This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

But for us the road unfurls itself, we don’t stop walk­ing, we know there is far to go. Denise Levertov

There are some givens when dis­cussing how one enters into a friend­ship with God. First, I think it’s help­ful that by look­ing at some­one else’s life we can also see our own. In upcom­ing posts, by briefly look­ing at the lives of three peo­ple in the New Testament—Judas, Peter and Barnabas—we will see these stages of faith come alive and per­haps be able to see our­selves in their sto­ries. I also inte­grate my own story into this—someone who is no dif­fer­ent from you—sharing how God has always been after me, push­ing me to come closer to Him. This is how He is with every­one.  By hear­ing some of my story, per­haps, you will be able to hear your own. By look­ing at some of these steps, I believe, we can dis­cover not only who we are, but who we are to become.

Sec­ond, these three stages of believer, ser­vant and friend are dis­tinct and it is impor­tant that you begin to look at your own life and see where you are, but then also find out where you’ve come from. What is your jour­ney been like? It is dis­tinct and you must dis­cover those spe­cial fea­tures. On the one hand, your rela­tion­ship with Jesus is entirely com­mon, exactly like mine, and yet it is also entirely dif­fer­ent com­pared to my own. God deals with each of us indi­vid­u­ally and in his own way. There are ways he relates to me that make sense to me, but wouldn’t make sense to you and vice-versa. This unique­ness of rela­tion­ship is illus­trated in a strik­ing man­ner in the book of Rev­e­la­tion. It shares that when we see Jesus face-to-face, he will give each of us a stone. Writ­ten on this small stone will be your unique name, which only you and he will know (Rev­e­la­tion 2:17). This is incred­i­ble if you think about it. This is how incom­pa­ra­ble and excep­tional you are and how dis­tinct your rela­tion­ship is to Him. God sin­gles each of us out. This is why this rela­tion­ship with God is so dif­fi­cult for us to fathom now. This is how per­sonal he desires a one-on-one rela­tion­ship with you. Even though we won’t receive this small relic until we get to heaven, this unique rela­tion­ship begins now and is one that is built with each day. It’s impor­tant that you really think about this; you have your own story and Jesus is per­suad­ing you to come along into some­thing that will not only just trans­form you today, but your future as well. Begin to think about this—what is your story and how do you fit into his life? Most likely, it is a pecu­liar and a strange one; one that only fits you and no one else.

You must also under­stand that these stages of growth are some­thing that God does, but it’s also some­thing that you must do. Each of these steps requires you to make a deci­sion and then act on that choice. I decided to become a believer in Jesus. I decided to become a ser­vant of Jesus. I decided to become a friend of Jesus. You must do the same. There are no spe­cial gim­micks you have to fol­low; there are no hoops you have to jump through; there isn’t any con­fer­ence you can attend. A rela­tion­ship with God is a hand-in-hand experience—he hold­ing on to us and we grab­bing on for dear life to Him. God never forces us to be in rela­tion­ship with him and there­fore, some of the respon­si­bil­ity lies upon us. He woos us, but we must fol­low. So often, he says—Come, fol­low me—but he never demands it. It’s always a request. I am con­vinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is exactly where God wants us to be—in a rec­i­p­ro­cal friend­ship with him where both par­ties are invested. This is his great­est desire and he wants us to fol­low, because he knows all that is in store for both of us.

Finally, and this may seem odd and con­tra­dic­tory, but this process is not about try­ing to get through the “steps.” Grow­ing in friend­ship with God is always a nat­ural process. It’s day by day and it will last the rest of your life. Each day you must decide, will I be a believer, will I be a ser­vant or will I be a friend to Jesus today? Like­wise, this is not writ­ten so that you can become reli­gious or spir­i­tual. Again, at its core, it’s about com­ing into a rela­tion­ship with the One who cre­ated you and desires you. Bren­nan Man­ning makes this chal­lenge way bet­ter than I ever could in his book The Rag­muf­fin Gospel and so I might as well just quote him. To end, lis­ten to what he has to say:

• This book (or blog) is not for the super spiritual.
• It is not for mus­cu­lar Chris­tians who have made John Wayne and not Jesus their hero.
• It is not for aca­d­e­mi­cians who would imprison Jesus in the ivory tower of exegesis.
• It is not for noisy, feel-good folks who manip­u­late Chris­tian­ity into a naked appeal to emotion.
• It is not for hooded mys­tics who want magic in their religion.
• It is not for the com­pla­cent, hoist­ing over their shoul­der a tote bag of hon­ors, diploma’s, and good works actu­ally believ­ing they have made it.

This work, unless oth­er­wise expressly stated, is licensed under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.