God's Friendship

August 28, 2012  **Tuesday. Starbucks. 8:22am**

Job 29:2-4

"I long for the years gone by when God took care of me, when he lit up the way before me and I walked safely through the darkness.  When I was in my prime, God's friendship was felt in my home."

When people go through rough patches in their lives, it is natural that they speak of times past.  They all dwell on the "good ole days" and "way back when".  These days are the highlight of many people's lives. Some view it as good memories and move on in a healthy way; others see it as good times but have not moved on, causing them to constantly look back with regret.  Job's circumstances were very dire and seemed hopeless.  He had friends who surrounded him, who spoke life and encouragement to him, and a times, did the "smack in the face" with words.  It trips me out that after Job's series of unfortunate events that Job and his friends could not utter words to console him for seven days!

I know that when I hit bumps on the road or even when I'm hanging out with a bunch of friends, they constantly talk about the past.  In light of their conversations, they often laugh or wonder why things happened the way they did.  When I look a my past, at this moment, I see and remember mostly those tough and trying moments of my life where I struggled with issues and bad choices.  During this time, I don't recall being God's friend.  I had no concept of what that was--sure, I knew what a friend was, but to really have a heart knowledge-to really live out how a good friend is, I never understood it, so in turn, I was a bad friend.  God is always have been and will always be our friend.  Sometimes we hang out with him as our best friend. We wear BFF T-shirts and necklaces to prove that we are best friends. How many of those times in our lives do we treat God as that guy in the background--the one in our outer circle, the guy we put our back to, the guy that we sometimes are embarrassed to be around, the guy who is there but we are hanging out with "cooler" friends?  I know I do, sometimes very often.

Lord, I wanna be your friend.  I wanna hang out with you as you stand next to me.  Not on the outskirts, behind the circle of friends, the one who is ignored.  I wanna hang out with you; like in Psalms 51:12b says, "...make me willing to obey you".  Help my heart to want to have you next to me, that I know who you really are-your character, your unfailing love, and your faithfulness.  Teach me to be cool like you, to hear your intimate voice, to really know you.

I love Facebook but I wish I could visually see God's friendship via his wall and see our postings and messages by this type of social media. Seeing it this way would be cool and all but truly, I want and deeply desire the intimacy of God's friendship felt at my home, my heart, as my dear close friend not just to add to my friend list.

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