Friendship, and Friendship with God
A youth sermon
When I was a little girl I used to imagine Jesus watching over me as I slept. I saw Him as a kindly man with a warm smile and equally warm amber glow who resided at night somewhere in the space between the white painted headboard of my bed and the blue stucco wall it rested against. The question of how He fit into such a small space and how he watched over every little child like myself never crossed my mind as I climbed (or on occasion flung) myself into bed each night. Nor did the question of why Jesus watched over me. It was a comfort just knowing that He did. From the first day I entered Good Shepherd Lutheran Preschool, Christian ideology and beliefs have existed in my life. I am the first to admit that I've been through some rough times with God, but obviously, standing up here today, you can see that something kept me in check. Today, I still sometimes imagine that Jesus watches over me in that space between my gold-colored metal headboard and the now light purple stucco wall. I still try not to wonder how He fits into such a tiny space.
Now, my senior year in high school, I have come to realize how important God is in my life. I've looked to God for guidance, support, answers, and yes, friendship. I believe that friendship with your fellow humans is one of the most important aspects of life, but a friendship with God can have just as much, if not more, impact.
Friendship exists as one of the most talked about, written about, and sung about ideals of human life. It motivates us to higher levels of understanding and communion with fellow humans, drives us to acts of nobility and empathy, and moves us to tears of joy and pain. It helps us grow as a food that nourishes our minds. It gives us peace. What you may find interesting is that if you replace the word friendship with the word "God", the power behind the latter paragraph still remains: God exists as one of the most talked about, written about, and sung about ideals of human life. God motivates us to higher levels of understanding and communion with fellow humans, drives us to acts of nobility and empathy, and moves us to tears of joy and pain. God helps us grow as a food that nourishes our minds. God gives us peace.
Not only are the words God and friendship interchangeable in this manner, both hold a great deal of importance in my life. I like to think that I've come to know how to have friendships that work and that will last. In a way, our relationship with God is very similar to a friendship with another person. I have chosen the topic of friendship because I wish to express the gratitude I feel in knowing that I can call each and every member of this congregation a friend.
We begin our interactions between one another by having a conversation. If that goes well, those interactions lead to a friendship. If a friendship goes well, we experience a communion with one another. It is the same way with God. Each of us experiences our conversations in different ways. It can be a silent or spoken prayer, with God's responses taking the form of action, such as the music we hear, the movies we see, the answers we receive from life, or the chance utterance of a friend passing by. The answers to our prayers take all forms. Once those prayers are answered, our friendship will form.
Oftentimes you will find people who see their friendship with God as a distant relationship. They see God only as a parent, yet He is both a Father and a friend, an equal mixture of both. Some people hope that they can count on God if they should ever have to, but a much closer relationship forms when they KNOW that God will help them in all walks of life. In this world, it takes courage to stand up and tell everyone that you believe God will never reject you so long as you believe in the teachings of Christ. You cannot have a friendship with someone you fear, so I believe that once someone ceases to fear God, they can grow closer to Him. The first step to forging a friendship with God is forgetting your fear of Him.
For a time in my early years I was taught to be afraid of God. My attempts at making sense of religion were often thwarted by well-meaning relatives who told me that if I misbehaved, God would send me straight below. I was not allowed to ask questions, for that showed a lack of faith. I became frightened of Him, afraid to question Him, and afraid to speak of Him. I soon rejected the angry God of my youth, choosing instead to believe silently within what I knew to be true. Only in time was I able to explain that it was not God I questioned, but man, and how man viewed God. Then, when I was invited here, I was able to open my heart to a loving God. When I did that, I realized there were no victims or villains of my youth. I realized that God creates nothing but perfection. Every soul is perfect, pure and beautiful. Yes, those perfect souls may do imperfect things, yet those imperfect things occur in life for a perfect reason. No person comes into our lives without a gift in his hands, whether that is the gift of experience, knowledge or lesson. Nor does God exist in our lives without a gift.
So, the first step in a friendship with God is knowing God. Knowing Him means, first of all, seeing Him. Lots of people see God, but don't recognize Him. It's similar to a cosmic game of Where's Waldo?. (Where's Waldo is a game in which you are given a colored drawing of some scene containing a whole lot of people, places and things. The object is to find Waldo, who always wore a red and white striped shirt, among the fray. Oftentimes, you would realize that you were looking right at Waldo the entire time.) This seems to be the way some people see God. They are looking right at Him, yet don't find Him. God appears in the most extreme ways and the subtlest ways. He is the flower that grows alone on a sidewalk, the words to a song, and the smile of a child. He is also manifested in human form as Christ, has given His son for us, and has given us life. We must embrace Him without condition because he embraces us, welcome Him into our lives as he welcomes us into the kingdom, and know Him because He has always known us. I believe we must come to know God through the path of our heart, not through a journey of our mind. (In a sense, does this mean we have to be out of our minds to know God? -little joke) and within our hearts, we will find our soul, and our soul is our closest link to God. So, in order to know God, we must first know our souls - we must first know ourselves.
Of course, knowing God is not the only step in having a friendship with Him. The second step is trusting Him. This is a hard step for me. What if God's promises aren't true? Some of what is said sounds pretty outlandish to me. We are offered an eternity if we simply do what is right. We are offered answers simply if we pray. We are saved if we simply have faith. Hey, those are lofty promises, and why shouldn't they be? In fact, are they really promises at all? Promises can be broken, but a truth cannot be broken. These things are not offered, because they have always been there. These things are not promised, because they are truths. Even before we ask, our prayers are answered. Once I realized that anything I needed was already provided for and that I did not need to ask for these things, because I already had them, I trusted God. I trusted Him because I had no reason NOT to trust Him.
I believe the third step is to love God. There are those who say that love is without condition, without limitation, and without needs. Because it is without condition, it does not require anything in order to be expressed. It asks for nothing in return. Because it is without limitation, it places no limitations on another. Nor does it know an end, for that without limitation experiences no boundary, no barrier to hinder its movement. Because it is without need, it seeks to take nothing that is not freely given, or hold that which does not wish to be held. It seeks to give nothing that is not welcomed fully. Love is God, expressed. We, too, can love God without condition, without limitation, and without need. There is nothing that we need in order to be perfectly happy. We only THINK that there is. I believe that our deepest, most profound happiness will be found within ourselves and with our communion with God. At the same time, we can only receive God's love in the way that we give God our love. This, I think, is the circle that represents love and God's love for us.
Sometimes it is hard to imagine expressing a love that is without condition, limitation and need. This is why it is so hard to imagine a God who does the same. We are often guilty of needing love in return for love, expecting things from our friends, and loving them on the condition that they treat us with love. If we love and are not loved in return, we feel victimized. Yet I say again that there are no villains and victims. Even those that hurt us have given us something by which our lives will be shaped. They too, will receive a gift from us. Hopefully that gift will be one of understanding and love.
The fourth step is to embrace God. Actually, this is precisely what I have been speaking of. To embrace God is to get closer to Him. Most people wish to be closer to God, yet are not quite sure how. My belief is that if we get closer to ourselves, we can get closer to God. Once we have found ourselves, we can move out to touch others as we would like to be touched. The best way to illustrate this is with the longwithstanding, "Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have them to unto you." I think that a variation on this rule, and perhaps a more accurate way of stating this rule, involves embracing others. Embrace others as we would seek to embrace God, for when we embrace others, we are embracing a part of Him. If we embrace the world, we embrace an essential part of God. In embracing the world, we embrace all parts of the world. That includes those who we view as wrong, misled, and misleading. It includes sinners, the lost, and Catholics (joke!). The largest part of embracing the world is rejecting nothing in it, including people, circumstances and conditions. Of course, this does not mean accepting conditions that are unfavorable. It means embracing those conditions which are unfavorable with love. Ah, and here we are, back to love again. Love is a large part of embracing God. There is no person that love can not heal, no soul that love cannot save, and no condition that cannot be remedied by love. And so, the steps I have illustrated so far really are all part of the same flight of stairs, so to speak. Each step leads us into a certain direction (hopefully up!) and each step must be taken separately, but the flight of stairs is united as a whole.
The fifth step is to use God's tools and gifts. In our dark hours and in our shining ones, in times of fear and in times of courage, in our up and downs, highs and lows, use the tools that we have been blessed with. We may not have the choice to have or not have these tools and gifts, but we can choose whether or not to use them. Do we have any reason not to use God's tools? Why else would He bless us with gifts if we were meant to not use them? God is the gift of wisdom, to open the hearts of others to new ideas. He is the gift of creative energy, which allow us to create pieces of our worlds, and inspire others with our minds. He is the gift of love, which allows us to accept others without condition, limitation, or fear. He is the process of life, so there is no way we can not use his gifts, only be unaware that you are using His gifts. If you use these gifts with awareness, things will begin to change. God, this divine force in the universe, is made up of all of these things and much more. When you used the tools and gifts that God has granted you, you are in a sense, using this divine force. (May the force be with you!)
Perhaps the sixth step is the hardest to understand. I believe the sixth step it to help God. Now, it must be pretty hard to help the All, the Divine, and that which is everything. Why would a perfect being need help from us? First, we need to understand what God is doing. He certainly has a lot of time in which to do whatever it is He is up to, right? Essentially, God's will is for us to have free will, for us to serve Him, and for us to love all. So in helping God, we are in a sense helping ourselves. In helping God, we are helping our relationship with Him grow. We can help God by living live deliberately, harmoniously and beneficially. These three ways of life can be most easily accomplished by using the gifts He had given us. God wishes us to do things on purpose, with a purpose, and for a purpose. Life itself exits for a purpose. He is the food of life, and He nourishes all things. I'm sure every one of us has heard this saying before: "Take and eat, this is of my body"… and this is the symmetry of God
When I step back and look at my life, I realize how far I have come. In junior high school, I was nothing like I am today. I was an angry, depressed, upset young lady who was very hostile towards the world. I was mocked at school, and, unable to find a suitable way to react, reacted by shoving my angry emotions inside of myself. I went home at night and cried, not knowing what to do or what to say to make the taunts stop. As everyone seemed to prejudge me, I too, prejudged them. I was, in a sense, very scrambled up inside with feelings I did not know how to deal with. I viewed these feelings as enemies to my soul, and at the same time viewed my tormenters as enemies. Then a series of events occurred that would forever change the way I viewed other humans.
It began with something that seems totally unconnected to God in any tangible manner: an algebra test. In seventh grade, every student in basic math was required to take an algebra test to determine what class they would be placed in the next year. If you scored between 70 and 90%, you were advanced to the Pre-algebra class. If you scored above that, you skipped pre-algebra completely and went on to algebra. Though I disliked math at the time, I decided right then and there that I wanted to see how well I could do on this test. I remember reading the instructions for the problems, blinking at the page with a confused look about my face, and then re-reading the instructions more carefully. Apparently my efforts paid off, because I ended up amazing my basic math teacher by scoring a 97% on the test. This simple event made me realize that I did have talents, and contrary to what others said about me, I was above their taunting.
The second event relates to the taunters themselves. There was a boy who mocked me daily in class, and one day when he approached me with a new mock, this time a play on my last name, I looked at him and burst into laughter. He began laughing as well, and since that time, we have gone as far as having a few decent conversations. This event made me realize that the people who had mocked me were only my enemies because I believed them to be so. When I realized that they were connected to me and not separate, the tauntings slowly stopped. Without this event, I would not have been able to do many of the things I have done, such as starting a support group for others who found themselves with no one to talk to as a friend during the day. Without this event, I would not have the courage to stand up here, presenting my ideas to you.
The last very significant event in junior high school concerns someone that everyone here should know. Arthur stood out from everyone in the crowd because of the curly tail that flowed partially down his back, a remnant from a popular style in the late 80's. When we met, he greeted me with nothing but kindness. He was the first male that I could easily talk to without fear of what he thought about me, because he always seemed to not only think the best of me, but bring out the best in me. There is no way I would be here if he had never invited me to church.
When I take a step back to look at the intricate weavings and patterns that have shaped my life, shaped my personality, and look forward into how these events will shape my future, I am filled with gratitude. And that is the seventh and final step in creating a friendship with God. Actually, it is almost an automatic step when undertaking steps one through six. Some people believe that when they thank God, good things will be brought to them. Now, just because we do not show thanks, this does not mean that God will take away all that is good. It means that He is a God of such love that by showing our gratitude, all things will come to us. True gratitude is a state of being. Gratitude should be as important a function as breathing. It should also take as much thought. We don't have to think about breathing, or perspiring, or living. Gratitude should come to us in the same manner. It should not "happen", it should "be" as in be a part of us, always. When you feel gratitude, you don't need someone to tell you, "alright, it's time to feel gratitude now." You just, in a spontaneous manner, feel grateful. You find yourself being grateful before you even think about it. If I thank God for something, rather then ask God for something, I know that it is already in place. So, perhaps thanking God is the first thing we should do, not the last. It shows God that we know everything will be provided for.
So, perhaps the seven steps to God can be reversed.
If you thank God, you are helping Him as He helps you.
If you are helping Him help you, you are using the tools and gifts He has given
you.
If you are using the tools and gifts He has given you, you are embracing Him in
your life.
If you are embracing Him, you trust Him.
If you are trusting God, then you certainly know God.
So there you have it. This is my way of having a friendship with God, and hopefully it made some sense. I know I may not have explained things fully and completely at times. These seven steps can not only be used in a friendship with God, it can be used in all human friendships as well. All of the steps are connected and interwoven into one another in such a way that if you look deeply enough into them, they can no longer be separated into steps. Perhaps these steps are a step to having God's kingdom come, His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
