Posts Tagged ‘Jesus’

Relationships, Spiritual living

May 20, 2010

How to Become a Friend of God

Tags: communion, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Life, relationship, spiritual and emotional wholeness, Spiritual living

The Bible sets the goal for us to be a friend of God. You may have heard people talk about what a great relationship they have with God. No longer being young I have learned to not just listen to what people say but to look for the evidence, to look for the fruit in their lives. Does the person speaking reflect who God is? Does the person have good friends? Have they had some of the same friends for years? What does this person know about being a friend of God, or anyone else?

You see, it has occurred to me that if we cannot be a friend to someone that we can see, touch, feel and hear audibly, we might not have the tools or capacity to have a friendship and deep communion with someone whom we cannot always see, touch, feel and hear audibly.

Would you agree that the same capacity for the attributes of friendship with each other, such as loyalty, honoring others, generosity, acting with accountability, and trustworthiness, are also required to become a friend of God? Would God have a friend who does not listen to what He says, is not loyal to Him, or not trustworthy? I think not. He will love us, He will care about us, but I don’t believe that He will call us His friends under those circumstances.

Imagine a line or continuum called Relationship. At one end of the line would be the beginning point we will call awareness (of another) and at the far end of that line would be intimacy. In between we move from awareness to acquaintance, to social friends, to advisors, to intimate friends.

Process of Relationship

Awareness → Acquaintance → Social → Advisor → Intimate →

Levels of Relationship:

Awareness: We know the person exists. They might be a celebrity, or a neighbor or someone who rides the same train as we do.

Acquaintance: We are not only aware of this person but we have met them, know their name, and perhaps a little about them. They may work where we work, live in our neighborhood or have children at school with our children. They can also be people we met at church or at the grocery store. Some people we are aware of are also our acquaintances.

Social: This is the category of friends that we often think of first when asked about our friends. These are the people that we talk to regularly, go out with or have into our homes. They know more about us than our acquaintances and we may talk about some things that are important to us, or we may not. We care about these people and they care about us in varying degrees. Some of our acquaintances are also social friends.

Advisors: Advisor is not a perfect word here, but I have used it for emphasis to describe a special subset of our social friends. Advisors are the people that we have some sense or level of accountability to. They are the truer friends than others; they will tell us the truth, even when it hurts or is unpopular. They stand for many of the things we stand for and believe in many of the things that we believe in. This doesn’t mean that we are identical, but we have a relationship based on things that we share a common and have a high value for. They love us and weep when we weep, and rejoice when we rejoice. Some of our social friends are also our advisors.

Intimate: Intimate friends are the fewest of all of course. They know us deeply. They know things that are private and most personal and they are our most valuable friends (relationships). These are people who will sacrifice for us, and maybe even give their lives for us. Some of our advisors, are also intimate friends.

One characteristic of this process or levels of relationship that might jump out to you is that as we move to higher levels of friendship, the subset of friends that fall into the next category is smaller.

My friend gave a going away party for someone once, and they joked about inviting the person’s hundred “best friends”. Sadly, if you have one hundred “best friends” you may really have none, because your best friends are going to fall far to the right of center on this continuum. The honoree was long on acquaintances and, but lacked the understanding and the skills to cultivate deeper relationships. Our best friends are our intimate friends which should include( but not be limited to) our spouses.

Another important characteristic of these levels is that the attributes of friendship given above, increase as you move from left to right. You may have no trust for a person that you are simply aware of while they are waiting for the same train as you, but you will have a great deal of trust for your advisors, and more for your intimate friends.

One of the reasons that we need our natural friends is that healthy and enduring friendships nurture in us the very attributes that we need to be a friend of God.

John 15:10-15 says, If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done–kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.

“I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature.

This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you.

This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends.

You are my friends when you do the things I command you.

I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father. [i]

Implicit in this scripture is the message that trustworthiness, the capacity to receive correction, the ability to be loyal in the face of personal detriment, a willingness to listen, to give our time in privacy to another and to share our innermost thoughts and feelings, are part of walking with God and being His friend. Walking with God is walking in communion with Him, endeavoring to see what He sees, and respond in the way that He is telling us to respond.

If you are walking in an intimate relationship with God today, perhaps you might express your gratitude sometime to those friends and mates who have helped you cultivate that capacity in your own life.

If you are not walking in the depth of relationship with God today that you truly desire, then go after Him. While you are pursuing Him, perhaps it would be good to also practice on the friends you have around you?

[i] “Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright � 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.”

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Change Your Mind, Spiritual living, Today...

April 3, 2010

Change Your Mind

Tags: change, communion, God, healing, Holy Spirit, Jesus, prophecy, spiritual life, transformation

Years ago my husband and I were having dinner with a man he worked with and his wife. The men had been talking about God and spiritual at things at work and Greg had been sharing with him many miracles and powerful things that had been happening in our life. After our guest ordered and finished three martinis in about 20 minutes she leaned across the table, looked Greg right in the eyes (more or less), and asked him with slightly slurred speech, “What do you have that we don’t have?” One miraculous healing at their house that night and we were delighted to see them come alive in Christ.

All power can effect change. Spiritual power effects eternal change.

Today in the church we are seeing a lot of emphasis and and attention to our political/legislative process. One of the outcomes of this emphasis is a great polarizing in our nation, including between Christians.

It is important to remember that our battle isn’t Conservative versus Liberal. It is the battle of light versus darkness. The conflict is between living a spiritual life in communion with God, or opting for the seemingly more popular humanism/materialism path. These are not compatible theologies.

When Lucifer fell, it was because he wanted to set his throne above God’s, and that is the battle that rages on the earth to this day. The battle for political, economic and social control is the world’s battle and we will not beat the enemy with his own game. We will only prevail, ultimately, by spiritual means.

We think we must work to have the law of land reflect our beliefs. Perhaps we should consider the sad possibility, that is exactly what is happening. The laws of the land may indeed reflect the overall beliefs of us as a nation. It may be that our beliefs are what we need to address first.

Never has our country become more godly than in the times of great revival. Prohibition, no matter what its good intent, lasted thirteen years and created more crime and social ill than had existed previously. The Prohibition laws were ineffective in bringing about a healthier society or a more righteous one.

Revival in America (First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening) had a huge effect on society. In many places crime decreased precipitously and bars and brothels closed. The outcomes weren’t based on new laws. They were the result of people coming to Christ and being changed.

The natural always reflects the spiritual. I believe that we need to be a spiritual people, full of the Spirit of God, invested in changing the world around us. We need to begin with ourselves, our families, our social circles and neighborhoods. Within that context we can and should support and pursue godly political objectives, but not at the expense of being godly, spiritual people, and remaining in communion with God.

We need to pursue change that is fueled with love, wisdom, generosity, and hope. If we could all do that, society will change and perhaps the laws of our land will change accordingly as well.

Today, change your mind, be the peculiar person you were created to be, and do something good for someone.

What do you have, that can change someone’s life, today?

Ephesians 6:12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world’s rulers, of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

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Gifting, Spiritual living, Uncategorized

January 17, 2010

So you can see sin? (And you think that is a gift?)

Tags: change, Destiny, God, Holy Spirit, hope, Jesus, love, prophet, sin, spiritual, spiritual and emotional wholeness, transformation

Satan is the leader in calling out sin, and making a spectacle of it. Whose team are you on?

One of the most encouraging things that I have discovered since Raising Spiritual Children: Cultivating a Revelatory Life was published is that a consistent response is that “this is not just about raising children, but it is for adults, too.” That is truth on several levels. One level is that what we missed out on when we were children can often be put into place when we are older, and we can have full restoration in that area.

In other words, when something we missed as a child is put in place within us, all that we missed along the way or over the years is also established in us as though we had had it all along.

Think of a person who has never experienced unconditional love. Their life will have been lived a certain way, with some clear and distinct voids and difficulties. However, at 30 or 40 or 50, if they experience unconditional love and can receive it, that void they have carried all of their life will be as if it was covered with a balm. Although they may have an intellectual knowledge of how they were growing up, they will not only be different today, but the past will not impinge on them in the same way either.

The unconditional love that they experience will make them whole.

It is a little bit like a computer. If your computer has missing or corrupted files, some or all of your computer programs will not work correctly. Overtime, performance even may deteriorate. Some things might work fine, of course, but there will be those programs or functions that simply do not work the same way they work for other people.

Once you restore that missing or corrupted file though, all the programs will work just like they were intended to.

This is a picture of restoration.

People who have been damaged or injured in life may have sinned (don’t we all), but correcting sin isn’t what they most need. What they most need is to have the important voids in their lives filled, healed, covered — pick your terminology. The outcome is restoration.

Today, there is a cultural mindset that instead of addressing the injury and wounds in a person, many people want to be the authority to hand out punishment and keep the focus on a person’s sin. (Trust me, sin will persevere. It doesn’t matter what penalty you try to extract for it; sin will pop up again doing its damage to someone else.) Some want to assess punishment, as if that is their role. (Some people do have this role of course, but it is a small fraction of the people who try to take it on.)

Confronted with the woman in adultery, remember what Jesus said to the accusers who wanted to stone her: “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” [1] After the accusers had scattered, Jesus turned to the woman. “Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?

No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” [2]

What changed? The woman changed of course. She had been in the presence of the Jesus, and his impartation of love and hope and kindness transformed her, forever.

As a revelatory person, I see more sin than I would like to. I know that Jesus would have seen far more than me. I also see that Jesus worked to bring sinners to Him and to health and to wholeness. I believe that His words and His love imparted to the woman in adultery transformed her, and made her whole. They healed her and gave her hope.

So I try to let the revelation of sin just be a red flag to point out who needs love and hope and impartation. I want to be able, by the Holy Spirit, to be a person who helps to build His church.

I want to have eyes that see what He sees, and to be the mouthpiece for His message, a carrier of His transforming love.

One of the most gratifying things we experience as parents is when our children grow up and do the things that we think are good and valuable.

As children of the King, I submit that we need to stop trying to please our detractors, stop acting out of fear, and make certain that we are pleasing Him.

It is the sinners around us who need us the most. Do you have what they need?

Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’”

[1] John 8:7

[2] John 8:10-11