The basics of a friendship are this: someone you enjoy talking to and listening to, and they enjoy talking to you, and listening to you. I suppose a best friend is that person whom you enjoy talking to and listening to more than anyone else.
To be close to God, then, means that he's someone we really enjoy talking to and listening to. To be close also includes having shared experiences together, the memories of which continue to fuel the close relationship. Talking and listening are an experience that helps bring a relationships closer, but going through celebrations and trials, through tasks and assignments together playing and planning together are also key experiences.
Jesus said, "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."
To become best friends with God, we need to start on the conversational piece. If we approach God without any desire to build a relationship with him, we'll miss out on much of the conversation. We'll reveal that we just want God to do stuff for us, not really be a friend to him.
Granted, it's a little harder to be friends with someone you can't see, you can't punch in the arm, you can't hear on the phone, you can't sip coffee with. But then God isn't quite like all our other friends. If we just start with talking AND listening with God, we'll make good progress in our friendship.
There were some good reminders for me in this chapter about friendship with God:
You can carry on a continuous, open-ended conversation with him throughout the day, talking with him about whatever you are doing or thinking at that moment. "Praying without ceasing" means conversing with God while shopping, driving, working, or performing any other everyday tasks.
The key to friendship with God, [Brother Lawrence] said, is not changing what you do, but changing your attitude toward what you do. What you normally do for yourself you begin doing for God, whether it is eating, bathing, working, relaxing, or taking out the trash.
It's helpful to keep the idea of friendship in your mind when talking with God - keep the prayers short, make them to the point, be direct. Some of you don't pray more because you just don't know what to say. A good place to start is to pray a short piece of Scripture that captures the essence of what you want God to know or do.
For example, you could repeat in your mind (or out loud): "Lord, have mercy"; or "Lord, help me believe"; or "Lord, your will be done"; or "Lord, give us today our daily bread"; or "Lord, thank you" or you can come up with many, many other short prayers.
Here's one of the best suggestions of the chapter - especially for those of you who worry a lot, who are burdened with anxiety and fear:
When you think about a problem over and over in your mind, that's called worry. When you think about God's Word over and over in your mind, that's meditation. If you know how to worry, you already know how to meditate! You just need to switch your attention from your problems to Bible verses. The more you meditate on God's Word, the less you will have to worry about.
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