built altars. He did none of this perfectly. … With persons we talk of response, growth, listening, and acting. Abraham did all of that in relation with God, whom he was convinced was determined to be a good friend to him.
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What we do know of Abraham is his quite ordinary friendship with God and God’s friendship with Abraham, using the everyday stuff of the culture - hospitality, altar building, family relationships, famine, sacrifice - but using it sacramentally, using the visible circumstances and people and things as witnesses and occasions for being in faith present to God as friend. In this he marks the very beginning of the biblical process.
It is only right that Jesus gets the last word: ‘I have called you friends’ (John 15:15, NRSV).
Amen.”

Friend, are you encouraged by this?  I am. I’m convinced that I am His friend, not because I did something spectacular for God.  Again, it was not our doing something for God.  From the outset, He doesn’t lack anything.  He doesn’t need our work from our self-righteousness.  But He wants relationship.  He wants friendship. Just like Abraham made mistakes, we also make mistakes and we are not perfect.  But, it doesn’t matter in making friends with God.  In our daily life, we make Him center of our lives and we become true friends.  In that everydayness, mundane life, we get to know Him more. It is not knowing about Him intellectually, but we get to know Him more as a Person, as a Friend.  So, we would totally trust Him, as Abraham believed that he would become a father of many, and God would revive Issac even if he killed his precious son on the altar. 

Friend, I pray that you and I walk with Him daily and live as friend of God, just like Abraham, our father in faith. Amen! Today, I didn’t write my story much, but excerpt from Eugene Peterson’s As Kingfishers Catch Fire.  I thought this would encourage us, though.  Next week, I would write about my friendship with God.  

Till then, have a bliss!
Julie

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. (John 15:13~15)