Day12: Becoming Best Friends

 Becoming Best Friends 

with God

Since we were restored to friendship with 

God by the death of his Son while we were 

still his enemies, we will certainly be delivered

from eternal punishment by his life.

Romans 5:10 (NLT)

God wants to be your best friend.

Your relationship to God has many different aspects: God is

your Creator and Maker, Lord and Master, Judge, Redeemer,

Father, Savior, and much more.1 But the most shocking truth is

this: Almighty God yearns to be your Friend! 

In Eden we see God’s ideal relationship with us: Adam and Eve

enjoyed an intimate friendship with God. There were no rituals,

ceremonies, or religion—just a simple loving relationship between

God and the people he created. Unhindered by guilt or fear,

Adam and Eve delighted in God, and he delighted in them. 

We were made to live in God’s continual presence, but after

the Fall, that ideal relationship was lost. Only a few people in

Old Testament times had the privilege of friendship with God.

Moses and Abraham were called “friends of God,” David was

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called “a man after [God’s] own heart,” and Job, Enoch, and

Noah had intimate friendships with God.2 But fear of God, not

friendship, was more common in the Old Testament.

Then Jesus changed the situation. When he paid for our sins on

the cross, the veil in the temple that symbolized our separation

from God was split from top to bottom, indicating that direct

access to God was once again available. 

Unlike the Old Testament priests who had to spend hours

preparing to meet him, we can now approach God anytime. The

Bible says, “Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship

with God—all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ

has done for us in making us friends of God.” 3

Friendship with God is possible only because of

the grace of God and the sacrifice of Jesus. “All this

is done by God, who through Christ changed us from

enemies into his friends.” 4 The old hymn says,

“What a friend we have in Jesus,” but actually, God

invites us to enjoy friendship and fellowship with all three persons

of the Trinity: our Father,5 the Son,6 and the Holy Spirit.7

Jesus said, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does

not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for

everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to

you.” 8 The word for friend in this verse does not mean a casual

acquaintance but a close, trusted relationship. The same word is

used to refer to the best man at a wedding9 and a king’s inner

circle of intimate, trusted friends. In royal courts, servants must

keep their distance from the king, but the inner circle of trusted

friends enjoy close contact, direct access, and confidential

information. 

That God would want me for a close friend is hard to

understand, but the Bible says, “He is a God who is passionate

about his relationship with you.” 10

God deeply desires that we know him intimately. In fact, he

planned the universe and orchestrated history, including the details

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DAY ELEVEN:

BECOMING

BEST

FRIENDS

WITH GOD

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of our lives, so that we could become his friends. The Bible says,

“He made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable,

with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God,

and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him.” 11

Knowing and loving God is our greatest privilege, and being

known and loved is God’s greatest pleasure. God says, “If any

want to boast, they should boast that they know and understand

me. . . . These are the things that please me.” 12

It’s difficult to imagine how an intimate friendship is possible

between an omnipotent, invisible, perfect God and a finite, sinful

human being. It’s easier to understand a Master-servant

relationship or a Creator-creation relationship or even Father-

child. But what does it mean when God wants me as a friend? By

looking at the lives of God’s friends in the Bible, we learn six

secrets of friendship with God. We will look at two secrets in this

chapter and four more in the next.

Becoming a Best Friend of God

Through constant conversation. You will never grow a close

relationship with God by just attending church once a week or

even having a daily quiet time. Friendship with God is built by

sharing all your life experiences

with him.

Of course, it is important to

establish the habit of a daily

devotional time with God,13 but he

wants more than an appointment in

your schedule. He wants to be

included in every activity, every

conversation, every problem, and

even every thought. You can carry on a continuous, open-ended

conversation with him throughout your day, talking with him

about whatever you are doing or thinking at that moment.

“Praying without ceasing”14 means conversing with God while

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Knowing and loving God 

is our greatest privilege, 

and being known and loved 

is God’s greatest pleasure.

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shopping, driving, working, or performing any other everyday

tasks.

A common misconception is that “spending time with God”

means being alone with him. Of course, as Jesus modeled, you

need time alone with God, but that is only a fraction of your

waking hours. Everything you do can be “spending time with

God” if he is invited to be a part of it and you stay aware of his

presence. 

The classic book on learning how to develop a constant

conversation with God is Practicing the Presence of God. It was

written in the seventeenth century by Brother Lawrence, a

humble cook in a French monastery. Brother Lawrence was able

to turn even the most commonplace and menial tasks, like

preparing meals and washing dishes, into acts of praise and

communion with God. The key to friendship with God, he said, is

not changing what you do, but changing your attitude toward

what you do. What you normally do for yourself you begin doing

for God, whether it is eating, bathing, working, relaxing, or

taking out the trash.

Today we often feel we must “get away” from our daily routine

in order to worship God, but that is only because we haven’t

learned to practice his presence all the time. Brother Lawrence

found it easy to worship God through the common tasks of life;

he didn’t have to go away for special spiritual retreats. 

This is God’s ideal. In Eden, worship was not an event to

attend, but a perpetual attitude; Adam and Eve were in constant

communion with God. Because God is with you all the time, no

place is any closer to God than the place where you are right now.

The Bible says, “He rules everything and is everywhere and is in

everything.” 15

Another of Brother Lawrence’s helpful ideas was to pray

shorter conversational prayers continually through the day rather

than trying to pray long sessions of complex prayers. To maintain

focus and counteract wandering thoughts, he said, “I do not

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advise you to use a great multiplicity of words in prayer, since

long discourses are often the occasions for wandering.”16 In an

age of attention deficit, this 450-year-old suggestion to keep it

simple seems to be particularly

relevant.

The Bible tells us to “pray all the

time.” 17 How is it possible to do

this? One way is to use “breath

prayers” throughout the day, as

many Christians have done for

centuries. You choose a brief

sentence or a simple phrase that can

be repeated to Jesus in one breath: “You are with me.” “I receive

your grace.” “I’m depending on you.” “I want to know you.” “I

belong to you.” “Help me trust you.” You can also use a short

phrase of Scripture: “For me to live is Christ.” “You will never

leave me.” “You are my God.” Pray it as often as possible so it is

rooted deep in your heart. Just be sure that your motive is to

honor God, not control him.

Practicing the presence of God is a skill, a habit you can

develop. Just as musicians practice scales every day in order to

play beautiful music with ease, you must force yourself to think

about God at different times in your day. You must train your

mind to remember God.

At first you will need to create reminders to regularly bring

your thoughts back to the awareness that God is with you in that

moment. Begin by placing visual reminders around you. You

might post little notes that say, “God is with me and for me right

now!” Benedictine monks use the hourly chimes of a clock to

remind them to pause and pray “the hour prayer.” If you have a

watch or cell phone with an alarm, you could do the same.

Sometimes you will sense God’s presence; other times you won’t. 

If you are seeking an experience of his presence through all of

this, you have missed the point. We don’t praise God to feel

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Everything you do can be

“spending time with God” if he 

is invited to be a part of it and

you stay aware of his presence. 

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good, but to do good. Your goal is not a feeling, but a continual

awareness of the reality that God is always present. That is the

lifestyle of worship.

Through continual meditation. A second way to establish a

friendship with God is by thinking about his Word throughout

your day. This is called meditation, and the Bible

repeatedly urges us to meditate on who God is,

what he has done, and what he has said.18

It is impossible to be God’s friend apart from

knowing what he says. You can’t love God unless

you know him, and you can’t know him without

knowing his Word. The Bible says God “revealed

himself to Samuel through his word.” 19 God still uses that

method today. 

While you cannot spend all day studying the Bible, you can

think about it throughout the day, recalling verses you have read

or memorized and mulling them over in your mind.

Meditation is often misunderstood as some difficult, mysterious

ritual practiced by isolated monks and mystics. But meditation is

simply focused thinking—a skill anyone can learn and use

anywhere.

When you think about a problem over and over in your mind,

that’s called worry. When you think about God’s Word over and

over in your mind, that’s meditation. If you know how to worry,

you already know how to meditate! You just need to switch your

attention from your problems to Bible verses. The more you

meditate on God’s Word, the less you will have to worry about.

The reason God considered Job and David his close friends was

that they valued his Word above everything else, and they

thought about it continually throughout the day. Job admitted, 

“I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily

bread.” 20 David said, “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all

day long.” 21 “They are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop

thinking about them.” 22

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Friends share secrets, and God will share his secrets with you if

you develop the habit of thinking about his Word throughout the

day. God told Abraham his secrets, and he did the same with

Daniel, Paul, the disciples, and other friends.23

When you read your Bible or hear a sermon or listen to a tape,

don’t just forget it and walk away. Develop the practice of

reviewing the truth in your mind, thinking about it over and over.

The more time you spend reviewing what God has said, the more

you will understand the “secrets” of this life that most people

miss. The Bible says, “Friendship with God is reserved for those who

reverence him. With them alone he shares the secrets of his

promises.” 24

In the next chapter we will see four more secrets of cultivating

a friendship with God, but don’t wait until tomorrow. Start

today by practicing constant conversation with God and

continual meditation on his Word. Prayer lets you speak to God;

meditation lets God speak to you. Both are essential to becoming

a friend of God. 

Day Eleven

Thinking about My Purpose

Point to Ponder: God wants to be my best friend.

Verse to Remember: “Friendship with God is reserved

for those who reverence him.” Psalm 25:14a (LB)

Question to Consider: What can I do to remind

myself to think about God and talk to him more often

throughout the day?

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