1. Created for an Intimate Friendship with God

Conversational Relationship with God

Cf. Genesis 3 - they heard the sound of God walking in the Garden

Notice the space God gives us in our lives to have freedom to engage

Cf. the Stepford Wives illustration (we are not mechanical objects - rather, free and loveable beings)

God has made you for his presence and he seeks fellowship with us (of course, this flows right out of the communal nature of God)

“There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet than a constant presence with God” Brother Lawrence

Our Part is to engage with God in a conversational relationship with God - of speaking and hearing

Co-Labourer with God

There is a cooperative nature to our relationship with God.

Prayer as “talking to God about what we are doing together”

John 15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for a slave does not know what the master is doing”

We are friends of God because we know what he is doing.

God actually cares for your cares - he is working with us.

Spiritual Growth involves the growth of our ‘wants’ - that is, the maturation of desires to the point that God will give us what we want because it will be what he wants. This is a real heart transformation, though.

Communication as “Guiding someone’s thoughts”

We need to use finite means such as words and symbols - God, however, can communicate through the infinite, the interior, the hidden (etc.)

Thus, God may be speaking in ways that we need to learn to be aware of

Cf. the value of discernment when learning which voice is speaking

Unceasing Spiritual Being - Infinite Unfolding

Note: communicating with God is not always (or primarily) about being told what to do.

Being “in the will of God” requires that we go beyond mere ‘being told’

Cf. the story of the servant who ‘did what he was told to do’ - there is no love in simply doing as we are told; the profitable servant knows what needs to be done and does is without being told.

There are no two saints alike because in their fellowship with God, they are being unfolded with infinite possibility and individuality. People who live according to the world, alone, are “boringly similar” and predictable.

There is noting unique about what they are living for - they are merely enslaved to their desires.

Saints are unique - God has shaped their hearts and wants; God is truly creative!

You are becoming something no one else has ever seen << Very important