How To Develop Close Relationship With God - Friendship With God

     

Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you. James 4:8 (NLT)

 

You are as close to God as you choose to be. Like any friendship, you must work at developing your friendship with God. It won’t happen by accident. It takes desire, time, and energy. If you want a deeper, more intimate connection with God you must learn to honestly share your feelings with him, trust him when he asks you to do something, learn to care about what he cares about, and desire his friendship more than anything else. 

You must choose to be honest with God. The first building block of a deeper friendship with God is complete honesty— about your faults and your feelings. God doesn’t expect you to be perfect, but he does insist on complete honesty. None of God’s friends in the Bible were perfect. If perfection was a requirement for friendship with God, we would never be able to be his friends. Fortunately, because of God’s grace, Jesus is still the “friend of sinners.”

You must choose to obey God in faith. Every time you trust God’s wisdom and do whatever he says, even when you don’t understand it, you deepen your friendship with God. We don’t normally think of obedience as a characteristic off friendship; that’s reserved for relationships with a parent or the boss or a superior officer, not a friend. However, Jesus made it clear that obedience is a condition of intimacy with God. He said, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” 7 We obey God, not out of duty or fear or compulsion, but because we love him and trust that he knows what is best for us. We want to follow Christ out of gratitude for all he has done for us, and the closer we follow him, the deeper our friendship becomes. Unbelievers often think Christians obey out of obligation or guilt or fear of punishment, but the opposite is true. Because we have been forgiven and set free, we obey out of love—and our obedience brings great joy! Jesus said, “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey me, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father and remain in his love. I have told you this so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!”

You must choose to value what God values.  This is what friends do—they care about what is important to the other person. The more you become God’s friend, the more you will care about the things he cares about, grieve over the things he grieves over, and rejoice over the things that bring pleasure to him What does God care about most? The redemption of his people. He wants all his lost children found! That’s the whole reason Jesus came to earth. The dearest thing to the heart of God is the death of his Son. The second dearest thing is when his children share that news with others. To be a friend of God, you must care about all the people around you whom God cares about. Friends of God tell their

friends about God.

I must desire friendship with God more 

than anything else.

The Psalms are filled with examples

of this desire. David passionately

desired to know God above all else; he used words like longing, yearning, thirsting, hungering. He craved God. He said, “The thing I seek most of all is the privilege of meditating in his Temple, living in his presence every day of my life, delighting in his incomparable perfections and glory.” In another psalm he said, “Your love means more than life to me.” 

Jacob’s passion for God’s blessing on his life was so intense that he wrestled in the dirt all night with God, saying, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The amazing part of that story is that God, who is all powerful, let Jacob win! God isn’t offended when we “wrestle” with him, because wrestling requires personal contact and brings us close to him! It is also a passionate activity, and God loves it when we are passionate with him Paul was another man passionate for friendship with God. Nothing mattered more; it was the first priority, total focus, and ultimate goal of his life. This is the reason God used Paul in such a great way.You may have been passionate about God in the past but you’ve lost that desire. That was the problem of the Christians in Ephesus—they had left their first love. They did all the right things, but out of duty, not love. If you’ve just been going through the motions spiritually, don’t be surprised when God allows pain in your life. Pain is the fuel of passion—it energises us with an intensity to change that we don’t normally possess. C. S. Lewis said, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” It is God’s way of arousing us from spiritual lethargy. Your problems are not punishment; they are wake-up calls from a loving God. God is not mad at you; he’s mad about you, and he will do whatever it takes to bring you back into fellowship with him. But there is an easier way to reignite your passion for God: Start asking God to give it to you, and keep on asking until you have it. Pray this throughout your day: “Dear Jesus, more than anything else, I want to get to know you intimately.” God told the captives in Babylon, “When you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.” 

Your Most Important Relationship

There is nothing—absolutely nothing—more important than developing a friendship with God. It’s a relationship that will last forever. Paul told Timothy, “Some of these people have missed the most important thing in life—they don’t know God.” 18 Have you been missing out on the most important thing in life? You can do something about it starting now. Remember, it’s your choice. You are as close to God as you choose to be.Now ask yourself this simple question What practical choices will I make today in order to grow closer to God? 

Then work on It to develop your close relationship with God. Hope you found this article useful and will help you to build your friendship with God.