Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Welcome to a new day and a new month. It feels like a weather change is in the air. My morning run felt like the fresh air of the fall season. I also believe that the season in the spirit is new and fresh. We had a wonderful day yesterday at Alife. There was a prophetic spirit in the house. That prophetic spirit was shared by many members of our gathering together. There was the sense of the family of God in the atmosphere.
Friendship with God produces true faith, and it is faith towards God that changes our world. Our aim is not a changed world. Our aim is friendship with God and in this our world will surely experience God’s love and it will change. This is the testimony of knowing God as our friend and of us living our lives as His friends in the world.
James 2:23 And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God.
Friendship with God is exhibited with works because we trust our Friend, believe our Friend, and do what our Friend asks. It is not our response to God that creates our friendship with Him. It is our friendship with Him that inspires our right responses to Him. God’s friendship with us, inspires our friendship with Him. Our heavenly Father demonstrated His love for us though friendship.
John 15:9 “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.”
Jesus knew His Father to be His friend. It was His intimate connection to His Father in His walk in life that inspired Him to respond to His Father and fulfill His Father’s desires.
John 15:10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
Truly, abiding in an intimate friendship relationship with God inspires us to keep His commands. Our goal is not to keep His commands. Our goal is to abide in a friendship relationship with God, but the fruit of that relationship will be seen in an obedience to His ways. Knowing Him as our friend will internally empower us to be His friends and enable us to demonstrate God’s friendship to those in our world.
John 15:11-13 “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
It wasn’t the power or ministry of God that demonstrated the joy of Jesus in His redemption of our lives. His joy was to reveal the friendship of God to men and to invite us all into an intimate way and walk of friendship with God in life. Jesus gave us a greater testimony than simply knowing the works of God in our lives. He gave us the ability to know the ways of God in our lives.
John 15:14-15 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.
Again, it is not doing the commands of God that give us friendship with God. Obeying His commands simply demonstrate our friendship with God and invoke a growing of that friendship in our hearts. We grow in our friendship with God from within our hearts. It is the fruit of a revelation of His love for us. That revelation of friendship will inspire us to live as Jesus did and empower us to do all that He desires of us each day as we abide in Him and His love.
John 15:16-17 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another.
Fruit is not something that gives us life. The fruit of our live is what gives life to others. I have many fruit trees, bushes, and vines in my garden. The fruit of those trees, bushes, and vines gives life to me and my friends. This is the testimony of their purpose in my garden. Our friendship connection to God our Father, and Jesus His Son, makes us fruitful in our world. It is a testimony of God’s love living in our hearts. When His love lives in our hearts, that love flows out to our world and is demonstrated in works of love towards others. By this, other people come alive! This is fruit of our lives.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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