When we live life with God as our best friend, everything changes. But to many of us, that concept is foreign. If you’re anything like me, your view of God growing up may have been more like a distant rule-enforcer than a friend. You may have lived with the fear that he was constantly waiting for you to mess up rather than to walk alongside you and help you. With these types of mentalities, the concept of grace can be difficult to grasp. And friendship? What does friendship with God even look like?
For a long season, I didn’t realize I kept certain aspects of my life off limits from God. I told myself I trusted him, but in reality, my trust didn’t extend to every area of my life. Through his love and mercy, he eventually revealed to me how little faith and trust I actually had. A series of life-changing events put me in a situation where I could either trust him or live with constant white-knuckle grip anxiety. I was tired of trying to control what was beyond my ability to control, so I chose the former. It was the best decision I ever made.
I believe one of the reasons friendship with God is so difficult for us to understand is because God is invisible. We may conjure up images of the imaginary friends of our childhood and wonder, “Is that what the Bible means? Does God want me to talk to him like I talked to my imaginary friends?”
There is a reason why Jesus told us to have a child-like faith (Matthew 18:3). Children are authentic and genuine and believe without a reason to do so. Being friends with Jesus requires us to have a child-like faith because our mindset needs to be contrary to what the world tells us. The world tells us seeing is believing, but scripture tells us we “walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)
It’s also important to dig into scripture to understand what this friendship looks like. When Jesus first refers to his disciples as friends, it is right before he promises to send our Helper and Advocate after he goes away—the Holy Spirit.
“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.” John 15:15 NIV
A few years ago, God gave me a revelation about this passage, and it came to life in a new way. I realized that when Jesus called his disciples friends, it was a declaration of trust. Even though they would later abandon him, he used this intimate term to describe his relationship with them.
If God Trusts Us, Shouldn’t We Trust Him?
When Jesus calls his disciples friends, he goes a bit further and makes a key distinction. He says his disciples are no longer called servants because servants do not know their master’s business. Jesus is setting his disciples apart and saying that everything his Father told him, he has made known to them.