What happens when God is your buddy?
July 19, 2007 by John Baw
Dreaming with God: Secrets to redesigning your world through God’s creative flow (Bill Johnson)
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. - John 15:15
Several paradigm shifts take place in our hearts as we embrace this promotion.
First, what we know changes , as we gain access to the heart of the Father. His heart is the greatest resource of information we need to function successfully in all of life. Jesus paid the price of our access to the Father, thereby granting us the freedom that comes from the truth we gain through that unlimited knowledge of His heart. Liberty is found in this phase of the promotion.
Second, our experience changes. Encounters with God as an intimate are quite different from those of a servant. His heartbeat becomes our heartbeat as we celebrate the shift in our own desires. The realm of His presence becomes our greatest inheritance, and divine encounters our greatest memories. Personal transformation is the only possible result from these supernatural experiences.
Third, our function in life radically changes. Instead of working for Him, we work with Him. We work not for His favor but from His favor. In this position H entrusts us with more of His power, and we are naturally changed into His likeness more and more.
Fourth, our identity is radically transformed. Our identity sets the tone for all we do and become. Christians who live out of who they are cannot be crippled by the opinions of others. They don’t work to fit into other people’s expectations, but burn with the realization of who the Father says they are.
The issue of working from favour rather than for favour is critical in the realization that you live in a Father-Son relationship rather than a Master-servant one. When I was young[er] I often helped out in my family’s business. Being the son of the owner immediately gives you a differentperspective on things than even the most loyal of employees. “Ownership” of an estate, an inheritance or a legacy does change you from thinking in terms of performance to thinking in terms of stewardship.
Because you are His friend (And because you are His son), the liberty to fully commune with Gods heart opens for us a realm of experience and encounter with God that transforms how we think and live. No longer do I work to earn my approval, I now work because God’s unrelenting passion has pursued my affections to such a degree that it has transformed me into a burning one that will not rest until I awake in His likeness. This, my friend, is what creation groans to see.
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> The issue of working from favour rather than for favour is critical
Right on John!
The other thing that is critical IMHO, perhaps even foundational to the above, is relating to Him out of the REVELATION that HE gives us by the Spirit, not the intellectual theorising about Him that WE do for ourselves. Both have Scripture as a foundation. Both do involve our intellect. But in one the source is HIS Spirit, and it’s a relational, experiential revelatory process, whereas in the other the source is OUR flesh and it’s an intellectual, theorising process. We have to know that He wants to reveal Himself to us and we respond to that revelation, not our theorising. Jesus came that we might KNOW the Father.
Be blessed.
Mark
@Mark: Excellent point Mark. Man, sometimes the comments are way better than the posts ’round here
Same round my blog too
I think it’s a good thing. We’re facilitators, not oracles
Our identity sets the tone for all we do and become. Christians who live out of who they are cannot be crippled by the opinions of others. They don’t work to fit into other people’s expectations, but burn with the realization of who the Father says they are. This is sooo true………….It’s not important what other’s say about me or what I think about myself but WHAT THE FATHER thinks of me and says too me that count……..When the Father told me He thought I was amazing it chagned my life…..Imagine that God saying to one of his kids He thinks that you’re amazing and He loves spending time with you…….haven’t been the same since!