1/20/08 Friendship With God

We return this morning to our series on spiritual growth.

So far we’ve seen that, when correctly understood,

spiritual growth is really nothing more than our growing in our friendship with our God.

We enter this world knowing nothing about our Creator -

He’s a stranger to us.

In fact, it’s worse than that.

We don’t simply view Him as a stranger,

we view Him as the enemy -

the great Moral Absolute of the universe

who demands from us what we can not deliver

and condemns us when we fall short.

But then, if we respond to the working of His Spirit in our lives,

we choose to turn our eyes onto the one window through which we can see our God with perfect clarity -

the window of the Person of Jesus Christ.

And what we see there tells us

that not only is our God not looking for reasons to condemn us,

but He is, in fact offering us a way of redemption and restoration to Himself.

The truth is that what He wants most of all

is the opportunity to build a personal friendship with each of us.

And then last week we began our study of Second Peter

and in the opening verses of the letter

we took one more step.

We heard Peter telling us that everything we need most

for a truly fulfilling life on this planet

will come to us through a growing personal friendship - epignosis - with our God.

Great!

But how does that friendship grow?

How do we, locked into our flesh and blood bodies,

limited to our physical senses,

ever develop a deepening unity with a Creator God we cannot feel, or see, or touch, or hear audibly?

Sure, it was fine for Adam to walk with his Creator in the garden in the cool of the evening.

It was wonderful for Peter to explore the Galilean hills with Jesus walking beside him.

But where’s our garden?

Where are our dusty roads and grassy fields?

How can we ever hope to go beyond gnosis,

simply gathering facts about our God,

and enter into living, intimate knowledge of Him?

Something really strange happens to our minds

whenever we get near the concept of building a friendship with God.

Suddenly everything we know about building human friendships

and everything we see happening between Christ and His followers in the Gospels

is obliterated by a massive shadow of religion.

We find our spirits cowering in the darkness,

convinced that the rules that govern communication with our Creator

are mystical, obscure, and inaccessible to all but a tiny elite.

We tend to abandon all logic

and retreat into an endless stream of rituals,

and formulas,

and devotional routines

that we desperately hope will please our Lord

and develop a closer unity between us and Him.

But if what Peter says is to have the power he intended,

we have to see it against the backdrop of Peter’s friendship with the man Jesus.

You see, the great wonder of Jesus’ relationship with Peter and His other followers in the Gospels

is that there was nothing mystical about it.

Sure, Jesus had tremendous influence in the lives of His disciples,

but it wasn’t an influence

that was driven by some kind of terrifying supernatural intimidation.

It was an influence that grew out of the quality of friendship

that Jesus built with each of them

as they shared life together.

Some of those experiences were as simple as eating, or walking,

or resting under the shade of a tree together on a hot afternoon.

Some of them involved

their witnessing the incredible things Jesus was doing.

Sometimes it involved Jesus barging into some problem area in their life,

forcing them to face a much needed area of growth.

But at the heart of everything He did

with each of those who came to Him

was a clear, simple, perfect, personal pattern of discipleship.

He loved them unconditionally right where they were,

committed Himself to them without reservation,

and then built a growing friendship with them through sharing life experiences together.

Every event they shared with Christ

helped to strengthen the friendship,

making it a little easier for them to trust in Him.

Of course what happened between them changed the disciples profoundly,

but the changes were not the goal - they were the byproduct,

the unavoidable results of their growing friendship with the Lord.

And here’s the amazing thing!

Peter’s words in 2 Peter 1:3-4 tell us

that God’s pattern of discipleship for His people has never changed.

Just as He discipled Peter, James, and John

through loving them where they were,

committing Himself to each of them,

and then walking with them through life experiences

in a way that gave them a longing to model themselves after their Lord,

so He wants to do the same thing with every one of us.

In fact, He’s in the process of discipling each Christian now,

in the same way as He did when He was here in human form two thousand years ago.

That’s exactly what Peter is doing in verses 3 and 4 of this first chapter.

He’s revealing to us this divine discipleship process.

Now look at this!

He begins with what we looked at last week -

telling us that everything we hunger for most in life

comes to us through epignosis, - that is our growing personal friendship with God.

That’s what we’re after,

that’s the goal.

“...His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

From there he then goes on to tell us that ...He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises...

Next week we’ll come back to that phrase

and look at it more closely.

But then he finishes his thought

by revealing to us

the project we share together with God,

the project that allows Him to disciple us

in the same way He discipled that first group of followers.

... in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.”

The life-long project we share with our God,

the one that allows us to build a deep personal friendship with Him,

is the project of becoming a partaker of the divine nature - our becoming more and more like Him.

But here’s the thing that we must never loose sight of -

that changing process,

that “becoming a partaker of the divine nature”

only makes sense as long as we recognize it

as the means to the greater goal of growing in epignosis -

growing in a deepening love union with our Lord.

If we ever remove it from that goal and attempt to make it an end in itself

our Christian walk will degenerate into a meaningless,

ego-motivated or fear-driven

performance-based religious caricature of true Christianity.

Rather than experiencing changes in our lives

in response to a growing inner awareness of God’s love,

we will attempt to bring about changes for Him in order to win His approval or acceptance,

or avoid His condemnation.

We so often get the basics of the Christian life upside down

and then wonder why the pieces don’t fit together as they should.

We trot into the family of God,

dragging our performance-based,

results-oriented mentality with us,

assuming that being better and doing better is the bottom line -

the goal we are seeking, the central purpose of the Christian life.

It never really enters our mind that what God seeks

is not how well we perform

but rather a growing friendship with us.

We pursue increased knowledge of God as an essential tool

to help us achieve the ultimate goal of better performance and increased productivity.

But Peter’s comments in the first four verses of his second letter

make it clear that we have everything upside down.

We don’t get to know Christ so that we can become more righteous or more productive.

Rather, we share with Christ the project of growing in righteousness and productivity

so that our friendship with Him can deepen.

The growth process is simply the tool He uses

to enable us to discover His heart and mind

in a way we could never experience any other way.

Let’s see if this will help.

Imagine for a moment a father who has a fourteen year old son.

This father loves his boy deeply,

and he longs to do whatever he can

to help his son through the turmoil of the teen years.

But he can see that he and the boy are drifting apart.

They live in separate worlds,

with so little opportunity to really communicate or share life together.

So the father comes up with a plan.

He decides to take the boy on a canoe trip in the Alaskan wilderness.

For a full week he and his boy will share the adventure of a lifetime

as they explore the last great frontier together.

For weeks before they leave

the boy and his father plan for the trip.

They spend their weekends

making frantic runs to Anchorage

getting fishing and camping equipment,

visiting stores and comparing prices and features

of tents, stoves, sleeping bags, freeze-dried food, and mosquito repellent.

They spend their evenings pouring over maps and books on the Alaskan wilderness together,

planning their route,

and checking and rechecking their lists to make sure they have everything they’ll need.

Then they head out together on their great adventure.

Together they learn how to paddle their canoe,

how to set up camp

and cook their food over the campfire.

They try their hand at fishing along the way,

and discover that living off the land isn’t near as easy as they make it look in the movies.

In the boy’s mind it’s just a great adventure,

but with the father it’s something very much more important.

Underlying all their activity together

the father never loses sight of his real goal - that of deepening his friendship with his son.

The decisions they make together,

the problems the run into,

the work they do and the things they see -

all of them give the father countless opportunities to affirm his son,

to share his values and philosophy of life with him,

and to communicate his deep love for the boy.

Now, why did the father invest all of that effort, and time, and expense into that trip with his son?

Obviously, because the trip gave him what he longed for the most -

a means by which he could share himself with his boy

in a way that could not be accomplished without their going through that adventure together.

Listen to this, my friends -

if eliminating sin from the human race or from our individual lives was God’s goal,

if that’s what He was really after

He could have accomplished it easily.

He could have never allowed Satan into the garden of Eden.

He could have removed Satan from access to the human race immediately after Adam’s sin.

He could remove us from the earth

immediately following our submission to Him.

He could set up His physical reign on the earth here and now.

But, you see, it has never been about God’s battle with evil.

That’s no battle! - GOD WINS!!

What it’s been about from the very beginning

has been us, His creation, discovering who He really is,

what He’s like,

our seeing into His heart and into His mind.

And that could only happen

if we were allowed to interact with Him

in a context in which real evil exists - both within us and around us.

And so our Lord has planned a camping trip for each of us.

It is a trip that involves His sharing with us

the challenge and adventure of

becoming a partaker of the divine nature

and escaping the corruption in the world around us.

He commits Himself to this adventure

and then walks with us each step of the way

because it provides Him with a means by which

He can share Himself with us at a level that could not be accomplished any other way.

There is no more challenging human adventure than personally discovering the true nature of our God.

It was not easy for Peter, nor is it easy for us.

Peter entered his relationship with Jesus

with a mind filled with preconceptions about what God is like,

about how the Messiah would act,

and about what it meant for a man to live in a growing love relationship with his Creator.

It took many months of daily personal interaction with Jesus,

listening to Him,

watching Him,

arguing with Him,

just being with Him before Peter could finally say,

‟You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16).

Why did it take so long for Peter to reach this point?

Had Jesus changed?

Had His miracles become more dramatic?

Had His teachings taken some new turn that finally fit Peter’s messianic mold?

Obviously, the changes didn’t take place in Jesus,

they took place in Peter.

After months of intensive daily interaction with the Lord,

Peter finally worked through his own misconceptions and flawed assumptions

about who and what God was really like

to the place where He could see correctly, at least for a few seconds,

who this Jesus really was.

Every one of us enters our relationship with Christ in a similar situation.

We begin our walk with the King

with a deeply flawed concept of who God is and how He will relate to us in Christ.

We misinterpret His actions,

misread His messages,

and misunderstand His goals and His purposes and His priorities in our lives.

We run away from Him and hide when we should run into His arms.

We fight feelings of guilt, fear, anger, and anxiety in our walk with Him

because we don’t know Him, we don’t see Him correctly.

Into our confusion the Lord says,

“...no one knows the Son, except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.” (Matthew 11:27-29)

He is talking to us about the same growth process

that Peter reveals to us in the first four verses of his second letter.

The goal of our Christian life

is discovering who our God really is - growing in epignosis of Him.

That learning process is made possible

by our sharing with Him the life-long project

of becoming a partaker of the divine nature.

But that project will only make sense

when we understand that it is not something we are doing for our Lord,

it is something we are doing with Him for the purpose of discovering what our God is really like.

Why didn’t Jesus attempt to correct Peter’s endless behavior problems during the months they were together?

When Peter blasted in where he wasn’t wanted

or blurted out what should never have been said,

why didn’t this God in human form standing next to him

pounce on Peter and blast him for his arrogance or stupidity?

It was because Christ knew

that the only thing that would ever have the power to transform Peter’s life

was a love union between the two of them,

a union strong enough to become the motivating force in Peter’s existence.

That love could only happen

as Peter lived with His Lord

in a way that enabled him to see the depth of Christ’s love for him.

That’s what John is talking about when he says, ‟We love, because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

Our ability to love Him

depends upon the degree to which we first see His love for us.

When that father took his son on their camping trip together,

why didn’t he focus on trying to improve his son’s performance?

When The boy messed up paddling the canoe

why didn’t the father demand that his son keep at it until he got it right?

When the boy’s attitudes and actions were less than what the father wanted,

why didn’t the father lash out at him and demand that he do better?

He didn’t because the father understood

that the only hope of truly touching his son’s life

was through creating the kind of friendship with the boy

that would give him a longing to want to model himself after his dad.

Anything less would have never truly touched the boy’s life,

and in fact would probably drive the son away from this father

who seemed to see only his son’s faults

and who demanded from his boy what he could not yet produce.

Peter wants to be sure we understand

that all true Christian growth

ultimately depends upon the degree to which we discover

the true nature and identity of our God.

God has ‟...granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.”

Our Lord then shows us that knowledge

by carefully leading us through the process

of our becoming a partaker of His divine nature

in the way that best enables us to see our God correctly.

Now, we haven’t even begun to talk about how this growth process works in our lives,

but we can’t go there

until we first understand why God has allowed the process in our lives.

Why doesn’t God “fix” what’s broken in our lives instantly?

Why do we sometimes churn over growth areas in our lives for years,

or for our entire lives?

Why does He remove some troubling issues in our lives immediately,

and yet call us to wrestle with others forever?

The answers to those questions rests, at least in part,

in the fact that what He wants most of all is not to “fix” us,

what He’s after is a means through which we can discover who our God really is.

Next we let Peter show us the first step in how this growth process works in our lives.