Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am in Deming, New Mexico. We had a great start to meetings yesterday and I will be continuing tonight. Last night I taught on Spiritual Realities and will do again tonight. Yesterday morning I gave a word on friendship with God. God has been speaking to me about being my friend and I His. It is in that theme that I write today.
God wants us to know Him in an intimate way. He doesn’t want us to just know Him as God, He wants us to know Him as our heavenly Father. He wants us to embrace being children of God so we can grow to become manifested sons and daughters of God. To be a son or daughter of God is not merely knowing Him in His power, it is knowing Him in His love. In this, we will know God as our friend and we will grow in being known as God’s friends. God wants us to know Him as our friend. I believe that this was God’s way in the desirable garden (Eden means, desirable) in the beginning of the history of God and man. Truly, the desirable place of life is to live in friendship with God.
Genesis 3:8-10 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
Even at the failure of Adam and Eve, God showed up in His usual way to walk with them in the cool of the day. It appears that God’s greatest desire was for man to have a friendship connection of conversation and intimacy Him. This was paramount to their destiny as His likeness and image in the earth. I believe that walk was a walk of friendship and love. God wants us to be His friends at the conclusion of every day and season of our lives. How we end each day is how we will begin the next. How we leave a thing, is how we will enter the next thing in our lives. Even after the fall of man, God looked for a connection with mankind in a culture of love and intimacy. His heart was still for a future and a hope for mankind.
Genesis 5:24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.
This descendant of Adam, Enoch, had a testimony of knowing God as his friend. The name Enoch means, dedicated. This man’s dedication was to know God as His friend. As a result, a place was made for him in heaven and for the future inheritance of his descendants upon the earth in the family of Noah. The name Noah means, rest. It appears that Enoch’s friendship with God made a place for his presence in heaven and God’s continued presence in the earth. This Enoch was a descendant of Seth, a fresh appointment of God in the lineage of Adam after Cain killed Abel. During this same time in the earth, Cain produced a descendant named Enoch. The Enoch of Cain, however, built a city and named it after himself – Enoch. His dedication was to himself and what he could build and do. His descendants did not inherit the earth. They were all taken away in a flood and no place for them remained in the earth. Their human testimonies were those of creative artists, inventors, and entrepreneurs, but these things all came to nothing in the presence of God in the flood. Only friendship with God made room for man to receive God’s life, become expressions of God’s life, and receive a partnership with God in the purpose of God’s life in the earth.
The testimony of God’s desire for friendship continued in the journey of man upon the earth. God called Israel to serve Him, because Abraham was His friend. Abraham’s friendship with God gave Him an inheritance that would be loved by God and would serve Him.
Isaiah 41:8 “But you, Israel, are My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the descendants of Abraham My friend.”
Power of ministry cannot reveal God in His friendship, only a face-to-face relationship can reveal a friendship with God. This was not only the testimony of God and Abraham, but also the testimony of Moses, as God’s sent deliverer to Israel after they had been bound in slavery and the darkness of Egypt for four hundred and thirty years. It was friendship with God that revealed the ways of God to Moses, not merely His supernatural works.
Exodus 33:11 So the LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.
Psalms 103:7 He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel.
The Israelites who only knew God’s works, failed to enter into the Promised Land before them. Knowing God in His power is not the same as knowing God as our friend. A prophet can know the power of visions and dreams of God, but it is only through friendship that we can know His ways.
Numbers 12:6 Then He said, “Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream. 7 Not so with My servant Moses; He is faithful in all My house. 8 I speak with him face to face, even plainly, and not in dark sayings; and he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?”
To see the form of the Lord is to see who He really is. It is only through an intimate relationship of friendship that we can know who someone is. It is only through an intimate relationship of friendship that we can know who God is and it is only through knowing who He is that we can know His ways.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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