THE MAKING OF FRIENDSHIP
Friends Know Each Other
How will unbelieving people come to trust in our God if we don’t know Him well enough to trust Him ourselves? Getting to know someone requires commitment and faithfulness. When two people draw close, one knows what the other is doing.
Moses was one who knew God as a friend (Ex. 33:11). He knew what God would do and therefore was confident in going to Pharaoh to ask him to set the Israelites free. He knew God well enough to stand in for Him as His mediator. If Moses didn’t have a close relationship with God, he wouldn’t have known that God would show Himself to be stronger and more powerful than any power Pharaoh had ever known.
Pharaoh had a hard time believing what Moses said about His God, because Pharaoh knew nothing of Him. Pharaoh’s magicians could also perform signs and wonders—when Moses and Aaron turned their rod into a serpent, Pharaoh’s magicians did the same with their rods (Ex. 7:8-12) —so if Moses didn’t know his own God’s nature and power, he would have had a hard time convincing Pharaoh. But Moses and God were close friends; His friend didn’t let him down and neither did Moses let God down. God’s serpent gobbled up the snakes of the magicians and wise men. Over time, Moses demonstrated God’s might and power in many ways to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh eventually believed in the power of Moses’ God.
Friends Share their Plans
Friends share their plans, and Moses was confident in God’s plans.
Yes, we should desire gifts and to move in the things of the Spirit, but God wants us to desire to know Him more, so He can reveal the things He is doing and so that we will know His nature and never doubt Him. As we walk in this increase and experience the manifestation of His anointing, we must continue to make it the cry of our heart to know Him.
"But since then there has not arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face" (Deut. 34:10). Their conversational relationship began when he was eighty years old, when he met God at the burning bush. In this particular conversation, Moses heard God’s voice, witnessed His power, received instruction on how to deal with Pharaoh, and then put into action the tasks God gave him (Ex. 3:4 – 4:17; 4:21–27). As leader of the Israelites for the next forty years, God continued to speak to him. He let Moses in on more plans and gave him instructions before receiving the Ten Commandments (Ex. 12:14–19), in how to set up of the Tabernacle (Ex. 40:1–15), in items related to the Passover (Ex. 12:1–20; 12:43–48), and while on Mt. Sinai (Ex. 24:9; Ex. 34:6–27). Friends Draw Close
When we seek to draw close, we walk and operate with the mind and the new heart of Christ as prophesied in Ezekiel 36:25–28:
One day, in a vision, the Lord brought me into His strategy room. The room was filled with angels, and it appeared as if they were looking at a computer monitor. The only thing I
"Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God." This is the strategy of heaven. 2 could see on the screen was our minds and our hearts. Then I saw as our minds became like the mind of Christ, and a new heart was given to us, and then the words "walking in the spirit" appeared.
If we want to walk w ith God, we have to have the heart and mind of Christ. But can we be on close, intimate, and friendly terms with someone so awesome in power, might, and majesty, someone so infinitesimally far above us who the Bible describes as having mighty angels bow humbly in His presence? Is it possible to walk with the Creator of the Universe? He’s such a powerful being.
How can we, as "small" as we are, commune with one so big? God made that possible by sending His Son to us in human form. Through Jesus we have the opportunity to know God. How important is it to know God?
