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Becoming A Friend of God: Part 3 · The God Who Sees You Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: We desire that closeness.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be seen and known and loved by God, just as He desires to see and know and love us.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, friend, and welcome back to the podcast.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: We are in a series right now about being a good friend to God.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to talk about how a good friend is considerate to their friend and how we can be considerate to God.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought about how, you know, when you have a good friend, like someone in your life that you really trust, they're considerate, right?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: They think about the way they act or the way they speak in front of you.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: They think about how their words would affect you.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And do we actually consider God in our actions and our words?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Are we considerate of him in our prayers and the things we say to other people too?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's this one verse that it kind of haunts me.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit of a tough verse, and I want to read it to you, but it's talking about grieving the Holy Spirit.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And before this verse, Paul is talking about the way that we speak to others.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So then he leads into Ephesians 4, 30, which says, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you are sealed for the day of redemption.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Greek word here for grieves is lupeo.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a few meanings behind this word.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is to affect with sadness or grief or to throw into sorrow.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like a throwing motion.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the other one is heaviness, to be in heaviness.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I think hearing those words and thinking about the Holy Spirit feeling that way, it breaks my heart just to think about it, just to think about him actually feeling this heaviness based on something I've said or done.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: If we are to consider him, to really think about him, we must ask the important questions before we act or speak.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have to say, would me walking into this situation, deciding to say this thing, would this hurt him?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Would this hurt the Holy Spirit?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have to be considerate in our words and our actions at the expense of God.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Miller, who wrote this amazing book on prayer, a praying life, he said this we don't need self-discipline to pray continuously.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: We just need to be poor in spirit.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: This idea of praying continuously and to just continuously talk to him, it shouldn't be daunting to think about that.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: It should actually just be an act of love and to know that we need dependence on him because we are poor in spirit.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: When we are in constant conversation with him, when we are talking to him throughout our day, we are constantly considering him.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're being considerate because we know that he's with us wherever we go, whether we're driving, whether we're um sitting and talking to someone, whether we're speaking, or whether we're picking up our kids from school or going to work or all of these things, he's with us, right?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think where where we get into trouble is we compartmentalize.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: We think, oh, I'm going to work.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: God doesn't follow me there, but I'll talk to God when I get home.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or I'm going to the pick up my kids at school and he's not with me then, but I'll talk to him later at night when there's time.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: We have to remember that he's with us everywhere we go.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if we remember that he's with us, we'll be considerate of him.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be considerate of him in the way we act and the way we talk and just everything we do.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: The other night, um, I was getting ready to uh pray with one of my kids at bedtime, and they said, Mommy, why do we need to pray?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, God knows everything, anyways, like he already knows, so why pray?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had to smile because they have a good point.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's true, he does know everything.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: But um my response was God doesn't need to hear from you, but he wants to hear from you.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: He has a desire to be your friend, to be the closest person in your life.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: He loves you and he cares for you.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that is why he wants you to pray.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's why he wants you to talk to him.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I went on to talk about how, like me as a parent, I said, I'd be so sad if you didn't tell me one thing about your day, or if you came home and didn't talk to me for the rest of the night.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be so sad, right?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and I really believe that that's how God feels about us.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to hear from us in every moment of every day.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this is part of being a good friend to him, is simply talking to him, updating him, sharing our feelings with him, bringing him along throughout our day, and asking him, am I being considerate of you in this moment?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Am I considering your spirit?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to grieve you, Lord.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think these things are so important.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And in the midst of, you know, telling him like our thoughts and our desires and our heart over things, I think we actually should be oversharing with him.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think we should overshare and share everything on our heart.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Get it all out to him and tell him things that we might not necessarily tell anyone else because he desires that closeness and we desire that closeness.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be seen and known and loved by God, just as he desires to see and know and love us.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let me pray for you, friends, as we um go into our week.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Lord God, um, I just lift up the dear friend that is on the other side of this podcast, and I just pray that they would hear you this week and that they would consider you.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that in the stillness that they would know your voice and that they would consider what would hurt your heart or what would give your heart great joy.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would direct our path, show us where to go, show us what to say and what to do, and stop us if we're about to do something that is not considerate of you.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, for your wisdom.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You promise to be with us in every single moment.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Please be with us this week.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: In your name.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, friends.