Friendship: Responding to Requests

“And you are my friends if you do what I command.” John 15:14

“And so the Father will give you whatever you ask of him in my name.” John 15:16b (Good News)

Healthy friendship involves a mutual exchange of hearing and responding to requests in relationship.  When prayer is primarily petition the emphasis is placed on God listening to us and responding.  Legalism and religion tend to narrowly respond to God’s voice in Scripture but neglect the relationship.

When we ask things of God we are acknowledging that God listens and responds to us.  This is comfortable for most of us because we begin our prayer lives with this.  We learn to bless God and others and then to ask for things.  All of those things are vital parts of prayer.  However, for healthy relationship we must also realize that God wants to engage us by speaking desires into our lives so that we might partner with Him to bring them into present reality.

Children have needs that parents can fill.  Parents needs are not fulfilled by their children.  There can be a friendship relationship between parents and children but it is not equal.  Good parenting involves parents working with their children to accomplish things that would be more easily and efficiently accomplished by the parent on their own.  I feel this is an image of the Father’s relationship towards us.  God does not need anything from us, and every need we have is satisfied in Him.  Like a good parent he comes to us with requests to help Him with things He doesn’t need our help with but that we also could not do on our own.  He humbles Himself to approach us as we so often approach Him – with requests. The main difference is that His requests never come from a place of need.

When God makes a request in Scripture they are often called commandments.  They are powerful, for our good and for His glory.  Uncomfortable with calling commandments requests? If I’m not mistaken, most of us do not do what He commands at all times. Often times we feel a heavy responsibility for our failure to listen and respond to those commandments.  We acknowledge with our guilt that commands are part of a conversation.  No matter how strong the words of a command, without a response on our part they are powerless.  The necessity of a response on our part makes the commands in essence a request.

All of this effort to define requests and responses is this: To listen and respond is relational language that makes space for loving obedience.  As God moves to make us powerful, He invites us into holy obedience that aligns us with His heart and opens the doors for increase in His kingdom.  That obedience is defined by Christ as foundational to entering into friendship with God.

Friendship: Accepting and being accepted

“You did not choose me; I chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures.” John 15:16a (Good News)

One thing I love about interacting with junior highers is that when ever I get overwhelmed with a concept I have an outlet for teaching that forces all of those lofty ideas back to earth.  I’ve been digging into the concept of friendship as it’s found in scripture for a while now so I took this question to a group of junior highers last week: “What makes someone your friend?”

Of all the responses, one struck me as loaded with a powerful message for our lives: “A friends accepts you as you are.”

I think we all, at least intellectually, would say that God accepts us as we are.  We find that here in John 15 when Jesus speaks of choosing the imperfect disciples to go and bear fruit.  His acceptance of us is humbling and worth meditating on.  However, what struck me deeper in thinking of friendship and acceptance was the power of accepting God as He is.  I think accepting God on His terms may be more difficult than allowing God to accept us as we are.  God’s character is unchanging and we so often enter into friendships hoping somehow that the other person will change or adapt to meet our needs.  God will meet our every need but He is unwavering in His identity and character.  To engage in healthy friendship with God takes both accepting and being accepted.  It takes a willingness to let God be God and to let God love us as we are.  Motion towards maturity in Christ comes from that foundational place of rest.

Friendship: Associate, companion, friend, lover

As I study friendship in scripture I’ve been looking into the actual Hebrew and Greek words used. In the OT when Abraham’s friendship with God is referenced the word used is generally translated in the OT as love.  It has a breadth of definition that includes beloved and lover.  It’s not that scripture is saying God was Abraham’s lover, but the word in other contexts has that connotation. It can be a very intimate, even sexual, word (Strong’s H157). When the Lord talked to Moses, on the other hand, it was the more common word for friend in the OT (H7453).  One that still includes lover as a possibility, but generally is used as friend, associate, brother or companion.

In terms of friendship with God I feel this points to a truth we find in our friendships with each other.  In healthy friendship people connect on multiple levels.  In the strongest friendships there is significance in talking about the superficial, the personal, the intimate, and in the times where both parties are completely silent.  I think we often feel pressured to strive to connect with God at all times on the most intimate level or to press into an abstract notion of intimacy.  I question if those ideals are really the best.  I’m leaning towards true intimacy as being comfortable with God and with yourself at all times.  Living in constant conversation with Him but not striving to attain some deeper connection.  Growing in depth and maturity in Christ at His pace and not our own.

Developing a Theology of Friendship

John 15:12-17 (New International Version)

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. 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. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.

“The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend“  and Abraham was called God’s friend (2 Chronicles 20:7, Isaiah 41:8, James 2:23).  Now if both Abraham and Moses were under the old covenant and reached a place of friendship with God, how much more freedom do we have to enter into that friendship now that we live under the new covenant!  What does that friendship look like on a practical level?  In what ways does it effect how we are friends with our brothers and sisters in Christ?  What elements of what we find valuable in friendship with others points towards the fullness of experiencing friendship with God?  In what ways do our earthly friendships need to be shaped by heavenly standards set in scripture?  With the curtain torn and considering 2 Corinthians 3:7-18, why would we not all experience the LORD speaking to us face to face?

This idea of friendship with God is causing all sorts of havoc in my brain and spirit as it has been bouncing around seeking to engage and transform my heart and mind.  I tried to unpack it with some junior highers and a few friends over this past week and those interactions will be fodder for the next few posts on this subject.  In the meantime, you are all welcome to engage the passage and the questions above before I post again.

Becoming a Sent People: Humility and Identity

In John 17:21 and 23 Jesus’ prayer includes what I would consider an audacious promise.  His prayer states that if those who believe in the apostles words (vs. 20) will be one, the world will know and believe that Jesus was sent by the Father. I believe that the key to why this is the case is found in John 17:18 and 20:21. As Jesus was sent by the Father so also he sent out the disciples. As Jesus was sent, so we are sent. The world knowing and believing in Jesus comes about from more than lone evangelists crying out for sinners to repent. The revelation of God’s sending Jesus comes from the body being bound together in oneness. It comes from us living as one, sent people and that comes from dwelling in the reality that we are a loved people (John 17:23).  Loved with the same perfect love that Jesus was loved with and sent by.  When we accept and rest under that weight of undeserved love we are shaped in two ways that lead into us being formed into a sent people: Humility and Identity.

Humility

When you begin to realize you don’t deserve God’s affections and that you can not earn grace, it forces you to a position of humility.  To be loved first, before any movement towards holiness was ever displayed in your life, is an assault against any grounds for pride.  The very nature of being sent also points to humility – a humility that Jesus displayed.  His words to commission the disciples referenced his own sending to show what it would look like.  Paul the apostle sums up this example of humility in Philippians 2:5-7.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (ESV)

Submission to the sender is required of one who goes at the request of another.  There is a position of subordination that is required.  Now in that submission you are not making yourself less, but saying that God is more trustworthy with your life than you are.  You become more by placing yourself in right relationship with God, which leads to the second result of resting under the undeserved love of God.

Identity

The phrase that is fast becoming cliche is, “To know who you are is to know whose you are” or some variation there of.  But cliche or not – it is true.  To know our relationship with the One who sends us secures in us identity.  Jesus was sent as the only beloved Son of God, and because of Christ’s sacrifice we are all invited to become sent out as beloved daughters and sons of God, in whom He is well pleased.  To become a sent people is to live in the reality that we are chosen into a family of brothers and sisters, and that we are given commission to expand that family to every corner of the earth.  To make disciples is to witness the re-birth of people into the kingdom as daughters and sons of God.

Humility and Identity as a People

I believe that the relationships between brothers and sisters in Christ become attractive to the world when we live in the tension between knowing that we are unworthy of grace and believing that in Christ we are called worthy.  Humility kills pride and identity creates confidence.  The two working in tandem create a freedom to not only be sent into the world, but sent into the joy and hardships of our brothers and sisters.

Easy to say, hard to grasp.

I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

John 17:23 (ESV, emphasis added)

Jesus was perfect, and the Father loved him perfectly.
We are imperfect, and the Father loved us perfectly.

Wow.

The Uncontrolability of God (Reflections on Psalm 78:65)

“Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,

like a strong man shouting because of wine.”

Psalm 78:65

I invited you into my ponderings of this passage a few weeks ago and I thought I would share where my personal reflections went.  I was initially disturbed by the image of God portrayed like a drunk because one who is under the influence of alcohol is usually considered as operating outside of their own control.  However, as I talked this out with people I thought of my internal reaction to being in the presence of a strong, loud, drunk.  I’m a little guy, and I thought of times when I had been around a person a foot taller and over 100lbs heaver than I when they were full of strong drink.  There was no reasoning with this person.  If he decided to do something I was utterly powerless to stop him.  No eloquent words, or impressive argument, or physical threat would have the slightest impact on his decision.  That thought captivated me in relationship to this passage.  What if part of the reason for this image of God was to remind us of our inability to influence God?  God described in similarity to being big, loud, and drunk is bringing a new dimension to the reality that God is fully outside of my control.  That when He chooses to act on His own I am utterly insignificant in halting His actions.  All illusions of control are taken away.  It’s scary enough to realize there is nothing you can do to stop a person who is drunk.  It is terrifying to realize that when God chooses to act without us we really are powerless to stop Him.  I’m growing in the conviction that to fear God rightly is to realize His potential to act without us and His divine grace that invites us into co-labor with Him.

Just my thoughts at present.  Reactions or responses?

Uncomfortable images of God

Every once in a while I come across imagery of God in scripture that stops me in my tracks. Images that are at great tension with my understanding of God. This morning I read Psalm 78:65:

“Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
like a strong man shouting because of wine.”

Think about that choice of images. Not only do we have God waking up as if he were sleeping (contrast that with Psalm 121:4 where God never sleeps nor slumbers), but next He is presented as a loud, angry drunk. I freely admit, that makes me a little uncomfortable. Then again, I like that about scripture as the Living Word of God. In processing his own grief, C.S. Lewis observed that part of the loss of his beloved wife was that her presence was no there to shatter his misperceptions. Her reality could no longer break down the incomplete image his mind held. When we approach scripture in humility, God’s reality will constantly challenge and break down our misperceptions of His character. If we are willing to sit for a while with the uncomfortable images instead of quickly rationalizing and justifying them, I think we might soon find that God is bigger than we give Him credit for.

You are valuable, significant, and loved.

If anyone reading this blog has ever had any questions as to weather or not they have significance, I invite you to spend some time considering birds – sparrows in particular.  Jesus brought the simplicity and depths of God’s affections for us to light using these seemingly insignificant creatures.

“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”  Matthew 6:26a (ESV)

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.  But even the hairs on your head are all numbered.  “  Matthew 10:29-30 (ESV)

In both of these sermon illustrations Jesus was pointing to God’s care of birds to make specific points to the people listening, but I invite you to stop and ponder what it means for God to care for sparrows.  Often we quickly move on to the applications of not being afraid and not worrying, and fail to dwell in the weight and intimacy of the Father’s care.  Sitting in the reality of God’s care for birds readies the heart for considering God’s interest in you.  In our economy scarcity determines value, but Jesus points to the numerous sparrows and says that God has value for each of them.  He takes notice of their needs and of each time one perishes.  Keep that in mind as you read this next passage.

“Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,

where she may lay her young,

at your altars, O LORD of hosts,

my King and my God.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house,

ever singing your praise!”

Psalm 84:3-4 (ESV)

The altar was the place of worship, the place of sacrifice, the place where man was able to approach God.  Because of what happened at the altar, the temple was the place where God’s presence was pleased to dwell.  At that sacred place, near the heart of God, the Father made room for the sparrow.  The sparrow he fed and clothed.  The sparrow whose death would not pass un-noticed.  Having considered that Jesus rhetorically asks, “Are you not of more value than they?” and later proclaims “Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” (Matthew 6:26b, 10:31).

God’s invitation into His presence is ever an invitation of love.  A love that is passionate, caring, intimate and satisfying.  A love that massively outshines, yet still exists alongside, His sustaining care and concern for birds.  More importantly, a love that will exist fully independent of whether you accept it or not.  But make no mistakes – accepting that love will destroy your life in the best way possible.

Sexual Theology (Why I am Voting Yes on 8)

I’ve been absent from the blog for a few weeks so I thought to myself, “Why not write on something that can get people angry at you?”  Ok, so that wasn’t what prompted this blog but I did take it into consideration when I chose to write.  If you are already offended by the title, please listen to my words and respond with theology, thought, scripture and love.

I wrestled with voting on Prop. 8 for longer than some of you may suppose.  A big part of me wanted to vote no, simply to upset the Church out of her cathartic slumber.  Had I kept with that descision I wouldn’t really have been doing anything but submitting to the authority and governmental structure of our state.  After all, for all our independent spirit we are nonetheless a democratic republic, not a democracy, and the judges simply did what they were supposed to do.  They are a check to interpret the law, and reject things that they find unconstitutional or unlawful.  Obviously I did not keep to this decision (hence the blog title), and here is why: The more I fall in love with the Christ and His church, the more reverence I have for marriage.

Ultimately, it’s not about sex or sexual sin as black and white morality.  As Don Everts captured in his book The Smell of Sin and the Fresh Air of Grace, that kind of understanding turns sin into point by point list that smells “(l)ike a childhood classroom.”  A simple laminated list of things not to do, ’cause they’re bad.  That kind of list often fails to stand up to the question of “Why not?”.  We weren’t ready for the why not when we learned the list, and often times neither were the people we learned it from.  I think that for some of us when we questioned and didn’t get a straight answer we rejected the whole list.  Truth be told, if we had prayerfully sought God and searched scripture we would have found the answers.  When it comes to the list that falls under the heading “Sexual Sins” I see the “why not” through out God’s word.  I see it when I read Hosea, where God chose to use an adulterous marriage as an allegory to describe the broken relationship between the people of Israel and Himself.  I find it in Revelation where the relationship between Christ and the New Jerusalem is described as a union between a bride and groom.  Christ’s own use of wedding imagery in parables seems to give answer to that simple, two word question.  In my heart and mind, the reason why marriage between a man and a woman is important is that it is the image God chose to use over and over again to give us insight into the depth of His affections for us.  With Hosea, God shows himself vulnerable in that He is impacted by a faithless, wandering Israel in something like the way a husband is impacted by an unfaithful wife.  Faithfulness is a characteristic of God that He chose to make known to us by gracing us with marriage.  When it comes to the Church, Christ’s love for Her is the example for husbands to love their wives.  At the end of time we have a wedding!  A celebration of union between God and his people.  In each of these cases there is a bride and a groom, male and female.  Out of all the ways that we could come up with for why this is a poor choice on God’s part (e.g. it excludes homosexual marriage, it is sexist having God spoken of in gender terms, etc.), in my mind none of them stands up to the simplicity of submitting to God’s choice and seeking desperately to understand it as the most loving and satisfying.  In voting to define marriage as between a man and woman, I feel I am being faithful in preserving in a small way the earthly institution that was meant to be foundational to understanding God’s feelings towards His people.  In short, I’m doing it out of loving the very best that I can, which means loving God with all my heart, soul and mind and loving my neighbor as myself.

————————–

This issue is so polarized and heated I fear some will automatically read things into this post.  Either that this is some sort of ammunition that can be used to bully moderates or opponents to Prop. 8 to vote yes, or that it will be read through a lens that interprets it (and me) as hateful, and unloving.

So if you were trying to shove this post into your ammo clip or if you have swallowed the propaganda that Yes on 8 will “protect marriage” – God loves you, and I love you but if prop Prop. 8 passes it won’t protect marriage, and if it fails it won’t kill God.  Marriage and sexuality have been undervalued by the church for far too long, and one piece of legislation does not relieve you of responsibility to live out biblical love, sexuality, and marriage.  Besides, pornography, divorce, and premarital sex have likely done far more harm to traditional marriage than homosexuality, and legislation is a piss poor substitute for the people of God showing the love of God.

If you were on the other side of things, I apologize for the lack of love.  Beyond that, I am sorry for every act from a Christian that made you feel that homosexuals were somehow less valuable to God, more sinful, or somehow unlovable.  I repent of every area in which I am not motivated by God’s love and by His standards, and I will try harder to love better.

And to all who chose to read this blog: Truly, I’m trying to love the very best I can, which for me means submitting to the love of God which exists fully outside of myself.  It’s the only unchanging standard of love I’ve ever found and I’ve found it to be deeply satisfying.