The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.

-Psalm 25:14 (ESV)

Everybody Prays!     

There is a universal phenomenon of prayer. Prayer is pervasive across the human race.

According to Genesis 1:26-27, we are all made in the image of God.

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

-Genesis 1:26-27

Bearing God’s image means we were designed to reflect and relate to God. 

• The instinct of God is within every single one of us.

• Every child, left to his own, believes in God and will seek to speak with God.

• Every person comes to a point when they feel their own smallness over and against the greatness of the Universe and they begin to pray.

Prayer: A personal, communicative response to the knowledge of God.

Prayer is profoundly altered by our understanding of who God is.

1. How do you know what God is like? Feeling or Objective Truth?

2. What happens when you fashion God in your own image?

3. How do you interact with God on the basis of erroneous information?

What is Prayer? Prayer is a response to the knowledge of God but it works itself out on two levels.

Level One: Prayer is a human instinct to reach out for help based on a very general and unfocused sense of God.

• Problem: It cannot be a real conversation because the knowledge of God is too vague.

Level Two: Prayer is a spiritual instinct informed by the Holy Spirit who lives in the heart and mind of the believer and who grants understanding and clarity to God’s true character and identity.

• Promise: The moment we are born again by the Spirit through faith in Jesus, the Spirit shows us that we are not simply God’s subjects but also His children—made to converse with God.

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.'

-Galatians 4:4-6

The relationship is not merely father and child - it is friendship!

The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.

-Psalm 25:14 (ESV)

Friendship: sode (Hebrew): Intimate counsel.

This intimate friendship with God is not merely possible but the goal!

• Basic Friends: Have something in common.

• Intimate friends: Discuss the deeper things of life.

There is a renewed interest in spirituality. However, the common phrase is: “I am spiritual, but I am not religious.”

Meaning: “I want to have a spiritual connection with the Divine, something beyond me, but without authority. I still want to live my life the way I want to live my life.”

• No discipleship

• No discipline 

• No community.

The problem with “spirituality” is that you define God and then search for experiences that harmonize well with the Deity you have made for yourself.

The key to understanding prayer is to understand friendship with God.

Is Friendship with God possible?

In every other religion: No.

• God is impersonal, unrelatable.

• Islam is monotheistic, but there is no relationship: Two-way conversation does not happen.


Verse like this are found only in the Bible:

The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.

-Exodus 33:11a

And the scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,' and he was called God’s friend.

-James 2:23

God talked to Moses as a man talks to a friend.

First: The Doctrine of God: The Triune God

If God were only unipersonal, then love could not have existed until God began creating other beings.

The Trinity, God is three persons, means:

• Those three persons have been loving each other from before the dawn of time.

• That communication and community occurred before Genesis 1.

• Before Creation, the Father was speaking to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Father and Son to the Holy Spirit.

In other words, within the Godhead is a friendship!

You and I are created in the image of God which is the reason we long for companionship and friendship.

Augustine: If we had a unipersonal God—a God who existed as a one persona and then began creating the angels—God would be power before He was love.

1. Power would be primary

2. Love would be secondary.

Because we have a triune God, Love is primary! Love precedes creation and therefore is primary! God is love. God is friendship and he wants that friendship with us!

Second: The Doctrine of Man

We are created in the image of God.

We are formed in the image of God–we are partakers of the divine nature. We are not God, but he has placed Himself within us in the sense that we possess:

1. A desire for community.

2. A desire to love and be loved.

3. A desire for friendship.

These realities exist within the Divine Nature, and God has passed them down to us.

Third: The History of Redemption

History is one gigantic, cosmic act of friendship.

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

-Hebrews 2:14-18 (ESV)

God became a human being. He was made like us in every way. God knows what it is like to be us!

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

-John 15:13 (ESV)

No other god of any other religion could possibly lay down his life for his friends because no other god went through the act of incarnation. No other god is willing to become this vulnerable—killable.

On the cross, Jesus became like us in:

1. Our darkness

2. Our death

3. And our lostness

4. To a deeper, more punishing degree. 

And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, ’Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.’ And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

-Luke 22:41-44 (ESV)

Why did He experience this agony?

Pain? Fatigue? Weakness?

No. Separation! Redemption is the ultimate act of love.

The Father turned His face away from His Son so that He would never have to turn His face away from us!

In the redemption story we see Jesus experiencing:

1. Hunger, exhaustion, pursuit by His enemies

2. Sorrow, sadness, weeping

3. Betrayal, denial, abuse

4. Suffering, death

5. The feeling of abandonment, “Why have you forsaken me?”

6. Alienation from God.

Every aspect of Biblical Theology tells you that it is possible to be friends with God.

But the question is: How is this friendship cultivated?

Prayer: Communicating and experiencing God as He truly is: friendship with God.

How can we cultivate this friendship?

1. We cultivate friendship with God through: Obedience

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

-John 15:13-14 (ESV)

If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

-Psalm 66:18 (ESV)

You lose your intimacy with God when you are living in disobedience.

1. Disobedience is not the same as failing and trying.

2. Disobedience has to do with a will that is wrong.

• I’m saved by grace through faith… No effort.
• God’s precepts are optional.

• I have not obligation to God.

The reason friendship is essential to relationship with God?

1. When you obey Him, you become more like him.

2. In friendship you begin to become like each other.

• That’s the reason the Bible talks about "iron sharpening iron."

• It’s the reason the Bible warns you of the company you keep. 

The Biblical doctrine of Holiness says that the more you obey God, the closer you get to becoming like Him.

Jesus did His part: the incarnation, atonement.

You? Only through obedience do you move closer to God.

He already moved closer to you and made the relationship possible. If you think your willing disobedience does not impact your friendship with God, you are mistaken!

If you are going to be friends with someone, transparency is key. Real friendship is not superficial.

We must know who the other person truly is.

Now, if you are going to be friends with God, you have to allow Him to be Himself.

1. Yes, he is love and compassion.

2. But He is also Holiness.

‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!’ And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: 'Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!'

-Isaiah 6:3b-5 (ESV)

God’s holiness requires a will that wants to obey.

The reason many have never felt and are not “feeling” the friendship of God is because: you have never intended to obey Him and you are not obeying Him now.

You want a Savior without the Lordship!

Without the will to discover and obey the will of God, friendship with God is impossible.

2. We cultivate friendship with God through: belief in justification by faith alone.

Example: Employer/Employee relationship.

• Your boss may be friendly but He is still your boss.

• It’s a mercenary relationship: You work and your boss compensates you for your work.

• Even if your boss likes you, if you don’t do the work, he will fire you. Also, if your boss does not pay you, you will fire your boss.

This is not similar to your relationship with God.

Your salvation is secure in what Christ has done for you on the cross, something you have accepted by faith.

• Your closeness to God is directly correlated with your obedience.

• You are in the family by grace through faith. You have been grafted in—adopted in.

• Which means you receive the discipline that comes from the father when you disobey. Such discipline proves you are in God’s family.

Unless you have a deep sense of justification by faith alone, you can never have friendship with God—it will be mercenary!

1. You do good things for God and expect to be compensated for your efforts. You don’t love God. You love you!

2. If you do what God commands out of a mercenary relationship then when you pray and God does not give you what you want, your reaction is: “Hey, Where are my benefits?” And you will walk away.

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

-Psalm 1:1-2

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

-Matthew 22:37, 39

Heart: He is my greatest passion.

Soul: He is my greatest comfort. He restores my soul.

Mind: He is the priority of my thoughts.

Strength: He is my sufficiency. My help in time of need. The first place I go.

Once you learn to meditate on the law of God, you become the friend of God! Why? Two-way communication begins.

The only way to meditate on the law of God without despair or discouragement is to understand that Jesus fulfilled the law of God perfectly.

1. He lived the life you were supposed to live.

2. He died the death you were supposed to die.

You can delight in the law of God. It tells you the mind of God: what He loves and what He despises.

This means that the law no longer creates despair but becomes the means by which I can please the Father—my ultimate friend.

It is not a way to coerce and manipulate God for His benefits but is a way to love my friend and become more like my friend.

3. We cultivate friendship with God through: A dynamic of two-way communication.

Friendship is not friendship if it is one-way communication.

In prayer, you talk to God but how does He talk to you?

Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint…

-Psalm 61:1-2a

How does communication primarily happen between you and God?

Far too many answer that question by saying: "I hear Him in my spirit or in my heart." That can happen, however, when you say you have “this feeling,” you may have heard from God or you may not have.

How does one discern? 

Since feelings are subjective, what objective source are they to be tested against? The Bible!

When you feel that God has spoken to you, you should always test it. We tend to hear what we want to hear, and reject what we want to reject. A wise person tests what they “feel” over what they know objectively to be true.

Never claim the authority of God over another person, i.e. “God told me to tell you this.”

You become the object of praise, and there is a chance that your feelings are wrong.

The only way to have a deep friendship with God is to “know” He is speaking to you.

The way you know He is speaking to you is to go to the Bible!

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

-Hebrews 4:12

God’s Words and God’s actions are the same!

When you listen to the voice of God as He speaks in His word, that is His power coming into your life!

Psalm 1 is about meditating on God’s word, the Scriptures.

If you want a meaningful prayer life you need to be deep into the Word. The deeper into the Word you go the deeper into friendship with God.

1. When you meditate on the Word. God speaks to you.

2. You respond to what you have heard in prayer.

3. You respond not on the basis of feeling but on the basis of what God objectively communicates.

I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him. Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods. Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare. Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—but my ears you have opened–burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart.’

-Psalm 40:1-8

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

-Philippians 4:4-7

…for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

-Philippians 4:11b-13

This is friendship responding to the words of a friend who exists as not just the friend you have created in your mind or think He should be, but rather, the Friend who is!

Your prayer life must be galvanized by His word!

In a world of prayers that indulge the religious ego and cultivate passionate longings, the Psalms stand out with a kind of angular austerity. Left to ourselves we will pray to some God who speaks what we like hearing or the part of God we manage to understand. But what is critical is that we speak to the God who speaks to us, and to everything that He speaks to us in the Bible. There is a difference between praying to an unknown God whom we hope to discover in our praying, and praying to the known God, revealed in Israel through Jesus Christ who speaks our language. In the first we indulge our appetite for religious fulfillment. In the second we practice obedient faith. The first is a lot more fun. The second is a lot more important. What is essential in prayer is not that we learn to express ourselves but that we learn to answer God. The psalms were not prayed by people trying to understand themselves. They were not the record of people searching for the meaning of life. They were prayed by people who understood that God has everything to do with them. God, not their feelings, was the center. God, not their souls, was the issue. Feelings, souls and meaning were not excluded. They were very much a part of what God is doing but they are not the reason for the prayers. Human experiences may provoke the prayers but they do not condition them. It is not simply a belief in God that conditions these prayers but a doctrine of God. We would rather pray exploring our own deep spiritual capacity with God as background music without bothering with the tedium and complexity of the scriptures.

-Eugene Peterson, Answering God: The Psalms As Tools for Prayer

If you want friendship with God, there is no shortcut.

You must be immersed in the Word. Your prayer must be in response to what God is saying to you through His word—which he has spoken—for sure!

4. We cultivate friendship with God through: The experience of “seeking His face”

When you actually see someone face to face, you learn so much more about that person. Something wonderful happens like that when we diligently seek the face of God.

In fact, the Bible sometimes uses sensory language for prayer!

One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

-Psalm 27:4

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory… I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

-Psalm 63:1-2, 5

Taste and see that the Lord is good…

-Psalm 34:8a

Why all of this sensory language?

It is one thing to know God’s holiness; it is another thing to sense God’s holiness so that it changes you and makes you not want to sin anymore.

It is one thing to have the knowledge that God is love; it is another thing to sense His loving presence.

Friendship with God means that sometimes when you pray you see His face—His presence overwhelms you.

Though a man dies, yet shall he live. (John 11:25, Paraphrased)

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.

-Psalm 116:15 (ESV)

When you are meditating on the word of God, first comes the actual exercise of the mind. Fix your thoughts and mind on the spiritual truth. Then comes the inclination of all your affections of your heart toward these things whereby they cleave to the spiritual truths and make an engagement under them.

-John Owen

First: Fix the Biblical truth in your mind.

Second: Try to incline your heart toward it. If you took this seriously how would you act, feel, and live differently?

Finally, sometimes comes a relish and a savor in which lies the sweetness and the satisfaction of the spiritual life. We then taste by experience that God is gracious and that the love of Christ is better than wine. If we settle for mere speculations and mental notions about Christ as doctrine, we shall find no transforming power or efficacy communicated to us thereby. But when under the conduct of spiritual light our affections do sometimes cleave unto Him with full purpose of heart, our minds fill up with thoughts and delights in Him. Then virtue (change in character) will proceed from Him to purify us, increase our holiness and sometimes fill us with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

-John Owen

As you should have noticed by now, the problem exists when you lean too far in either direction.

One: You believe that God speaks primarily through experience rather than through His Word.

Two: You believe the knowledge of God through His Word means that He will never speak to you personally.

Prayer is Everything.

Dirt Road Discipleship means that you are willing to do the hard work of reading, thinking about, and meditating on His Word.

1. You have everything against you. At the same time, you have everything for you.

2. The Holy Spirit has opened your eyes. It’s up to you to engage the will.

A genuine disciple of Jesus Christ desires friendship with God!

A disciple understands that such friendship comes through:

1. Obedience

2. An understanding of justification by faith

3. A dynamic interplay between your prayers and God’s Word

4. The experience of seeking His face.

“Grace is not opposed to effort. Grace is opposed to earning.”

A true friend consists of candor and constancy.

Candor: Transparency and vulnerability.

Constancy: commitment and stick-to-it-iveness.

Jesus’ death is the ultimate act of friendship! Mediate on that!

Real friends always let you in. They never let you down.

Look at Jesus!

How much more vulnerable could he be?

He stretched out His hands and allowed them to be nailed to the cross so that you could come in forever! How much more stick-to-it-iveness could he have?

Jesus looked down from the cross and saw all the people denying Him and betraying Him and forsaking, mocking and ridiculing Him.  But in the greatest act of friendship in the history of the world…He stayed!

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