It's sad to admit that our ideals within usually never quite match up with the way in which we portray them through the lives we live; however, should we allow the reality of what has already been done alter the ideals within, or should we hold steadfastly to our ideals and persevere toward a goal that aligns what will be done to these ideals instead? In saying this I mean, just because our definition of an ideal relationship with God does not match what we can physically observe in our own lives, should we give up on this notion within and concede to the reality that we have, are, and will always be terrible people: regardless of how hard we try to accurately portray these ideals? After you have given yourself a moment to let this question marinate inside your mind, take a second to picture an artist that is standing in front of an empty canvas. Before he puts his brush to canvas, he conjures up a mental image of what he would like to see on the canvas that stands in front of him. The mental image within is most likely full of life, beauty, complexity, and a picture perfect portrayal of what he would like to see in his masterpiece. However, as he attempts to replicate this picture within, he sees that the actual lines, colors, and strokes on the canvas do not quite serve his mental image any justice. Now, could this artist ever truly be great if he was to be satisfied with a portrait that didn't quite meet the standards of how he imagined it in his head? On the contrary, he would only become a great artist in the event that he continually persevered to make the work of art look as close to the mental image as possible. After all, practice makes perfect does it not?
Now you may be asking, "Where exactly are you going with this train of thought?" or "What does this have anything to do with being best friends with God?" Well, I'll tell you. Being best friends with God is much like an artist trying to paint his masterpiece. We are the artist, our ideal understanding of what it looks like to be His best friend is the mental image, our actions are the brush strokes, and our continual pursuit to align our lives with this ideal is the artist's perseverance to produce his masterpiece by painting the most accurate portrayal of the mental image within as possible. So if I am the artist and I’m standing in front of this empty canvas we call life, my first objective is to imagine what it looks like to be best friends with God. So what would my ideal understanding of being best friends with God look like? Though there may be several ways in which we can paint this picture, I believe there are three main criteria that should serve as the foundation for this mental image. In order to become best friend’s with God, we must first acknowledge that we need to abandon our pride, sacrifice our control in order to be willing to become utterly vulnerable, and finally, ask and demand Him to give the only gift worth receiving: His perfect love to be revealed to us, in us, and through us. Once these three objectives have been firmly rooted in our hearts and minds, we can truly start to paint our very own masterpiece that portrays a picture of what it looks like to be best friends with God.
When formulating a mental image of what it looks like to be best friends with God, we must first learn how to abandon our pride. Pride takes on many forms and the good Lord knows how it has manifested itself in a shameful number of ways in my own life. I’ve spent a great deal of my life misplacing my confidence in my own talents and abilities because it seemed so natural to take all the credit for my own accomplishments. My lips would give God the credit; but in my heart, I held onto it with a selfish grip that didn’t seem to want to let go. This stubborn pride then nurtured this misconception that I could do everything on my own and that I didn’t need anyone’s help: much less God’s help. If I didn’t need His help, then what good was He to me? After all, most relationships usually revolve around a symbiotic coexistence. As terrible as it sounds, if a friend has nothing to offer you, you are more likely to cut that friend off than another friend that actually had something to offer in return. For this very reason, we must abandon our pride in order to dispel the delusion that tells us God has nothing to offer us. Once we have abandoned our pride, we can begin to see that God is not useless; but rather, He is quite a necessary best friend that has way more to offer us than we could have ever imagined.
If you are feeling terrible because you feel like this pride issue is just as profound in your own life as it is in mine, do not be discouraged. Pride may be very crippling in your walk with God, but that does not mean you are alone in your struggle. In fact, I would argue that every single Christian battles with this issue of pride in some way, shape, or form. Take the tower of babel for example. Genesis 11:1-9 says:
“Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, ‘Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’ But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel – because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”
There are two things we should take away from this passage. One, as a collective group, mankind possesses a certain degree of pride that compels them to want to make a name for themselves and two, God knows how capable man is and so there will be times in our lives when He intervenes in order to remind His children that He wants us to rely on Him rather than our own merits. Now ask yourself this, when do you find yourself seeking God the most? If you answered, “When I’m helpless and desperately in need of His help,” you will see that God knows exactly how to get your attention. After all, He is our father is He not? In these times of desperation, do not feel guilty or terrible for seeking Him only when it seems convenient; because in all fairness, feeling such guilt only shows that you acknowledge your own transgressions and that you are abandoning your pride by admitting that He in fact does have something to offer you in return, Love. Do not convince yourself that you shouldn’t seek Him because you feel like you are only seeking Him when it is convenient for you because that is nothing more than the Devil’s whispers resounding in your ears. Instead, know that you are not perfect and so when God intervenes to get your attention, you are simply obeying His call when you seek Him in such desperate times. It is better to feel guilty for being a horrible best friend than to not be His best friend at all; hence, we must abandon our pride - and do it daily - in order to strive to be less of a horrible best friend and more of an ideal best friend instead. Now that we’ve established that abandoning our pride is necessary because it allows us to see the necessity in being His best friend in the first place, let us now move onto why it is pertinent that we actively sacrifice control in order to become vulnerable before Him.
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