Friends of God

                                 

     Sometimes when we first start out living this new life in Christ we can tend to feel lonely as we give up the ways and people of our past; especially, if we have not yet made new Christian friends. But God’s word tells us that we have a friend in Jesus, He is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24) and we can count on Him—always. Also God’s word says, “God sets the lonely in families…” Psalm 68:6 (NIV). Even if you are single or living alone you are never really alone because you are now a member of God’s family so you now have many brothers and sisters.

     When studying God’s word remember that all of the accounts and stories in the bible are true and actually happened unless Jesus was speaking in parables which He did to His disciples and the multitudes that followed Him to help explain something they might not otherwise understand. So when we read the story of Abraham and how he trusted and obeyed God we can see in scriptures of the Old and New Testament that God considered and even called Abraham His friend! James 2:23 (NKJV) “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.” Also in Isaiah 41:8 (NIV) it says, “But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, you descendants of Abraham my friend.” The promises and privileges of Abraham are also for us today. Wow! I don’t know about you but if I have God Almighty as my friend then how can I possibly be lonely?

      If God and His family are new to you then you might be thinking how can God be my friend when He is my Creator and my God? Here is the truth—God is many things to us who live for and serve Him and I encourage you to read and study His word and you will discover that for yourself. To those who know God well this is a truth in our life and we understand, embrace and proclaim it to others. God is everything to us!

     He is also our friend and we can turn to Him for friendship and companionship and we can know that He is always going to be there, not like the friends we’ve had in the world and in the past, but a friend who doesn’t skip out when things get rough or are not going just the way they want them to. Isn’t that what true friends do? Don’t they hang in there when everyone else has fled? Aren’t true friends the ones who we call upon during the worse possible times? Friends who are good and close friends don’t abandon us because we have been moody or less than pleasant and they are forgiving when we ask for forgiveness but don’t deserve it. Good friends don’t constantly find and dwell on our faults while never seeing the best in us. We all have some good in us, now that God has put His goodness in us, and a friend will look and FIND our rights not our wrongs and they will let us know that on a regular basis.

 Let me tell you, the only place you are going to find friends like that is God and His family. You will not find them in the world because so called friends in the world have ulterior motives when seeking your friendship and they are always going to want something in return for the friendship they offer you, if that is even what to call it—friendship?! In the darkness of addiction people think sharing in their sin or party supplies is an act of friendship, but is it? It is not. They will act as though they want nothing in return but they will expect you to supply them when their supply runs dry and they will remind you of how much they sacrificed to and for you. They weigh and measure the friendship by deeds done to and for each other, reminding you of things they did for you that you don’t even remember or the actual events didn’t happen the way they see it and it was actually you who did the good deed for them?! Does any of this sound familiar? That is not true friendship either, it is the world’s way of showing and expressing friendship, but it is not true friendship and when we have finally known what a real friend is we can finally understand and see that we never actually had friends in the world of addiction. They are what I consider “drug buddies”, “addiction companions”, and “drinking partners”; some were even “enemies” in the guise of friends.

     I think that might be how or why that old cliche' got started, “with friends like that who needs enemies?” It’s true though, and it is heart wrenching when you think you have a friend and you find out in the middle of a crisis that this person you viewed as such a good and close friend has nothing to offer you. They can’t offer you comfort the way God can, His word says in 2 Corinthians 1:3 (NKJV) He is the ”… God of all comfort.” He can and will comfort you the way you wanted your worldly friends to but they didn’t and couldn’t because they didn’t know Him.

     These so called friends ditched you when you needed them the most and they didn't care that you not only needed them but that you were devastated by their abandonment. Friends of addiction will turn on you when you were so sure they never would and they will also turn the wrong done to you into an infraction against them. Yes, when you needed someone the most they not only fled but also turned others against you. Does any of this sound or seem familiar? If you have lived in the world of addiction I know this is so familiar to you that it probably even brings up some of that old pain and hurt. Only dwell on the pain long enough to remind yourself that you don’t want the friendship that the world of addiction offers because it is not true friendship and there is no sense in missing any of that or those people—it didn’t and won’t last, and now you can say thank God for that!

     It is a matter of letting even the meaning of friendship become newly created in your heart and life.

     God Almighty and our Lord Jesus are your new best friends and they will never leave you, forsake you, abandon you or turn on you. The best part is they don’t have some crazy conditions or purpose for pursuing you as a friend, they are simply and completely your friend with no ulterior motives. Doesn’t that sound great and haven’t you wanted a friend like that all of your life? You have one in Jesus. Embrace this new friendship and call on Him to show you how to have a friendship that is true and real and worth all the effort put into it.

    

     The other really great thing about God’s family is when you begin to pursue friendships in the body of Christ you can know that your friends in Christ will literally be the best friends you have ever had. They are friends who will be there for you, and support you, and help you, and instead of turn on you they will pray for you. Now don’t get me wrong people are people so I am not saying you will never again be hurt by people but what I am saying is that your closest friend Jesus and God the Father will lead you into good, safe and healthy Christian friendships if you ask and are obedient to what and who God directs you to. 

     When you are feeling lonely and you haven’t yet made some good Christian friends just talk to God, thank Him that He was a friend of Abraham and He is also a friend of yours. Thank Him that His word and the promises in His word are for you right now, today. Jesus is your friend, the one who sticks closer than a brother so talk to Him as such and tell Him that you want to make and have new friends in the family of God and I assure you that He will bring them into your life and you can learn how to not only have, but also be, a real true friend because now your best friend is God. There is no better friend in the secular world or the Christian world so trust Him and He will bring many new and “true” friends into your life.  

     Hallelujah, we are friends of God!

~

     

"I'll Always Love You and I'll Never Leave You"

            "I’ll always love you and I’ll never leave you.” He said it and yes I had heard it before, but this time it would be different, this time I knew it would somehow be different. I don’t know why I thought for a second that anything would be different, after all, everything  was happening just as it usually did. Why did I think something was going to be different?

Nothing changes unless something changes.

       I have taken longer to post than usual and I am sorry for that. God has been guiding and leading me about what to write and share and it is going to get more personal so I had to really seek Him about specifically what to share and how to talk about such “tender” issues.

     My heart is to share and not only in doing so continue to heal wounds and scars of my own past, but also to hopefully, maybe, touch another’s life and help them find some hope through my story.

     I have said a few times in past articles that people can be addicted to people—the secular world and the addiction “specialists” call it codependency. Whatever you want to call it, it is an unnatural desire for another person to the point that it becomes interruptive to one’s ability to function, thrive and grow.

       “I’ll always love you and I’ll never leave you.” He said it and yes I had heard it before, but this time it would be different this time I knew it would somehow be different. I don’t know why I thought for a second that anything would be different, after all, everything was happening just as it usually did. Why did I think something was going to be different?

      He had come into my life talking tales of love and happiness as though they were something he knew anything about. And I hungered and thirsted for something, someone, enough to believe what he was telling me. The word tales here has a double meaning which fits what I’m referring to—a tale is an account or description of something (the great life he was promising), and a tale is a little fib or lie (the not so great truth that he wasn’t promising).  Over the years this would come to be my story and it would not be specific to any one man, but in fact a few men.

      I must say at this point I was not addicted to sex; however, when you have self-esteem issues as a young woman who didn’t have many or you had lacking or nonexistent healthy relationships with men you will begin to get your identity in sexual relationships in hopes that someday one of them will finally “notice” YOU and subsequently fall madly in love with you. In reality it doesn’t work like that—instead the more you give intimately of yourself the more your self-esteem is shredded to pieces. There is nothing more damaging to your self than to have given your most intimate parts to someone only to have them not want you anymore—ouch! That is pain that goes deep. I know. This is how damaging it is, the bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 6: 18 (NKJV), “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” It is damaging to the very core of who we are.

     I spent most of my young adult life being addicted, codependent or unusually, abnormally attached to men. Not necessarily any specific man, I mean, if any certain one stayed around long enough to make the unusual attachment more intense and “love like” to me then I would think, feel, or surmise that yes indeed he loves me and he might be one that was a little more difficult to get over when the time for leaving me came, but that is the only specifics about it. And of course, there was never any doubt that it was love that I was experiencing even though I really had no idea what love even was.

      I am sort of like the Samaritan woman at the well. Read the (true) story in John 4:7-29. I have been married four times. I was married the first time when I was only fourteen years old and I was honestly only in love with one of my husbands. Even that love, I would come to find out 5 years later, was not the kind of love I needed and I finally realized I didn’t want it either.

      I was on my fourth marriage and I was just figuring out a man can’t make me happy and this guy loves me the best way he knows how, it just isn’t enough for me.

     If we have never fully known love we will look for it almost anywhere, yes, sometimes even where we have already looked and not found it. And we will think and feel that emotions are somehow connected to real, true love. Yes, we can and should have emotional feelings for people we love and care about, but having feelings for someone does not mean we love them and it certainly does not mean they love us!

     I didn’t want this to be a lesson on love because everyone is an expert and really no one knows what they are talking about, unless they are talking about God’s love. God’s love is agape love which means it is unconditional love, there are no strings attached to it and you don’t have to pay a price for it.

     The world’s idea of love or the love that our flesh is familiar with is a love that always costs someone something. It is painful in its very nature and we only think or feel that someone loves us if we hurt either when we have it (love), or if we suddenly don’t. Codependent people become so familiar with the abuse and or neglect from others that when they don’t have it they feel as though they can’t go on. They “feel” unloved.

     Love is not a feeling. We have all heard this a million times, but people who have never known God’s agape love and who are codependent don’t seem to be able to separate the two.

     Even though I finally got over my thing of needing a man in my life, it wasn’t until I let God be the thing I needed that I finally felt fulfilled. He is the only man I need in my life and I have been set free from getting my identity and sense of worth through a mere man.

     Isaiah 54:5-6 (NIV) “For your Maker is your husband—the Lord Almighty is His name...The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—a wife married young, only to be rejected.” I have clung to these scriptures because they are my story. I was married young, rejected and abandoned by so many men who said to me, “I’ll always love you and I’ll never leave you.” Jesus is the only one who can say that statement to us and mean it! He is the only one who cannot (if we have accepted Him as Savior) ever leave us and if He went to His death so we could have life—He really, truly, with no strings attached—loves us. Think about that for a minute, before He knew we would accept Him, He still died for us, and He knew that some would never accept Him yet He died for them also.  I believe that qualifies as real love.

     I began in my life to let My Savior “court” me, and in turn, I am courting Him. Yes, guess who I finally “let” fall madly in love with me? My Savior, the lover of my soul.  I talk to Him like I would a husband, and I talk to Him like a close friend, because He is. I tell  Him everything and if I get too lonely I ask Him to bring healthy people into my life and He does. Jesus is my everything and my all! 

     I have been happily and joyfully in a committed relationship with Jesus Christ for years now, and I have never been happier. I have been single and without a man of many tales for over 10 years now, and I am truly blessed. The wonderful thing is that I can take what I have learned and am still learning about my relationship with Jesus and make it the center of any and all of my relationships and they will be better because of it.

     Jesus longs to know me and I long to know Him. If I miss a day of prayer with Him I truly miss Him, and feel lonely for Him! I can’t wait to get my heart connected with His and it is a relationship I treasure and want to nurture and have grow. His words are “love letters” to me and I read it as such. His word teaches me about His Ways and His Heart and guides me on how to open up my heart and my ways to Him—just the way a healthy, vibrant relationship should be.  

     Those of you who find yourself in relationship after relationship and you can’t seem to ever find love—STOP looking, let it find you! Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock...” Revelation 3: 20 (NKJV), let Him be the love of your life, and you will finally know happiness.

     Jesus is the Only One who can ever say to any of us—“I’ll Always Love You and I’ll Never Leave You”—He means it. Let Him love you today.

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