Friends

So I was on a retreat with my beloved youth group this week and had a lot of time to think. I just couldn't get over how blessed I was to have so many great friends. They're all so supportive of me in whatever I do from music to bible quizzing and it gives me those warm fuzzies just thinking of them. All this led to me thinking how dead my relationship with God was then. I remember reading a while ago that we should treat our relationship with God like we do our relationship with our best friends. At that moment it just kinda clicked for me. When I thought of it that way it seemed like God wasn't the big guy watching from heaven anymore, he was the one standing right beside me my whole life. I used to have this vision that whenever I sinned, God was up there wagging his finger at me like a parent would to their three-year-old child. Now it's like he's right behind my shoulder and whenever I go to do something I know I shouldn't, he puts his arm in front of me and tells me that I shouldn't do it, yet he doesn't stop me when I completely diss him and do it anyways. Yet now whenever I do that it feels like I've let him down. I know what it's like to let down a good friend, and it doesn't feel good. Now that's what I get when I let down God. Now there's a whole new meaning to the verse that says, "And he walks with me, and he talks with me." (actually that might be a hymn, not a verse... maybe both.) Then there's prayer. Why do we have such a hard time with prayer? I've come to the conclusion that it's because we don't see God as a friend, but as one of those untouchable kings or emperors of old. When you're with a friend constantly for a few days, do you talk to him 4 times a day at meals and before bedtime? Of course not. You talk to them all day and that's how it should be with prayer. He's there, why not talk to him?