Photo by lauren lulu taylor on Unsplash
How did your best friend get to be your best friend? I’m guessing that you spent a lot of time together, that you shared many adventures and misadventures. You listened to one another, encouraged one another, sometimes corrected one another. You were there for each other in good times and bad. You got to be best friends by sharing life together.
How do you develop that kind of relationship when one of you isn’t visible, when you don’t speak his language, when he comes from a different culture? You must learn to “see” with different eyes, “hear” from a different place, and come to realize that you’re going to have to learn the rules of a different culture, because he isn’t going to bow to the standards of your inferior world.
You can know God on many levels. You can know him as Father. Many times, in my sanctified imagination, I have found myself snuggled in his lap, safe in his arms, listening to the sound of peace. How do you hear peace? You can, but it’s a sensation in your deep inner being rather than a sound in your ears.
How do you see something that has no physical substance? You can, but you have to learn to trust and move with the picture you find dropping into your thoughts. I struggled to know what to do with those kinds of pictures. Once, I told God I didn’t want to make anything up, but he said that we are created to make things up—to make them up out of our sanctified imaginations and birth them in with our faith and the word of God. Hebrews 11:1-3 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen…By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
I am beginning to interpret that relationship with God as Husband. He drops the seed of something he wants to create in or through me into my spirit—a stray thought, a song, a picture, or a word. I lay hold of it and meditate on it, ask him questions about it, and let it grow. I write it in my journal, along with the answers to my questions as they come. Often they come more as impressions or feelings than as actual words. An uncomfortable or uneasy feeling is a caution. Don’t go there. I measure everything by God’s character and his word. Sometimes, I will remember scripture that fits, like the Hebrews 11 passage in the paragraph above. Together, the Lord and I create substance or perhaps capture substance and bring it from the unseen realm to the visible realm. We give birth to an idea or a dream. For me, partnering with God in that manner has produced books and changed lives and given me more satisfaction than any other thing in my world.
So many times, God’s people fail to move beyond petition prayer. It’s okay to make requests of God concerning the needs and issues of life. He wants us to do that. But he wants relationship with us. He wants intimacy. He wants us to partner with him to do the amazing things he created us to do. Petition prayer won’t get us to that place. We must listen for the silence deep within that is pregnant with his dreams for us. We must grasp and step into the pictures that float our way.
What are the “unrealistic” dreams that lie deep within your heart? What’s hidden under the “must-dos and can’t-dos” of this world? What if you ignored, just for a while, the rules of possibility our world says must be followed, took your invisible friend’s hand, and explored his culture where nothing is impossible? Try it! You might discover a new Best Friend.
