Oh lovely Yahweh:
My firm foundation.
My master at arms,
Schooling me in warfare,
Training me to fight.
My faithful friend.
My fort.
My castle.
My champion.
My impenetrable wall.
My safe house.
My bodyguard.
(Everyday Psalms, Psalm 144, page 323)
“What a friend we have in Jesus,” we sang from our hymnals, dressed up in our Sunday best. I knew my parents believed those words, but there was an awkwardness to singing about our friendship with a God we couldn’t see with words printed out for us in little books in case we didn’t know the words.
But that awkwardness doesn’t negate what we read in the Scriptures. Exodus tells us “the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend” (Ex. 33:11). We read of Abraham and David and their friendships with God. And there are the words of Jesus: “You are my friends, if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything I have learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:14-15).
There’s something unthinkable about this. It feels narcissistic to think of the Creator and Master of the Universe could and would be my friend if I’d be his friend. Who am I out of billions to deserve such attention, such affection? And yet the Scriptures never veer from this audacious truth.
God doesn’t just deal with the cosmos or with humanity in general. God deals with each person uniquely. In his book The Gift of the Jews, Thomas Cahill asserts that the first person to be an individual in human history was Abraham. Prior to him, people only thought of themselves collectively. But Abraham had a unique sense of self because God selected and befriended him as such. In a very real sense then, we become who we are — who we really are — by being befriended by God and befriending him in return. It is here in this relationship where I know that I am known, truly known, and do not need to run away and hide. Because I find God to be the best of friends, faithful and true.
Prayer leads me into this friendship, drawing me further and further into it.
What’s essential to friendship that stops me in my tracks when it’s extended to my relationship with God is that it’s a two-way street. We both give to it. And we both receive from it. We’re not equals. That’s not essential to friendship. But there is a real give and take, a real seeing eye to eye, a leveling of two who couldn’t be further apart — he so high and I so low. And the conversational nature of prayer lives in this space.
Prayer: Dear God, it is my greatest goal to not just find you to be friendly, but to know you and be known by you as your friend. Thank you for befriending me. You truly are the best of friends. Draw me deeper into this thing called prayer that I might enjoy conversation with you. When I grow distant, pursue me and draw me deeper into this friendship. Amen.
For further reading: James M. Houston, The Transforming Friendship: A Guide to Prayer, Regent College Publishing, 2010.