Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am in California spending some time with my family that lives here – Aaron, Amani, Kaden, and Zaria. We are having a great time and I am looking forward to several more days with these loves of my heart. The friendship of family is surely a testimony of an abundant life.
God wants us to know Him as our friend and us as His friend. We see Him as our friend through a personal connection in our hearts, but also Him through others. When God presented this thought to me, I was challenged in my thinking. I have lived long enough to know friends, but also the disappointment of losing friends. Some I have lost through miss understanding, some through deception and betrayal, and others through physical death. In any case, those friends that I lost are dead to a living relationship with me today. I realize that my expectations of friendship can’t be fulfilled in any single human form. It takes many people together to reveal who God is in my life as my friend. My wife Bonnie says that friends come in pieces. One can be your best friend in this, another in that, and yet another in a different way altogether. Together they reveal what true friendship really is. We must learn to see and embrace the friendship of God in human form in our lives. That friendship can’t be found in a single person. That friendship is revealed in pieces to give to us a greater testimony of God’s friendship in our lives.
Friends in the flesh are only a portion of the testimony of who God is as our friend. No human being can replace Him as our friend. Because of this, friends come in pieces. We must look for God as our friend in pieces of humanity. If we seek to abide in a friendship relationship with God in life, we too will be expressions of God’s friendship to others in our world. Like all human expressions we are only a piece, but we can each be a piece of the bread of God’s friendship in our world.
The following is a portion of the prophetic flow released at Alife Church the weekend before last. I am also attaching an audio version of all the prophecy given as well to this blog because I felt the prophetic atmosphere is significant of what God is doing with us as His family in this season. God is our friend, and He is revealing Himself in the many pieces of His community.
I saw an archery bow and an arrow and I heard God say, “The archery bow is My promise and I’m calling you to hold on to My promises. Hold on to the things that I’ve said. Hold on to the things that I’ve declared about you. Because it’s not about the bow, it’s about the arrow, and the arrow is you. For I put you in My promises and My promises only serve who you are. You are not the servant of My promises. My promises are because I believe in you. So, I’m forming you, I’m fashioning you to be my sons, to be my daughters. It doesn’t matter what the enemy’s resistance is, you are the sharp arrows that will meet every enemy in the place of influence. Because the influence of My love in your life is greater than any influence of the hate of the enemy. The influence of freedom and release of My Spirit in you is greater any resistance against that. So, hold tightly to My promises, but understand it’s not what you hold on to that is My will. It’s who you are, that is My will. So, hold on to the bow because I’m sending you forth as My arrows to fulfill My purpose, a testimony of My love,” says God.
We must fully embrace knowing God as our friend to be an expression of God’s family in the earth. As the family of God, we will be known as the people of God in the earth, but that testimony is one of being loved by God and being the expression of God’s love to our world. We are each a piece of God’s testimony of love and life. Weapons of the enemy have been formed against this, but we are the weapons of God’s life. We are being stretched in the bow, stretched in the promises of God, so that we can be drawn close to God and see what He sees. When we see what He sees, we will become the sharp arrows of grace and truth that will pierce through the influence of our enemies with the influence of God’s love. God is our friend, and we are expressions of who He is to our world.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
Prophetic Words at ALife on 9/4/2022
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Hello Pastor Ted,
Thank you for this message on friendship as well as the prophecy recording.
I wish to respond to this post by sharing something on my heart in the last few months regarding friendship. Sarah Ellis, a British Missionary says:
To act the part of a friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life.
A faithful friend is the medicine of life–Apocrypha
Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man–Sam Walther Foss
The story of Jacob in Genesis 28:13-22 speaks about God as our ‘Keeper.”
Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. (Genesis 28:15)
Adonai, the Father of the Universe, made a covenant with Jacob to be, “his keeper.” Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it, he said with holy fear. How awesome is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!
Jacob then made his stone pillow a pillar anointing it, “Bethel, The House of God.”
What this picture looks like to me is the fact that God makes a promise to be Jacob’s Keeper. As the arrow shot from this promise, Jacob becomes the Keeper of all the tribes of Israel.
If God be with me, and keep me in this way where I am going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on, so that I come back to my Father’s House in peace, then the Lord shall be my God. And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God’s House, and all that You give me I shall surely give a tenth to You. —Genesis 28:20-22
God lays a foundational principal with the story of JacobI as well as a picture of the Church (The House of God)–The Lord God remains our Keeper as in the Sermon on the Mount. We are invited to rest in His faithfulness. What this means is that we put EVERYTHING into His hands–we are gifted a continual Sabbath rest in God’s keeping power. We never have to fear or fret–as we rest in Him we can be sure that His will is to walk out each step of our lives —as angels climb up and down and Father God speaks His promise from the top.
The Body of Christ, is invited to be the Keepers of each other as well. As a Keeper we are the arrows that are released into the world with God’s powerful love for one another.
As a friend of God, in response to His Keeping Power in my life, I wish to address the Spirit of God in everyone–and celebrate how God is growing us separately and corporately–I choose to be a friend. The “pieces” of friendships are the parts that impact my life and the lives of others. I believe that to be an arrow of love, especially in God’s House, I must be a keeper of my friends from my placement in Christ as well as my placement in the Body.
This is what I am meditating on–how my gift of friendship lands on others is none of my business–each eternal soul is a precious treasure to God. When I stand in His love, I am doing my service to God and others. The gift of His Keeping power enables me to rest on The Rock, Bethel, The House of God, “The Kingdom within” and hit the bulls eye with love.This is my desire with His Keeping power to do so, I cannot do anything on my own.
Great input Sally – thanks for your thoughts.