When we live life with God as our best friend, everything changes. But to many of us, that concept is foreign. If you’re anything like me, your view of God growing up may have been more like a distant rule-enforcer than a friend. You may have lived with the fear that he was constantly waiting for you to mess up rather than to walk alongside you and help you. With these types of mentalities, the concept of grace can be difficult to grasp. And friendship? What does friendship with God even look like?
For a long season, I didn’t realize I kept certain aspects of my life off limits from God. I told myself I trusted him, but in reality, my trust didn’t extend to every area of my life. Through his love and mercy, he eventually revealed to me how little faith and trust I actually had. A series of life-changing events put me in a situation where I could either trust him or live with constant white-knuckle grip anxiety. I was tired of trying to control what was beyond my ability to control, so I chose the former. It was the best decision I ever made.
I believe one of the reasons friendship with God is so difficult for us to understand is because God is invisible. We may conjure up images of the imaginary friends of our childhood and wonder, “Is that what the Bible means? Does God want me to talk to him like I talked to my imaginary friends?”
There is a reason why Jesus told us to have a child-like faith (Matthew 18:3). Children are authentic and genuine and believe without a reason to do so. Being friends with Jesus requires us to have a child-like faith because our mindset needs to be contrary to what the world tells us. The world tells us seeing is believing, but scripture tells us we “walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)
It’s also important to dig into scripture to understand what this friendship looks like. When Jesus first refers to his disciples as friends, it is right before he promises to send our Helper and Advocate after he goes away—the Holy Spirit.
“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:15 NIV
A few years ago, God gave me a revelation about this passage, and it came to life in a new way. I realized that when Jesus called his disciples friends, it was a declaration of trust. Even though they would later abandon him, he used this intimate term to describe his relationship with them.
If God Trusts Us, Shouldn’t We Trust Him?
When Jesus calls his disciples friends, he goes a bit further and makes a key distinction. He says his disciples are no longer called servants because servants do not know their master’s business. Jesus is setting his disciples apart and saying that everything his Father told him, he has made known to them.
If Jesus trusts us with secrets from heaven, shouldn’t we trust him too? He could have spoken to the disciples in constant parables as he did with the Pharisees, but instead, he chose to reveal things to them that he didn’t reveal to anyone else. He knew the Pharisees' hearts were hardened, and because of this, he didn’t explain the parables to them. But with the disciples, he explained his teachings and invested his time and energy. He tried to prepare them for his death and to later be fishers of men. He prayed for them before his crucifixion and for each of us who would later follow him.
Although Jesus knew his disciples weren’t perfect and he would go to the cross alone, he saw their hearts. Beyond the imperfections and the mistakes they made, he saw men and women who desired to follow him and trust him.
When we live with God as our best friend, trust is crucial. We can’t have any valuable relationship without the foundation of trust. And if we’re willing to give him our trust, a whole new world opens up to us.
How Trust in Our Friendship with God Opens a New World
If we trust God and call him our friend, we obey his commands. This truth is stated several times throughout scripture and is key for our relationship with him to grow.
“You are my friends if you do what I command you.” John 15:14 ESV
In a world that tells us to “live our own truth” and “follow our hearts,” this command seems foreign. Do what God commands? But what about what we want? Doesn’t God care about our desires?
Yes, he does. As a matter of fact, David tells us in Psalm 37 that when we delight ourselves in the Lord, he gives us the desires of our hearts. (Psalm 37:4) The key is alignment. When we align ourselves with his Spirit and his ways, our desires will become his desires.
The truth is that nothing the world has to offer will ever satisfy us. We could have all the desires of our flesh, like fame, money, and success, and still, be empty. We could have the perfect house and family and still wonder why we don’t feel fulfilled.
What the world gives, the world can take away, but what God offers us is complete and eternal. He will make our hearts swell with meaning and purpose in ways we never thought possible when we surrender our lives to him and commit to following him no matter what.
When we live with God as our best friend, we also know this: He wants the very best for us. Following him and his commands become second nature because we know he is leading us down a path far more beautiful than anything we could imagine for ourselves. We’ve tasted and seen that he is good, and we’ve also tasted enough of the world to know it isn’t.
The Key to Everything: The Holy Spirit
So are we expected to follow God in our own strength? No. When we commit our lives to the Lord, he gives us the Holy Spirit, who helps us in our weakness and is able to do more than we can ask, think, or imagine through us. If we try to walk through this life in our own strength, we will become weary and restless, but if we ask God to help us, he is more than willing to do so.
“But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” John 14:26 NIV
But the Holy Spirit isn’t just there to strengthen us. He is also there to counsel us, guide us, comfort us, and so much more. He is the friend who will intimately relate to us when we feel misunderstood or abandoned and will lift us up when we feel discouraged.
Living life with God as our best friend is a daily, ongoing commitment, just like any relationship. But it is the best friendship we could ever ask for and a friendship we all need.
If you’re wondering how to live life with God as your best friend, simply ask him. The more you talk to him like you would a faithful friend, the more this conversation will become a natural part of your everyday life.
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Abby McDonald is a writing coach and the author of Shift: Changing Our Focus to See the Presence of God. Her mission is to empower women to seek God in the middle of life’s messes and to share their faith with courage. Abby writes regularly for Proverb 31 Ministries’ daily devotions team, and her work has been featured in numerous publications. You can connect with Abby on her website where you can grab a free worship playlist to help you shift your focus toward God. You can also connect with Abby on Instagram.
