III. Enhancing Friendship with God

What then should we do if we sincerely desire to deepen our friendship with God in the events of our daily life?

A. We need to renew our minds with God’s word so that we can:

Think God’s thoughts with Him and live as a practical but not a mere academic child of the Father. Jesus did say that if anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know it. The converse is therefore true i.e. if we are not sincere in wanting to do his will, then He hesitates to reveal His will to us. The more we obey Him in daily small issues privately or publicly, the more we will be able to think His thoughts. In fact, there are enough guidance stated in the Bible as to how to live lives worthy of Him. However, more often than not, we either do not read it enough or ignore it out of fear of having to obey Him. Whether others know whether we are obeying Him or not is irrelevant because He holds us, especially adults, accountable for our response to His directions generally and specifically.

We can know our security in God’s ownership of our lives . We need to know and understand where we stand before the just and holy God who has justly fulfilled justice for us through the sacrifice of the perfect Lamb of God who is His only begotten, Jesus. Nothing can change God’s love for His treasured possession who come to Him by trusting His Jesus. Without the assurance of salvation, Hence, the enemy’s main plays on our weakness and uses this strategy against His people:

a. He goes to God’s beloved created men and women to lie to them that God does not really love them but want to make use of them. He plants doubts of God’s integrity in His children by twisting facts to make it sound as if He is threatened by the very humans He created with delight (Genesis 3:1-7, Proverbs 8:27-31). By this method, he hopes that they will forsake God and live according to their own natural ways. Eve and Adam did. How often have we fallen into the same trap when we struggle in our life in Christ? Some may respond to this lie by living according to the gospel of works and are deeply unhappy as they try to earn God’s salvation all over again.

b. He goes to God and accuse His children before Him in the hope that God, their everlasting faithful Father, will give up on them too! Will He ever do so for a moment? A resounding “NO” (Romans 8:31-39)! However, unless we know His verdict on these critical issues in our pilgrimage, we will not be rested in our Father’s love and the friendship through His Son. We will constantly be insecure and restless, instead, and wonder why we find it so difficult to simply trust and obey God though we desire to do so very much; we will repeatedly need others to reassure us that God still cares for us in spite of our present suffering as pilgrims.

We need to know the difference between sanctification in status and sanctification in life. Mr. Chan Yik Keng, the late senior member of the Cantonese Chinese Methodist Church in Penang, explained this well in a sermon in 1970. He stated that once we receive and belong to Christ and are marked by the Holy Spirit in us, we have been made right with God. However, due to our unholy selves in an unholy world, we still need to work on our minds so that the Holy Spirit can gradually transform us into His likeness, day by day (Romans 12:1-2). Knowing this difference will enable us to be less hard on others and be more patient with ourselves. We will run or plod on towards Christ, our coming Bridegroom and Friend, because we know our redemption is secured by Him through grace, not by a bit of our ability.

A seed must die before it can become a shoot, then a branch and then a plant with flowers and fruits. God at times uses models from the plant and animal kingdom, including a donkey that talked, to reveal His truth to us. The process of sanctification in life takes time and only He knows how long. But our stubbornness to let Him have a free go in our individual life does not help hasten the process.

We need to know the difference between the organisation church and the organism church. Many have witnessed, too many times, how, if the organisation church is problematic, many bear resentment against God, church leaders or members as they become so discouraged that they no longer have the joy of God’s salvation. The organisation church consists of some necessary local or wider church structures that exist in a damaged world and church i.e. called denominational or independent local churches. It is temporal and imperfect by nature. In contrast, Scriptures reveal to us that Christ came to save the organism church, His living eternal body, not the temporal organisation. The latter is needed for the time being before He comes again just as national government systems are needed to help us be more disciplined, whether we like it or not, so that the human community will be safer from each other’s failures to love as He has loved us.

If we do not accept this differentiation, when the organization church disappoints us, we become so confused about who church members are and should be like, that we either turn away from a particular community of a local church in frustration or simmer in our prolonged anger to the destruction of our spiritual life in Christ. Resentful and troubled souls result, peace of mind becomes an illusion and the reality of God’s abundant life disappears. Hope for change also becomes blurred. Our testimony before a watching world vanishes, guilt sets in, the beloved living organism church becomes weak in her discipleship and witness…Satan laughs.

One day, the organisation church will not be needed any more because there will be no tears, sicknesses, weaknesses and sins. The bride of Christ will simply love and obey Him and His people without hesitation. They cannot sin any more. Even the lions and the lambs will be friends! The reality of such a state still needs to be experienced with hope by those of us still in this old world. However, accepting the above difference will empower us to be more patient with each other when the organisation goes wrong, as it will now and then. We will not be so discouraged that we throw Christ, His ways or His people out of our lives because a fellow church member sin against us or unknowingly hurt us without cause. We will be able to forgive faster and endure longer as organisations may come and go but Christ’s friendship is eternal (John 17:3); we will be able to continue to rejoice always, pray constantly and give thanks in all circumstances because this Friend stays the same. HE is unchanging in His loyalty to us in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, humility, faithfulness and self-control!

If we see the local church as an organism, we will naturally view our fellow church members as brothers and sisters of one family with God as our Father, Jesus as our Elder Brother and the Holy Spirit as the Enabler who moves us to be God’s family.

Exercise

• Regularly, go to your room…close the door…be silent before Him and yearn after God…secretly, sincerely and specifically. Converse with your Beloved Friend. Write down the discussions and petitions that take place between you and your God. Read the Bible reading and meditate on His word. Be silent in His presence and by faith look to Jesus alone. This may take a few minutes, hours, days or weeks. (If 2 Corinthians 3:17 is true, God’s glory would have been a bit more reflected from your face without your realising it. His acceptance and peace will follow you into the arena of family, church and society. For His honor)
• Read biographies of the saints of old who have gone way ahead of us and learn from them how to relate with God and how he relates with His living body.
• Read about God’s creation to be reminded of His greatness and sovereignty over all but reject anything which smells of idolatry e.g. prosperity gospel, exaltation of people/ministries instead of Jesus, etc.

B. Receive His Healing Grace through our forgiveness of our enemies

The whole gospel of our Lord Jesus is about forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God and then, with fellowmen. Christ, having become the complete atonement for the sins of the world, does not give us any excuse for not forgiving those who wronged us (Matthew 6:14-15; Ephesians 4:52).

We need to identify those we are angry with and forgive them one by one. Forgiveness is facing the cross of Christ and placing all our enemies’ (still on earth or not) known and unknown wrongs against us, our wounds and evil responses of unforgiveness, at its foot, through sincere prayers. It is also a change of loyalties from worship of self and its resentments to the worship of God alone. Since Christ has once for all paid the total price of all our sins (including that of those who wrong us), forgiving one another is simply practising justice in the eyes of God. Debts cannot be collected twice. Therefore, when we believe that forgiving our enemy is being unfair to us, it is the enemy’s lie and we suffer the most inwardly. We, of all people, must know that we are unfair to them if we do not forgive them.

Forgiveness includes a change of cds. We need to switch off the old audio words from our minds e.g. 

• “You are useless!” (means I am of no worth as a human)
• “Don’t think that you will make it in life unless you are perfect!” (I have to be perfect before I am somebody in this world.)
• “You will never be like your brother/sister!” (I will always be a loser.)
• “I cannot live without my dada/sex/money/him/her!” (I feel so insecure and unwanted)
• “You are an accident.” (I need to prove that I am not.)
• “I own you…you must do always what I tell you!” (I have no right of my own.)
• “You cannot have a holiday till you finish all your work!” (I have to work for my needed rest but will enough be enough?)

We then need to switch on to listen to the new cds of God’s views of you.

• “You are My treasured possession!”
• “Just be your personal best for Me, not the ideal unrealistic unreachable self in this imperfect world.”
• “You are unique and have only to be yourself so you can return your real self back to the God who created you for a unique purpose.”
• “Your identity is in being God’s beloved child, not in earthly family name/status/possessions/degrees/external beauty/sportsmanship/fast cars/worldly knowledge/self-centredness/sex/drugs/relationship with VIPs/theolo-gians, etc.
• “God delights in you !”
• “Your ultimate 100% submission is to God alone. All other people-to-people submission is relative only since all have sinned and fallen from the glory of God but are now being redeemed by the grace of God through Christ Jesus.
• “Even if you do nothing, God’s love for you stays the same…has not changed a bit! We cannot add anything more to what Christ has done for us. He knows we are made of dust and cannot save ourselves. That is why He had to do it for us and that is why His invitation to be reconciled with Him is GOOD News indeed! 

As we obey him through forgiving our enemies, His healing grace will flow into our lives to embrace and to heal…emotionally, mentally, spiritually, socially and even nation wide…for God is for us and not against us.

Exercise

Forgive your enemies on your own or seek pastoral counselling from a trusted brother or sister in Christ (it may be someone who is able to listen to your heart’s cry and lead you closer to God, your Friend, once more. It may be a friend, a pastor or a specifically trained personnel).

C. Experience Deep Repentance

Though repentance is brought about by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, we are allowed to pray for it if we realise we have sinned in some specific or vague area of our thought, word or action but are unsure of its definition or severity. However, it seems to me that ‘repentance’, just like ‘submission’ (to direct or delegated spiritual authority), is a dirty word in many circles today. To undergo godly sorrow seems to be a sign of weakness and not strength. Who wants to be known as weak in our surge for personal, family and social development and enjoyment? Few see true repentance as a precious gift from the holy God to His people. Repentance from daily sins breaks humanly impossible barriers to a growing fellowship and delight in our gracious Father and fellowman. Repentance bring forth a wellspring of freedom to love and be loved, to cry and to laugh, to know His ways for us and a freedom of expression of our God given creativity without having to pretend all our life (1 John 1:9)!

Dr. John White (the late doctor, Bible teacher and author), likened the process of repentance to the emerging butterfly kick off the web that entangles its legs as it seeks to be free from the cocoon. Unless it untangles itself, it will not be free to fly, something which it has been created to do. Similarly, unless we repent of our repeated or new sins, after the initial point of salvation, we cannot enjoy God’s friendship though we much desire Him.

Exercise

If, for a while, we have not felt the evil of sin in our lives, it is a good exercise to pray that the Holy Spirit will cause us to know our specific sins, if any, and cause deep godly sorrow in our hearts so that we will proceed with seeking God’s forgiveness. We cannot put sin in a pocket and hope it keeps quiet. One day it will make noise and we will have to still bear its consequences UNLESS we confess them to the Saviour as soon as conviction comes. God takes us at our word. Whether we may see God’s glory or not is not for us to say, but we need to seek to be right with Him each day. However, a prayer to see His glory may be appropriate if it is so that, in contrast to His glory, we may see ourselves as utterly sinful so that we may repent of our sins and/or be deeply grateful for His mercy to us. If God shows us our sins, then we will repent but if He does not, we can be assured that He knows what He is doing and be at peace. Consequently, we do not have to carry the burden of true guilt that results from our unconfessed sins, or false guilt when Satan accuses us of sin that is non-existent in God’s eyes (Revelations 12:10).

Christian testimonies in biographies or life are filled with case after case of transformed lives and relationships with God and fellow human beings when God’s means of the grace of repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation flow from God to the humbled us and from us to one another.

When was the last time we prayed for the Holy Spirit’s conviction of Jesus’ righteousness, our sin and the judgement on the evil one already? (John 16:8-11).

A hymn writer lovingly asked:

“What will you do with Jesus,
Neutral you cannot be for
Some day your heart will be asking
‘What will He do with me?’”

By Dr. Lee Bee Teik